A review by timmens59
The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout

5.0

What a fine, outstanding piece of literature. Many will recognize the title from the movie adaptation, The Shootist, starring the Duke, Lauren Bacall, Ronnie Howard and Jimmy Stewart. I'm a fan of the movie and as a fan of the Duke and aware of his dying of lung cancer, the movie was particularly poignant when I watched in back in '76. Back to the book. Swarthout reminds me of Charles Portis and True Grit fame. The writing is tight, original, lyrical, capturing what I imagine the way men and women in the 19th century West used the language. It has a beauty to it, an elegance even. As is often the case, the book has darker and richer moments not captured in the movie for various reasons. In this edition, Swarthout's son, who co-wrote the movie screenplay, writes a fascinating foreward in which he explains Wayne's and Stewart's objections to a few aspects of the screenplay, which in its original form followed the book's darker and cynical moments of human nature. So a couple of things were changed, but I won't go into details. I will say, however, Swarthout displays the knowledge of a surgeon in describing the horrors of a gunshot wound. Men don't just die from a bullet wound in this book. You travel with the bullet, in minute detail. I took it as his attempt to swat away at the many romantic tropes of the Western myth, giving the reader a much more realistic examination of gun violence and the brutality often experienced at the hands of humans. Highly recommended.