Customer Reviews

The Pistoleer

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was some book ! Absolutely outstanding in every respect - as a story, in its style, very exciting, excellent dialect, really funny in spots, ..... Chapter by chapter I went from hating the arrogant ... (John Wesley Hardin), to wanting to be a Hardin. If he really was as portrayed in this book (which I doubt), he was mostly the kind of person I respect - leave him alone and he'll buy you drinks all night long and otherwise give you the shirt off his back. Meddle in his business, get in his face, or harm his family and he'll whip you or kill you. Now don't get me wrong. Any reader would try to see where they fit in, in that day and time and I am pretty much left with the sad conclusion that I would have probably been a sorry, boot-licking peddler of some kind . . . . not a Hardin.

There was nothing like the American West in the history of the world and figures like Hardin exemplify it; deadly, brave, sad and foolish all at once. His death seemed a relief because by 1895 there was no place left for the bravado of a gunslinger who would draw over an insult.

I found the writing format, the telling through other's eyes, less engaging and certainly less tasty than Blake's current style.

Was easy reading, fast paced, started on a high and finished on a high. This was as true a story on the life and times of one of the deadliest men ever to live as you can find. I have read the few books there are on Hardin and this is in line with all of them, except for one fact. This book is much better reading!

This is a fictionalized account of the life of John Wesley Hardin told by those who "knew" him. You're hooked immediately in the superb narrative, as the author takes many voices and pulls no punches. I have purchased many copies of this book and given them to friends, all of whom loved it. A+++++.

I first read this book in the late 80's and thoroughly enjoyed it. I became a fan of his and recently read "JWH: As witten by Himself". Each book describes a slighly different side of Hardin but each is a great read, and neither reduces my appreciation of him as a true "Westerner". The book I read formerly had been "lost in the shuffle" and so I reordered it for my library.

As a youngster growing up on L.I. in the early 50's, I couldn't get enough of the many Westerns shown on TV back then. As I look back on all this, I believe JWS was a TRUE Westerner, not the Hollywod cowboy. Excellent reads, both.

This presentation, although fictional, draws on the way the common people saw John Wesley. Many of the accounts are about real characters and, as a teenager, I had the pleasure of meeting some of the older people who remembered Hardin well in Gonzales and Wilson Counties. This book is written from the view of those common people who loved and admired him.

I particularly liked the way it was presented because I feel like History has been written about him from a reconstructive (Carpetbagger and Scalawag) view. I would recommend it highly because I feel like we need to be objective about history.

It has been a lot of years since I read this book, but I remember it fondly. I especially remember one of the chapters somewhere in the middle that has an absolutely hilarious recounting of a bar fight by one of the instigators (arrested and in jail), who takes complete responsibility for his part in the fight by prefacing each thing he and his friend did to start the fight with "Now I ain't sayin' we didn't......" A priceless paragraph.

Probably the toughest gangster in the old west. Killed more folks than
most and was finally shot down from the rear..just like Wild Bill. In later life, he was an attorney and wrote this book about his life. It is not often you get to get a book written by the gangster that lived he legend.

While Blake is a premier writer, in this work he has chosen to glorify a deadly killer in a way that doesn't do history justice, but continues to perpetuate the myth of this man as hero. I live in the area of Texas where Hardin did many of his deeds, and myth already abounds here. We don't need a novelist to validate these misconceptions.

This book is written in installments: first-person narratives by people who know the main character. Most of them are only a few pages long, and few of the narrators repeat. Thus, it's impossible to really sympathize with any of them. The main character himself, gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, is hard to like: we never get into his head, and from the outside he looks like just another gangster. The reader sympathizes briefly when he's wounded and imprisoned, only to be put off when he commits his next act of mindless violence or drunken stupidity. The post-Civil War American West, as presented by the author, whacks the reader over the head with violence, lawlessness, and what I felt were rather gratuitous scenes of sex with prostitutes. I'm all for "gritty" historical fiction, but here it sometimes seemed like the author was just trying to show off. Without emotional content, grit is just an irritant. Having said all that, the book is intelligently written and apparently well researched, and it might be somebody else's cup of tea more than it is mine.