I realized something halfway through this book: even though the Newbery is an award for American children's literature, this is the first that is actually set in America. (Well, History of Mankind had a few chapters on American history, but it made up a slim percentage of the book.) And even then, it's set in an exotic part of the US - looking ahead, I'm not sure when I'll actually hit a book that's set in the present day and is about an average kid.
Anyway, this book follows the life of Smoky from birth to retirement on a nice ranch. Will James obviously knows and loves horses, and I don't really feel strongly either way on whether I like the book.
It may be just me, but the chapters where Clint (the "bronc buster", who takes wild horses and makes them rideable) is breaking Smoky have a strange tone to them. It's almost like reading about a kidnapping and a rape, where the victim eventually develops Stockholm Syndrome.
"Smoky struck once; Clint dodged the front hoof and kept a rubbing. He rubbed past the left ear and down his neck till the withers was reached [...] The little horse quivered and fliched every once in a while but the rubbing process went on till Smoky begin showing symptoms that he could stand it all easy enough."
"Instinct pointed out only one way for him to act, -- it was telling him that neither the human nor the leather belonged up there in the middle of him that way [...] His head went down, and a beller came out of him that said much as "I want you" -- Up went Smoky's withers followed by the hump that made the saddle twist like on a pivot, and last came steel muscles like shot out of the earth and which carried the whole mixed up and crooked conglomeration of man and horse in mid air and seemed like to shake there for a spell before coming down."
I guess my mind's in the gutter. Oh yeah, those passages also show the dialect the entire story's written in, presumably some sort of cowboy speak. It kind of loses its charm part way through.
No comments:
Post a Comment