Max Evans

3.5 stars

Millie and her sister were orphans in the early 20th century after their parents died within a short time frame. Although, they were in and out of foster homes, they mostly managed to stay together. When Millie’s older sister Florence, got sick, it was suggested she head for someplace dry. They ended up in New Mexico, with Florence in a sanitorium and Millie needed to find a way to make enough money to pay for Florence’s care. It’s how Millie got into prostitution, and not long after, she started buying and running the whorehouses, herself. She married a number of times, but held on to those whorehouses, and added to them.

Millie was feisty, that’s for sure. She was also well-respected. And had a few brushes with the law. I’m not sure she was someone I would like, but it takes all kinds. She has lots of good stories. The book certainly kept my interest. Overall, it was good.… (más)

Southern writing is inevitably compared to or associated with Twain or Faulkner, in the same way that Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis are with the Midwest or Phillip Roth and Tom Wolfe with New York. It is a sad state of affairs that has allowed Max Evans to go unnoticed in the cannon of Southwestern American literature, having been overshadowed by Edward Abbey, Willa Cather, Larry McMurtry, Rudolfo Anaya, and Cormac McCarthy. Save for a couple of film adaptations of his books, The Rounders and The Hi Lo Country, Evans would go all but ignored, even though his stories and characters capture the eccentricity of this strange land as well as any of the other more popular authors.

[The Hi Lo Country] is set in the high plains of New Mexico at a time when cowboy life was on the wane. Desperate living conditions, a World War, and the industrialization of agriculture had put the land and cattle owner on the cusp of extinction, and marginalized the generations of men and women who scratched their existence out of the dry, dusty land. Big Boy Matson, a hard living cowboy of the old West, and his ‘padna,’ Pete West, are men buffeted by the cold winds of inevitability. But they are more than that – they are symbols of a way of life that can no longer sustain itself. They live in a country that is named for its character, both high and low in the same breath, and among people who have learned to live in the ebb and flow of the place. Their friends – a Mexican who drives only in reverse when he’s drunk; a crazy inventor who thinks he can harvest gold from the ocean; a coyote hunter more at home with the wild than with people – all cling to life in the face of obscurity.

Pete and Big Boy fall in love with the same woman, Mona, the wife of a cattle worker who lied to her about his fortune. Mona chooses Big Boy because he is larger than life, and tames the world around him with the sheer force of his will. But Mona doesn’t refuse Pete, keeping him in line in the even that Big Boy finally loses his grip. The guilt over the dalliance with Mona and the betrayal of his best friend haunt Pete to the point that he begins to self-destruct, even as Big Boy self-destructs in the campaign to establish himself as the best suitor.

Rarely has the voice of the West been captured so vividly than in [The Hi Lo Country]. Rarely has the nobility of another time and way of life battling annihilation been described so evocatively. These are people sustaining themselves on notions of loyalty and honor that no longer carry currency. These are people who will be viewed nostalgically, but dismissed as obsolete within their own lifetimes. They stand for a civilized manner, albeit it one carved out jaggedly from a heartless and deadly land. And Evans crystalizes them in amber for us to marvel at from afar.

Bottom Line: A faithful rendition of a time and a people that have passed, nostalgic only in our own yearnings to recapture a little of what we lost with them.

4 ½ bones!!!!!… (más)

WAR AND MUSIC: A MEDLEY OF LOVE
Max Evans,University of New Mexico Press, June 1, 2010, $24.95,HC, 180pp, 978-0-8263-4908-8.

Ty Hale, a young soldier from New Mexico is left by his unit in a grain field in Normandy after being knocked uncouncious. As he grasps the situation, a hellish scene of bloody bodies surround him. Confused and battered he gathers himself together to search for his unit.

At a country estate he meets Philippe Gaston, a music teacher and his attractive daughter, Renee. Also there is Hans, a talented musical prodigy and German deserter. The four become quick friends and their love of music is shared. Renee and Ty fall in love. All four have a passion for music as it provides a cocoon of comfort while the grim gore of battle continues around them.

In War and Music, Max Evans describes the grisly stage of war as a symphony of sounds, the pleading painful cries of the wounded is a “serenade of devastation.” “The loudest sound amid the medleys of war is that rarest of moments when all is quiet, impossibly quiet.”

Misplaced and intrusive the book contains excessive ineffective and forced metaphors
With sometimes little sense they interrupt what otherwise would be beautiful writing. For example:

“He was drawn to the house as he must have been drawn to his mother’s breast soon after birth.” and “The three males were as dead as childhood dreams.”

War and Music is a contrast, the horrific and gruesome vision of battlefield carnage with the haunting sounds of a soldiers suffering. This is not a book for those with a weak stomach for gore, but if you can persist, his message of hope is shared with those who have a love of music, that transcends the reality of the moment.

© [Wisteria Leigh] and [Bookworm's Dinner], [2008-2011].… (más)