 | | |
| The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford | 
 enlarge | Author: Ron Hansen
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy New: $10.40
You Save: $2.60 (20%)
Buy New/Used from $7.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  (14 reviews)
Sales Rank: 45570
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0060976993
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060976996
ASIN: 0060976993
Publication Date: February 26, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Hansen re-creates the real West with his imaginative telling of the life of the most famous outlaw of them all, Jesse James, and of his death at the hands of the upstart Robert Ford. James, a charismatic, superstitious, and moody man, holds sway over a ragged gang who fear his temper and quick shooting. Robert Ford, a young gang member torn between worshipping Jesse and taking his place, guns him down in cold blood and lives out his days tormented by the killing.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Why a novel? August 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A novel about a historical figure? It works if you don't know anything about J. James. Otherwise it is just fluff.
 Excellent Book A MUST HAVE May 2, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is Great. A Must Read in my Oppion.
Two Thumbs WAY Up
 This book has A LOT in common with the film February 28, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
I saw the movie first and while I applauded the lush cinematography and attention to detail. The performances were great but unfortunately the overall effect was mired down in often excrutiatingly slow storytelling.
It's faithful to the book in that manner. Beautifully written with immense detail, the character study and history is frequently lost in the dense prose. It is a novel worth sinking your teeth into, but it IS a commitment of your time and attention.
Those who live by the sword........ November 3, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
....die by the sword. Or gun. Or treachery. That is an over simplistic way of looking at this book, but it gets the message across. There are several ways to determine if a man is a "legend"....one is that at least some people think of him as a fictional character...another is the sighting of him alive after he's dead. Jesse Woodson James was indeed real, and he did indeed die on April 3, 1882, shot from behind by a coward named Bob Ford. He was sighted "alive" as late as 1951, but that's either rubbish, or mistaking son for father. I certainly have an interest in the topic; my wife is a direct descendent of Captain George Todd, company commander of Jesse, and several of the gang, during the Civil War. Our son will be happy to tell you about it.
I suppose that this novel is more a character study than a straight history. Of course, it only claims to be a novel. Starting in 1865, we get a look at the last 17 years of Jesse, then we continue with the last 10 of Bob. We see the life of crime, the damage done, the women who stood by criminals. Jesse James certainly has brains, courage, strength of character, and even a certain nobility. Of course, he put his God-given talents to some very questionable uses. Bob Ford may have had brains, but the rest of Jesse's good points were WAY beyond him. Jesse, Bob, and all the others...Frank, Cole, both Zereldas, Dick...come to life. The author means for us to see them as real people, the mixture of good, bad, and indifferent, common to humanity; he succeeds. Still, he never attempts to fathom just why Jesse went the way he did...maybe, only God knows that.
On the whole, I can recommend this book...the writing is a bit stilted, the detail a bit too verbose...still, it's worth your time. If you REALLY want to know about Jesse, try "Jesse James Last Rebel of the Civil War" by T.J. Stiles. That book IS history, it covers cradle [and before] to grave, and is a lot better written...it even goes into motivation. Of course, there is a whole further area of speculation about Jesse's career...gold, Indians, the Masons, Albert Pike, the next Civil War...that is beyond the scope here. Overall, four stars is about right...
Absorbing and obscure August 22, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
A tapestry of fact and fiction, recounting the last years of James' life and the entirety of Ford's. The prose in this is amazing, dense-packed and grimly poetic, an unsentimental depiction of hard lives and moments of lyrical beauty. The experience of reading the text was so thoroughly absorbing, impossible to skim through, that it almost made me overlook the feeling I had afterwards of not really having much more insight into James and Ford as characters by book's end than I did at the start.
Hansen's James is a force of nature, beyond good or evil or human judgement, a tyrant and a child, cruel and kind. "Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them, rains fell straighter, clocks slowed, sounds were amplified: his enemies would not have been much surprised if he produced horned owls from beer bottles or made candles out of his fingers." A great character, yes, but it's hard to get at the heart of such a cipher. Hansen's Ford is even more obscure - although Ford is the other half to this story and a poignant lost-boy figure, the way he's presented here is almost a cliche, an overlooked child crying for attention in a society which seems to reward infamy. All of this, by the way, is clear from the first few chapters - Hansen doesn't seem to really move beyond these ideas, never reveals more about who *he* thinks these men were.
But, you know, I can forgive a lot when the man writes like this. "No one talked as Jesse moved - it was as if his acts were miracles of invention wondrous to behold. Martha stared at Jesse as she cooked, Ida was moonstruck as she set down another dish, Charley and Wilbur grinned gregariously whenever his eyes floated near." Beautiful.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| | |