Frederick Manfred—parallels with Homer

After 19 published novels Frederick Manfred remains comparatively little known outside his native West. Many readers, presuming on the slightest kind of acquaintance with his work, would have him to be a writer of mere “Westerns.” Others not much better acquainted seem to regard him as a sort of rude romantic giant who, while glancing over his shoulder at Homer's example, hacks out his heroic fiction with a blunt instrument.

There is, maybe, a little justice in this last assessment. Speaking of Manfred's more characteristic fiction, Wallace Stegner, who does know, and admires, the work, insists on its romantic character and points to certain shortcomings of style and judgment. And up to a point Stegner is probably right. The heedlessness of Manfred's enormous energy has produced weaknesses, sometimes serious ones, in even his best novels. But when we look at the fact that this same energy has produced “Lord Grizzly” (1954) and “Conquering Horse” (1959), what can we do but register our quibbles and give thanks for it?

The five “Buckskin Man Tales,” now republished in paperback, represent Manfred at his best and, in fact, include two or three of his most distinguished novels, All depict, among other things, phases of life in the West during the last century—specifically the “Siouxland” region—and all depend on carefully researched historical bases. “Lord Grizzly” is the fictionalized story of Hugh Glass, a historical figure of the Northwestern frontier in the first quarter of the century. “Scarlet Plume” (1964) is the story of a woman captured by Indians in the Sioux uprising of 1862. “Riders of Judgment” (1957) re‐creates the war between large and small ranchers in Wyoming in the latter part of the century, and “King of Spades” (1966) is partly concerned with portraying the 1870's gold rush in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Only “Conquering Horse,” a novel exclusively about Indians, has no traceable historical event or personage at its center, though the fictional creation is obviously supported by the most painstaking research. But none of the novels is so stringently oriented in terms of historical fact as to limit Manfred's creative powers as novelist.

The five novels, as I judge them, are nowhere near of equal merit. “King of Spades” is the least successful. Somehow Oedipus seems a bit mislocated in South Dakota, and surely the gold rush in the Black Hills offers no kind of answering thematic resonance. “Riders of Judgment,” a story of cowboys, is a much better novel, but still lacks the dramatic realization that is so complete in Manfred's best work.

Happily the other three novels are among the author's most distinguished. The life of the Indians in their original conditicn excites Manfred's imagination to its splendid best, and both “Scarlet Plume” and “Conquering Horse”—though the first only in part —deal with Indian life. Of course no vision of that life can be finally authoritative at this point, and it can be argued that Manfred's is a romantic one. But if so, the vision is romantic in the best sense: in the process of suspending certain material limits a more persuasive reality is made available. It is hard to see how a life so bound up with the primitive view of nature as essentially spiritual could be more effectively rendered than it is here, where the near‐miraculous is a part of the daily order of things. Add to this that Manfred nowhere shrinks from detailing the savage cruelties of Indian life, and the sum is a portrait that—to this reader, at least—is about as convincing as it could be. “Conquering Horse” especially is a remarkable achievement.

But the very best of these novels, and surely a Western classic, is “Lord Grizzly.” Historical fact supplies the novel's bare outline. A man, Old Hugh Glass, is horribly mauled and mutilated by a grizzly bear and, of necessity, is left by his companions to die in the South Dakota wilderness. His desperate crawl to safety, a crawl that takes him weeks, and his consequent passion for revenge on the men who had deserted hitn constitute the story's simple action. But the rest, the real story, Hugh Glass's suffering, anguish and courage, is Manfred's creation. And what an impressive creation it is! (The late William Carlos Williams said of “Lord Grizzly”: “I have never in lifetime of reading about our West met with anything like it.”)

Not many novelists can match Manfred's powers as a storyteller. His narrative mastery excites interest in small as well as great matters and the most unpromising moments surprise us with their dramatic intensity. The lonely three‐day vigil of No Name, in “Conquering Horse,” is one in a host of examples. It is a passage of many pages, with No Name prone on the ground waiting for his vision from heaven. Yet Manfred keeps it intensely alive. The hovering of an insect or a bird, the bitter intervals of cold, thirst and hunger are all made to charge the tension of No Name's watchfulness and build toward the climax that is the vision itself.

Manfred the novelist is a little like the primitive Indians he describes. The whole world is alive for him: small things and great ones alike are brimful of significance. Hence the acuteness of his eye for detail and his gift for portraying the eloquence of purely sensuous experience. I don't know where else in fiction there is so much about food and eating, for instance, or where else the experience of them is rendered with so much gusto and precision. A reader might think of the feasts in Homer. And thinking of Homer, he might be reminded of another parallel. The animal kingdom has its dignity too and our typical modern condescension toward it is not shared by either Homer or Manfred.

The Buckskin Man Tales, as Manfred has stated, were intended to portray, by a series of fictional murals, an era of history in a part of the West. But the greater value of the portrayal is not the historical value, at least in any strict sense of history. Rather, it is Manfred's image of the land that helped to shape the history, the living breathing image of that part of Mother Earth that he has rendered for us with so much love and so much eloquence. ■

In a style as wide‐ranging and as fascinating as the American West, Frederick Manfred a dozen years ago discussed the subjects dearest to him—his heritage, his upbringing, his writing and his views on the literary scene—in long talk with John R. Milton of the University of South Dakota. It has recently been published in an attractive paperback, “Conversations With Frederick Manfred,” with a foreword by Wallace Stevens (University of Utah Press, $5). ■

Lord Grizzly

207 pp. Paper, 95 cents.

Conquering Horse

275 pp. Paper, $1.25.

Scarlet Plume

317 pp. Paper, $1.25.

Riders Of Judgment

318 pp. Paper, $1.25.

King of Spades

254 pp. Paper, $1.25.

By Frederick Manfred.

New York: Signet/ New American Library