The book opens rather confusingly with some scene-setting history whilst the reader becomes accustomed to Kesey’s writing style. Whilst much of the plot turns on Viv this is not a book about women and she is an underdeveloped character in both the book and the film version where Lee Remick plays her as a presence rather than a wholly developed person. Two additional central characters are Viv, Hank’s wife and Joe Ben or Joby, Hanks cousin who represents the moral good-hearted epicentre of the book – everyone likes Joby who is a believer, a religious man. Half brothers as they are they could not be more unalike. A dope-smoking John Coltrane fan whose head is a mess and recently botched a suicide attempt. Half brother Leeland (Lee) is the spectacle-wearing cerebral child gone east to get an education. The alternative movie title – Never Give an Inch – Copyright 2019 Heritage Auctions The defining image is of him training as a swimmer by stroking upriver against the current and going precisely nowhere – swimming as he does in a river that no one else cares to even enter. Hank is the epitome of the western man, a cowboy with an axe rather than a gun. Father Henry has two sons by two different women – Hank is the brawny bull moose, ex-football star who no man dares cross, a chip off the block that shaped Henry, though not quite so unpleasant. The book centres around the Stamper family – a bunch of hard-nosed independent loggers whose motto is, ‘ Never Give an Inch’. Further, ‘ The novel is an important and unjustly neglected classic of American literature’. In, ‘ 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die’, Margaret Anne Doody declares the book is, ‘ A raw exploration of the survival of the American dream and a near-mythic fable of man pitted against nature, community, and big business’. Still, people keep trying and, ‘ Sometimes’, is as good a candidate as any. The defining characteristics might be that the GAN is not yet written, is endlessly debated and it will ruin everything if it ever does come to print. Nonetheless, there are claims that this might be the Great American Novel, a grail after which many seek, have sought, and endlessly written about. Famous as he was it was almost as much as a personality than as an author (a particularly American affliction) and he might be best known for his Merry Prankster escapades. He did in fact spend research time with loggers. It’s set in the fictional logging community of Wakonda in the Pacific Northwest and Kesey – who looks like he may well have chopped down a few trees – seems to know his way around. It’s a doorstopper of a book running to over 600 pages and it is not an easy read, but it is very rewarding. Fewer though might be familiar with Kesey’s second novel, ‘ Sometimes a Great Notion ’, written in 1964 – which a good number would claim to be the superior literary work. There may well be even fewer who are not familiar with the film version, featuring one of Jack Nicholson’s greatest performances – wherein he acts rather than mugs his way through proceedings. It’s my guess that there won’t be many readers of this website that are not familiar with Ken Kesey and his most famous book, ‘ One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ’. Man against nature, rugged individualism, small-town life, family, relationships, love and death – that sort of thing! Hopefully, the choice I have made embodies some of those themes that exemplify much that is American and that the writers we tend to admire pen songs about. It feels like a good idea to widen the scope of this feature with a novel or two, perhaps a volume that has been unjustly neglected. ‘He did get hitched rather late in life,’ Kennedy said, ‘and while a wonderful husband and father, I think he missed the freedom he had had before.A dark family drama played out in a rough world of its own. Domesticity, children, and even the devoted ministrations of a loving wife, got on his nerves after a while, hence his joy in male company and the wilderness. Quirk (Applause), Kennedy ‘felt that Stewart, who, in 1951, found himself with new twin daughters in addition to two stepsons, relished the time away from home. In ‘James Stewart: Behind the Scenes of a Wonderful Life,’ by Lawrence J. As if all this isn’t enough to make “Bend of the River” a candidate for Oregon’s official movie, the Turner Classic Movies website also says, “The cast and crew of ‘Bend of the River’ spent several weeks on location in the Oregon wilderness, which Stewart enjoyed immensely according to his co-star Arthur Kennedy. Wagon trains! Saloon owners! Riverboat captains! Sign us up.
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