Tonto Basin / Zane Grey

Tonto Basin (aka To the Last Man)

by Zane Grey

western

copyright 1921

read in April 2013

rated 8 / 10: really quite good

I've seen Western movies. I was a fan of John Wayne. I thought that I knew what to expect from a Zane Grey novel.

But...

Everyone wears a big black hat. Everyone is tall blond and tough. The good guys are not all that good. The bad guys are, well, bad. But not one-sided bad. The only certainty that remains is that the hero and the heroine get together at the end.

Then there is the forest of Arizona -- the beautiful country in which men kill each other. Grey describes the country with beauty and emotion. In a foreword he writes, "My inspiration to write has always come from nature." Yet his characters clear land and shoot wildlife with not a hint of compunction.

Grey sees nature in all its grandeur and beauty. He portrays nature as something to be used and abused in order to support humans. There is no hint that this is contradictory. A sign of the times in which he wrote, perhaps... A reflection of the belief that nature's abundance is and always will be, unlimited.

The hero and heroine are a bit too good... Every other character is a mixture of good and bad, of loyalty and violence. I was surprised by the shades of grey in "a Western".

This is an enjoyable book -- and a bit of an eye-opener to the real world of Arizona in the 1880s to 1890s. If you don't want to read the book, read the Wikipedia entry, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasant_Valley_War. Which leads to authorial sources...

Grey writes, in his foreword, that he spend many months, over several years, getting the basic facts from native Arizonians. Wikipedia cites a book written at the time. I wonder how much else was available from the bookshop rather than from original sources? And how much of the foreword is poetic licence?!

All that is quibbling. Tonto Basin is a good book: enjoyable, tough, believable and with a satisfying (somewhat contrived) happy ending. All set in a beautiful part of the world... as it then existed.

The rest is just a curious line of thought...

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I read Tonto Basin in a book published in 2004. It included a recent foreword which included the lines, "Tonto Basin now at last is published as Zane Grey wanted his story to appear."

So what has been changed?

I went to Gutenberg Press (www.gutenberg.net) and downloaded an older copy of the novel. What are the differences?

Well, the author's foreword has been replaced by a researcher's foreword. Which is a pity because the author's notes are fascinating.

The name has been changed, from To the Last Man, to Tonto Basin. Not sure why.

The new foreword says that the original publication had a key sexual relationship removed, that reference to an illegitimate birth was censored. Okay, I'm an innocent... I didn't see the illegitimate birth in the new novel, either...

Then I looked for word-by-word changes.

First, the older characters say a lot of "y'u" and "y'ur" and "y'u're". In the newer book they say "you" and "your" and "you're". Has an authentic Arizonian accent been censored in the *modern* book?

Then, in the older book, there are three or four times when a character says, "----, ---- ---- !" In the uncensored version, these characters say, "God damn!" or similar. Okay, that's more modern acceptance of blasphemy; older censorship of the same.

Right at the end, the older book ends with the hero hugging the heroine; all is right with the world. The newer book carries on for perhaps two hundred more words... There's an actual marriage proposal; some words about how happy the couple are now that they understand how good they each are; a hint of the woman's subservient position in a marriage; and a brief reference to God. Not much God really, after the spirituality of various rides through the forest.

Apart from the obviously implied marriage proposal, the cut did not make much change to the story.

So the changes are not that great. Perhaps there were earlier versions -- original publications -- which were more heavily cut. There is a reference to the difficulty of getting a book published, with the large number of deaths that are an essential part of this story.

Which leaves just one more change that I have identified:

"Isbel's house had been constructed with the idea of repelling an attack from a band of Apaches." So, okay, the house was built to withstand Indian attacks. Which means that it is solid enough to withstand the rustlers who are about to attack.

Really? Nowhere else in the book is there a mention of Apache attacks! The only Indian is the "half-breed" hero (who actually has a quarter or less Indian blood -- but not Apache blood). So why was the house built to repel Apache attacks?

That quote is from the more recent publication. In the older version -- with my own emphasis added -- the sentence is, "Isbel's house had *not* been constructed with the idea of repelling an attack from a band of Apaches." Which makes more sense. Especially since the bad guys hang out in their own building which is noticeably more solid, with stone walls.

But the sentence which does include "not"... seems to me to imply that the rustlers are being referred to as "Apaches". The house is not built to withstand an attack by the gang of rustlers... referred to by Grey as "Apaches"... Just as we would refer to a gang of "thugs" -- which is a word which comes from the original Thuggees... professional assassins now used as a byword for people who are tough and violent.

Has the more *recent* book been censored?!? Has a "modern" editor said, We can't call these rustlers Apaches... That would offend our Native American brothers!

Have we moved from one form of censorship to another?

Or am I reading too much into one small word that was lost in a proof-reading oversight...

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Dr Nick Lethbridge
Problems ? Solved
(+61) 0419197772
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"The time to relax is -- when you don't have time for it." --Sidney J. Harris