Customer Reviews

The Sea of Grass

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

 

 

"The Sea of Grass" is a simple story masterfully told by Conrad Richter. No other writer can match Richter's ability to capture the spoken word of a region or particular time period, or equal his aptitude in turning a simple chain of events into powerful story telling. This novel chronicles the end of the New Mexico frontier as seen through the eyes of Hal, the nephew of one of the last great cattle ranchers. As civilization encroaches even onto that remote region, Colonel Jim Brewton symbolizes the last struggle and eventual submission of the land to the inevitable development of the forces of society. Richter also weaves Brewton's marriage to an unfaithful wife and his relationship to their children into this conflict. Although this plot appears derivative and indentical to that of a soap opera, Richter's prose style elevates it to the status of a great tragedy. Richter clearly mourns the passing of the great independents whose struggle to develop the land clearly and ironically led to their own obsolescence.

Conrad Richter is a detailed narrator of the Early American Scene.The clear sense of a spacious natural setting that he has depcited in other novels like the vast New Mexican territory in The Lady, the elemental force of the natural forest in The Trees, and The Light in the Forest is present in The Sea of Grass. The cattle barons with their ranches "as big a Massachusetts with Connecticut thrown in" and the rolling spanse of emerald green prairie in the spring will render a visual sense of splendor.Historically, Richter encompasses the tense struggle between the rich cattle barons and the squatters in the mid 1800's. My favorite part of the book is the unexpected direction of the character Lutie. The delicate balance of prose and the strong conflicts that develop between the characters, the Colonel, Lutie, Brock, and Judge Chamberlain grab the readers' full attention. Mr. Richter with an uncanny skill for recapturing the past dramatizes the brutality and bravado of the Southwest in the mid 1800's in The Sea of Grass.

The reason why it is so important to pay attention to description is because Richter uses nearly every detail to help tell the story. The prose is evocative in the tradition of some of the best modernist writing at the time like Willa Cather. Despite the occasional misplaced modifier, Sea of Grass is definitely a book that deserves a close reading--if only for Richter's poetic prose that makes you want to read out loud.

THE SEA OF GRASS is thought by some to be one of the classics of Western fiction. It was originally published in serial form by the "Saturday Evening Post" in 1936. Later, it was made into a movie, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.

As a novel, 75 years later, it is only fair. The plot revolves around three characters: Colonel Jim Brewton, a powerful John Wayne-type cattle baron, who runs his vast empire on a "sea of grass" in the 1890s; Lutie Brewton, a highly charming and sophisticated woman whom Brewton "imports" from Missouri to be his wife on the isolated plains; and Brock Brewton, the third of Lutie's children who it is eventually revealed was actually sired by Brice Chamberlain, Jim Brewton's political nemesis. The major problem with the novel, at least for me, is that the actions of these three characters, as well as what must be their underlying motivations, are more those of Greek gods than actual human beings, and the overall story is more a mythical tragedy than something that rings true to human experience. The second problem I have with the novel is that in general the prose is too clichéd and infused with the tropes and conventional images of Western fiction. It's not full-blown Louis L'Amour, but it is too far down that trail for my taste.

On the other hand, an aspect of the novel that I appreciated was its depiction of the conflict between open-range cattle ranching and "nesting" (farming or homesteading) and their disparate effects on the land. At the beginning of the novel, Jim Brewton grazed his 70,000 head of cattle on public lands covering an idyllic "sea of grass" that rose to a rider's stirruped thighs. But the federal government, for populist reasons, pursued policies that eventually unleashed hordes of nesters on the land to farm it, which entailed fencing it and plowing over of the sod and native grasses. Aided by the fortuitous timing of a few unusually wet years, the nesters initially were prosperous, but then the normal dry conditions returned, the farms withered, the land was ruined, and the sea of grass was gone forever. All this is reminiscent of several recent books (such as "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan and "Grassland" by Richard Manning) about the misguided - indeed, disastrous - farming of the Great Plains over the decades leading up to the dust storms of the Great Depression.

