The survival story of Hugh Glass is as close to mythic as is possible in reality. Several novels (WILDERNESS; REVENANT), an atrocious film (MAN IN THE WILDERNESS, which turns the Glass character into a 19th century McGyver) and an excellent biography by John Myers Myers attest to the interest Glass's story still holds 190 years later. Frederick Manfred's LORD GRIZZLY is a fine fictional account of the legendary ordeal, but it is also an accurate and loving portrait of the Mountain Men of the 1820's who trail-blazed (the already blazed Indian Trails I might add) the mysterious American West.Manfred has written the dialect of the mostly illiterate (with minor exceptions such as Jedediah Smith) Mountain Men quite accurately, which at first can be confusing or off-putting to the reader, but soon becomes a direct reflection of the mindset of these uneducated, adventurous individuals (there is a collection called "Voices from the Wilderness: The Frontiersman's Own Story" which contains first & second hand accounts of famous mountain men that reads like a streamofconsciousness James Joyce novel; these men used punctuation and capitalization arbitrarily and spelling is, for the most part, phonetic; it is a fascinating glimpse at the western man's self-expression in the early 1800s).The language and descriptions Manfred uses are at times lyrical and flowery, but I found this appropriate to the setting (a seemingly edenic wilderness not yet sullied by industrial man), and it was in my opinion the finest aspect of this novel.My only problem with the novel is the writing of Glass's great 'crawl' back to safety. This is supposed to be the high-point of the novel; it is the moment that makes Glass's story legendary, and Manfred treats it as a plodding repetitious day by day almost-diary entry. Roger Zelazny handled this scene better in WILDERNESS with a hallucinatory quality to the writing, and he used it as a time for Glass to reflect on his past more fully than does Manfred. Some may say Manfred wants the reader to struggle through these 100 pages in order to 'feel' Glass's struggle to crawl back to civilization; however, I would rather read a succinct paragraph that relates that same struggle than to be bored for 100 pages; the 'experience' of reading can never relate, no matter who the writer or reader is, the harrowing experience of Glass's crawl.Other than that LORD GRIZZLY was a fine read.
This is a book I've been meaning to read for decades. My niece reminded me about it recently, when she was raving about it. It was handed about and admired in my family, and it's a fictionalized account of a bit of South Dakota history. And Manfred came and spoke in a literature class I took in college, so I feel sort of connected to him. He's a great storyteller. His writing is very vivid, at times too much so. The time he is writing about includes a lot of fairly disgusting things -- early 19th century, frontier hygiene; festering wounds; eating of freshly killed and uncooked animals; maggots and lice; bloody battles in which men are scalped; buckskin clothing crusted with sweat, old food, blood, etc. I like that the author doesn't pretty it up for us, but it makes for an uncomfortable read, sometimes.The main character, Hugh Glass, is presented as an experienced and careful mountain man with extraordinary resourcefulness. But he's not emotionally complicated. I liked the way Manfred wrote him as a whole person, with regrets and strong affections and blind spots and rage. But he didn't make him into a deep thinker, by any means. The author hints at some of the larger issues at work in the story, like the white trappers viewing the Indians as amoral for doing the same things that the white men were doing. Interestingly, we also see Glass railing internally against the settled East where he came from, which he thinks of as ruled by harpy-like women who force men into nice clothing and stifling jobs. But Manfred doesn't dig too deeply into these issues, so his story feels authentic. We're left to ponder the right and wrong of the characters' actions ourselves, which is just fine.
What do You think about Lord Grizzly (1994)?
Whoa boy. That Frederick Manfred sure is something else. Despite myself, I really, really liked this book. I kind of didn't want to. The main character is enormously selfish, balls-out, over-the-top, sexist, racist, and hypocritical, but, my god, the detail in this book is second to none. Manfred can describe a guy wrastling with a bear, the wounds festering, the crawl back to civilization, the dark thoughts that cloud a person in pain. And, I learned a lot, albeit subjectively through the eyes of a white male mountaineer, about the landscape and lives of the people in the unsettled West. A great read.
—Nicole Helget
This is a fantastic book! I would like to use the term epic but it was nearly the opposite type of tale. The hero of the novel is Hugh Glass, an early American mountain man who was hired as a scout by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to explore the upper Missouri country. Glass was accompanied by several noted frontiersmen and the expedition became known as Ashley's Hundred. Glass was mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead. He crawled a staggering distance in what became one of the first near mythic tales of the Great American Desert. The book focus on Glass's thoughts and fears and determination to survive. It becomes almost microscopic in showing the reader how Glass would roll to the next rock, push to the next copse of grass, drag a broken hip across a fallen tree. By telling the reader the details of each small challenge Manfred describes how terrifying, brutal and enormous the frontier appeared to the white explorers. The dialogue is stark and dated. The story line is not politically correct. I read this book years ago because it I was interested in the time period when the American government was allied with the Sioux against the Pawnee and the Arikara. I hope Hollywood does justice to this amazing tale.
—Shawn
