BEST WESTERN

What is the best Western ever written? For my money, that’s an easy one: Shane, by Jack Schaeffer. (I know the movie is also considered to be a great classic, but to me, Alan Ladd just doesn't match up to the hero described in the book.)

This quintessential tale of good-versus-evil is also one of the shortest. My copy has only 119 pages, making it pocket-portable, and the ideal summer read.

What's so great about it?

The character for whom the book is named is the personification of Chivalry, as defined by C.S. Lewis: “...a man of blood and iron... he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.”

Ask the man on the street what “meekness” means, and he’ll probably say, “Weakness.” He couldn’t be more wrong. Meekness is not weakness, but strength — under control. (And by the way, if anyone out there knows exactly who originated that statement, please let me know, because he nailed it on the head.)

Meek — that’s Shane. He deals in hot lead, but he is also the most civilized guest ever to visit a little house on a prairie. He is a nineteenth-century knight-errant. Launcelot with a six-gun.

Shane falls in with the Starrett family, and makes an immediate and powerful impression on each of its three members. Marian, the woman of the house, has some difficulty articulating precisely what it is that she senses about Shane. But her husband Joe understands very well what kind of man has drifted into their lives:

“I like him.” Mother’s voice was serious. “He’s so nice and polite and sort of gentle. Not like most men I’ve met out here. But there’s something about him. Something underneath the gentleness... Something...” Her voice trailed away.

“Mysterious?” suggested father.

“Yes, of course. Mysterious. But more than that. Dangerous.”

“He’s dangerous all right.” Father said it in a musing way. Then he chuckled. “But not to us, my dear.” And then he said what seemed to me a very curious thing. “In fact, I don’t think you’ve ever had a safer man in your house.”

Best. Western. Ever.