Another plus, for me, is that the novel is set in New Mexico, and as I read it I was challenged to figure out more precisely where in New Mexico. The town closest to the headquarters of Brewton's cattle operations is something called Salt Fork, which is on a river and on the railroad and sits astride the Chihuahua Trail (or the Camino Real). All this would point to Salt Fork being located somewhere between present-day Socorro and Truth or Consequences. But if that is the case, where the hell was the "sea of grass"? (I would appreciate any informed opinions.)

2.5 stars, rounded up based on a coin toss.

I first read this excellent book long ago. The story line evolves almost as a mystery novel, with lead-in followed by the enlightenment - in a setting that touches on the emotional development of all of the different types of personalities that comprise the people of his tale. There are users and the used, basic human nature denied even in the face of it's truth; the burden of public opinion, where the substance of a story changes colors like a chameleon depending upon who does the telling; of living and of dying.

The vast, endless grass plains of the New Mexico and Texas territory provides the backdrop for Richter's story and he describes it masterfully, especially noted if one comes from a West or Southwest background. His words awaken memories and feelings in the older reader that may be absent in a younger one because their time has not yet come to look back; his first-person delivery is recalling events of 50 years past. He steadily gathers around his characters the essential descriptive life's details that bring them to life; there are, tied into moments of the telling, all that the senses evoke at the time, which tethers events firmly to the telling of a story long past.

A beautiful, and even at first glance obviously cultured lady steps off the incoming train from the East, to become the wife of a wealthy, hard working cattle baron, several years her senior, whose life is inexplicably intertwined with the land and with a philosophy he can't let go of. He believes the end of the free range is more than what meets the eye; it is the ruining of the great grasslands that were never meant for the plow because there was not enough water available to handle the needs of a farm, and that the emigrants had no idea of what the land would do them. She almost immediately finds herself at odds with the beliefs of her new husband in the matter of the handling of the homesteaders that are encroaching on the cattleman's open range. He is still powerful with his wealth and community standing behind him; the settlers - most of whom are impoverished - are not powerful, but their sheer numbers are a presence that can't be ignored. She is immediately drawn to the brilliant oratory and the politics of the young Eastern lawyer who has come to plead the case for the new Homestead Development, and perhaps both of these men refuse to see the truth. The story line is superb. All of the age-old elements are there, because that is what makes us what we are; but the resulting story - as told by the young nephew as he begins his own life, is unique and something quite unlike anything I had read before. As he watches, helpless to interfere or be of much use, he struggles in his own way to hold on to the old, familiar, beloved world he is losing while he moves into the new world he has reluctantly been forced to prepare for.

I highly recommend this book as one of a kind; and of a story line that is unique and well thought out. In fact, it would appear that some parts of it may have been drawn from a life experience or two rather than being strictly the product of imagination. "Truth is stranger than Fiction" and we have all known people who loved too deeply to let go even when pride was compromised; who stubbornly held to an ideal doomed; or one child who went bad despite all advantages, while the other children in the same family did not turn to the same fate.

To revisit it's pages again was akin to seeing an old friend after many years absence.

Sea of Grass has larger than life characters, one dimensional, more suitable to the big screen than a novel. The love story is melodramatic and doesn't really involve the reader. It may have played better in the nineteen forties than it does at the end of the 20th century. They function more as a backdrop to the drama being played out on the land than as a story unto itself. The real story is a battle of the homesteaders against the great cattle herders with Mother Nature winning in the end. A moderate recommendation.

The Sea of Grass is a tour-de-force of artistic prose. Conrad Richter's word painting of New Mexico at the end of the cowboy era is chock full of delightful metaphors and imagery.

The problem is that all that poetic language crowds out the dialog and characterization. So the story of macho Colonel Brewton and his mail-order bride falls as flat as a limp tortilla. The affection and forgiveness that Brewton lavishes on his whorish and supercilious wife is understandable only as a stereotypically proud male devotion. Her idolization by the rest of the town (including the young narrator) is not justified at all.

Read this novella strictly as an interesting period piece, ignoring the plot, and your time will not be wasted.

This book gets to descriptive and gets hard to understand at some times, you must keep in tuned otherwise you will be lost forever!!!