A classic western by Max Brand, a master of the genre.
This premium quality large print edition contains the unabridged original classic version of Max Brand's first western novel, "The Untamed" in a large 7.44"x9.69" format, printed on heavyweight 60# bright white paper, with a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design. Also included is a brief original introductory author biography discussing the life and work of Max Brand.
"The Untamed..."
.".. He started up from his chair, white faced, his hands high above his head, staring at the apparition of Whistling Dan, who stood with two revolvers covering the posse. Every man was on his feet instantly, with arms straining stiffly up. The muzzles of revolvers are like the eyes of some portraits. No matter from what angle you look at them, they seem directed straight at you. And every cowpuncher in the room was sure that he was the main object of Dan's aim. ..."
Max Brand's first western introduced "Whistling Dan Barry," an influential character who not only appeared in subsequent novels by Brand but became one of the archetypes for the western genre so successful in popular reading, film and television for decades. Roaming the west with his half-wild stallion "Satan" and the wolf dog "Black Bart," Dan's eyes blazed yellow at the prospect of a fight or the approach of danger, his guns ever at the ready.
Max Brand brought a more literary and serious approach to the western than did many others who worked in the genre, and while "The Untamed" includes all those elements a reader expects in a western--gunplay, posses, horseback chases--in the characteristic action-packed style of Brand's many stories, it is also a well-plotted and thoughtful novel. While the modern reader will almost certainly recognize certain cliches of the western genre, it is worth noting that many of them "became" cliches long after Max Brand introduced them, as a result of countless others imitating Brand's originals.
"Max Brand..."
"Max Brand" is the best-known of many pen names used by Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944), an incredibly prolific American author known today primarily for his many western novels and as the creator of the cowboy-hero "Destry" and the character "Dr. Kildare." Born in Seattle, his parents both died while Faust was still a boy and he grew up with relatives in central California, eventually working for a time as a cowhand on a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley.
By the 1920s Faust was writing extensively for pulp magazines under multiple pen names, sometimes being the actual author of two serials and a short novel published in a single issue. By 1934 Faust was writing for more upscale magazines and had moved his family to a villa in Italy, but in 1938 he returned with his family to the United States and settled in Hollywood, working as a screenwriter for a number of film studios. He reaped a fortune from the "Dr. Kildare" films, and became one of the highest paid writers of the era. Despite his wealth and success, Faust used his real name only on his now-forgotten poetry, which he considered his true literary achievement.
One of the most prolific authors of all time, he wrote more than 500 novels and an almost equal number of shorter stories. Working at a breakneck pace, sometimes writing as much as 12,000 words in a weekend, most of his work was published with little or no editing or revision by either Faust or his publishers.
Despite his age and heart condition, Faust managed to talk his way into an assignment as a front line war correspondent and was mortally wounded by shrapnel while with American troops in Italy in 1944.