Peter Fonda, "The Hired Hand" (1971).

A few days ago I started reading Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (1998), a book delivering all the salacious details of the American film industry in the 70's. With my enduring interest in film, you'd think that I might have already gotten around to this title. Finding it for a quarter last Sunday certainly helped pique my interest. Anyway, it's a great summertime read. It's light enough to be tremendously entertaining, but at the same time there is enough meat between the slices to keep me from feeling ashamed of the empty calories. I'll probably get around to posting a review whenever I finish.

If nothing else, Biskind's book has rekindled my desire to revisit my shelves, searching out the gems that cannot wait. I thought I had a lot of 70's classics, and perhaps I do- but there aren't many that I haven't watched yet. However, one flick that I've kept in the plastic for a couple of years already is Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand (1971). There is plenty of gossip about Fonda in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, so it seemed particularly appropriate that I finally break the seal and watch it. Obviously Fonda is primarily known for his acting career, so I had no idea what to expect from his directorial foray into the Western genre. I suppose I imagined something completely over the top... like a postmodern, psychedelic trip through the desert.

To my surprise The Hired Hand is remarkably restrained. Regardless of how it must have seemed during its theatrical release, Fonda's movie demonstrates some reverence for the traditions of the American Western. It has a very simple plot. Fonda plays alongside frequent collaborator Warren Oates, riding across the beautifully-depicted landscape (photographed in stunning fashion by legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond) and getting into sketchily-drawn shenanigans that are largely beside the point. Fonda's character Harry is getting a bit road weary, and feeling an urge to reunite with the wife and daughter he abandoned seven years previously. Oates (Arch) plans to continue on his ride to the coast to get his very first glimpse at the ocean. But circumstances conspire to send both Harry and Arch back to the old homestead together.

Hannah Collings (Harry's wife, played by Verna Bloom) is predictably unsettled to see her phantom husband return after all of the intervening years. Her daughter is now sufficiently grown-up to be disturbed by the revelation that her Daddy is not dead, as she has been told since she was old enough to understand what that meant. Hannah has become hardened out of necessity, and the local townies pass up no chance to let Harry and Arch in on what she has had to do to survive. It's a bitter pill that Harry must swallow, but he'd be a pretty small man not to own his responsibility for those circumstances. He's decided he's sticking around. Meanwhile Arch is feeling the vibes from Hannah, and realizes that he must be on his way.

The film is ultimately about the conflict between a man's duty to his family and his competing desire to run with his friends. It pits filial against familial loyalty. Fonda has managed to convey this complex dynamic in a way that is at once minimalistic and (even) tender. In this respect he has strayed far beyond the traditional borders of what was typically a hyper-masculine milieu. While there is a hint of awareness of the secondary status of women in many Westerns, it is often reduced to a joke or a cliché. Given the prevailing attitudes of the 70's (and the presumptive influence of his pro-feminist sibling), I guess we shouldn't be too surprised that Fonda worked against the stereotypes. In the process he created a poetic document that transcended the genre, without the self-consciousness that might have distracted from its power.

James Carlos Blake, "A World of Thieves" (2002).

Over the last couple of months I've been doing pretty well pulling recommendations off of Amazon. I've discovered several authors that I have enjoyed, and I'm sure that I'll continue reading their books. Many of these writers work within male-oriented genres. The characters are hard and capable of excessive violence. They are also tortured by the disconnect between the way things should be, and the way the world is. There are a lot of unattractive truths and complicated relationships. Certainly there is also a lot of moral relativism. For the most part, I've enjoyed the themes these authors have explored. If nothing else, they have found a way to avoid easy answers and broad generalizations. That's why they seem so true.

As I finish one title, I'm led to the next in a chain of kinship. In this way I came across the name of James Carlos Blake. The man is the product of the Texas/Mexico borderlands, and a descendant of a noted pirate. As a kid he made pocket change by capturing poisonous snakes. It's been said that Blake is the literary equivalent of film director Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia). Certainly Blake manages to pack a lot of bloody incidents into his narrative. His characters seem fated to fulfill their harsh destinies despite the circumstances that might momentarily distract them. It seems a point of confidence for Blake that a man will be what he is meant to be despite his own will.

Buck, Russell and Sonny are not exempted from Blake's convictions. They believe (as the author no doubt does) that thievery is in their blood. A World of Thieves chronicles their adventures in Louisiana and Texas. Sonny is an orphaned teenager that is slowly learning his own place. He has cast his lot with his paternal uncles and intends to find his fortune by hook or by crook. Fraternal twins Buck and Russell started out as gamblers and petty thieves, and slowly worked their way into committing armed robberies. While their eldest brother (Sonny's father) looked the other way regarding the crimes of his siblings, he wanted something different for his son. But when he passed away, Buck and Russell recognized Sonny's true nature and kinship.

A World of Thieves begins with a botched bank robbery that results in the capture of Sonny (whose job is to drive the getaway car). As luck would have it the authorities have very little evidence that Sonny is guilty. He expects to get released quickly, but then finds himself sticking up for an effeminate weakling in his holding cell. As a result Sonny finds himself staring down a life sentence, and he is sent to Angola- a prison plantation in the swamps of backwater Louisiana. Despite history and conventional wisdom our protagonist believes he can successfully escape his imprisonment, and sets off to do just that. Against all odds he succeeds and sets off to rendezvous with his mentors and resume his life of crime.

Blake's spare prose keeps the reader's eye moving quickly through the pages. There is very little extraneous description- the writing is almost entirely focused on the action. I found this a bit unfortunate, as the novel's settings have enormous atmospheric potential. The characters blunder through the murky wilderness, raise hell in raucous oil-boom towns, and make pit stops along isolated desert roads- but Blake skims over all of this, rushing toward his eventual goal of utter destruction. He also inverts traditional morality in such a way as to make the villains heroes, and vice versa. He punctuates his narrative with moments of brutality, but for the most part he makes a crime wave look like a humorous romp. I don't think this approach does his material justice.