Outlaw by Warren Kiefer

Just because I've outlived practically

everybody don't mean I'm in  a hurry

to die.

Opening to Outlaw

by Warren Kiefer

Sandy over at You've GOTTA Read This and I teamed up for a mini-read-a-long of Outlaw by Warren Kiefer  for the Hop-a-long, Git-a-long, Read-a-long Western Reading Challenge which ends today.  Though Outlaw is one of Sandy's all time favorite books, I'd never heard of it.   

Outlaw is the story of Lee Garland, who begins life in New Mexico orphaned after the local Apache Indians raid his parents farm.  He is raised by a neighboring Mexican family, becomes something of an outlaw, rustles cattle, joins Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders in their charge up San Juan Hill, becomes something of a oil baron and eventually Ambassador to Mexico.  He lives to consider voting for Nixon which he refuses to do.   

Sandy and I decided to join forces by asking each other a set of questions for our reviews.  Her questions to me are in italics below.

One big aspect of Outlaw that I noticed only in the re-reading was the level of prejudice.  Knowing you were reading the book with me, when I came across some ugly attitudes towards gays, I cringed.  But gays weren’t the only target.  Everyone got their share of the bigotry…Indians, Mexicans and even women.  What was your initial reaction to all of this?  Did it offend you, or did you just chalk it up to a sign of the times?

You can't read westerns or any form of historical fiction set in America with a thin skin.  History isn't pretty.  If anything, the prejudice in Outlaw is not nearly as bad as it probably was in real life.  The narrator, Lee Garland, is actually very forward thinking for his time.  He breaks into the narration a couple to say how a person's race, religion, even sexuality doesn't matter much to him.  He allows the local Jewish community to place their savings in his bank when no one else will.  He expresses admiration and sympathy for the black soldiers fighting in Cuba.  He feels sorry for the Apache Indians even though they killed his family.  Even in the book's most problematic scene where two murderous lovers, one of whom is cross dressing, are hung there's a hint of admiration in how the two men stick together in the end and in how bravely the cross-dressing one faces his own hanging.   

All of these events and attitudes are true to the historical setting of Outlaw.  They're also true to the characters in the novel.   I've a set of grandparents with life stories very similar to Lee Garland's.  My grandmother went west in a covered wagon as a girl and my grandfather was orphaned as a boy and went on to try his hand at many different types of work including investing in land.  He was a farmer, not a cattleman.  My grandparents never struck it rich, though not for lack of trying. While they both held prejudicial views similar to Lee Garlands, they were sympathetic and understanding of people they had actual experience with and intolerant of just about everyone else.  It was not uncommon to hear my grandfather take the side of Native Americans and then say something truly awful about the entire population of Korea and all their descendants.  Lee Garland, in Outlaw, and my grandfather would get along just fine.  The even both hated Democrats.

Strangely, the anti-Democrat speeches surprised me.  They are certainly true to Lee Garland's character, and probably to men of his historical time, but I don't remember ever encountering anything like them before in literature.  They didn't offend me.  In fact, I think we really should see more stuff like that in current fiction.  People say they hate politics, but politics is one of the prime movers in our lives today.  They really should play a bigger role in fiction if fiction is be considered an accurate reflection of contemporary life.

 What was your opinion of Lee Garland (the narrator and protagonist in the book) at the beginning of the story?  Did that attitude change as you progressed through the tale of his life?  Did Lee’s prejudiced attitudes or questionable behavior have any bearing on those feelings?

I don't think Lee Garland ever does any serious self-reflection.  He's an I-am-what-I-am kind of guy.  He does go from outside-of-the-law to inside-of-the-law which makes him more respectable, but he's still a cattle rustler at heart.  He just moves to rustling cattle by legal means.  


Towards the end of the novel he tries to bring a long-time friend back home to the U.S. from Mexico but runs into trouble at the boarder.  His friend has a Mexican 'wife,' many children, and loads of illegal liquor.  Unfortunately for Lee Garland he runs into an honest boarder agent who refuses to allow the liquor and the Mexican 'wife' into America, even after Lee Garland offers him a 'bribe.'  Lee contacts his friends higher up in the government, gets his old buddy into the country along with his 'wife' and family and has the boarder agent sent to exile in Alaska.  Lee Garland sees this action as 100% right and justifiable which it's not.  A government agent who refuses to accept a bribe knowing he risks retribution is a man to be admired in my book. But not in Lee Garland's.   I think he's typical of the her's you find in westerns in that, while he does have many admirable qualities, he also carries a lot of baggage most of us could do without.  Much like real people.

 Do you think you will ever re-read Outlaw?  Are you interested in reading anything else written by Warren Kiefer?

I don't think I'll re-read Outlaw, though I am glad I read it. Out of all the westerns I've read, I think it's the closest to what people who don't read of lot of westerns think of as a western .  I lean towards the more literary end of the western genre.  Outlaw is a guilty pleasure book.  It's the sort of book that used to tempt me in the super-market check-out line back when the super-market check-out lines had a rack of books.   It's an entire James Michener multi-generational story crammed into the lifetime of a single man.  This is coming from someone who read Centennial twice. 
 

It is impossible for me not to at least take a tiny poke at the ending.  Without spoiling anything of course, I have to ask where your head was when you turned the last page…did you like it?  Were you angry?  Sad?  Impressed?  Do you agree with the way Kiefer decided to conclude Lee’s story?


I'm going to go ahead here full guns blazing so there will be spoilers.  Be warned.  Or just skip the following paragraph. 


I liked that Lee Garland managed to die in a gun fight even at age 88.  He survived so many for so long but he couldn't keep on winning them forever.  That his final one is over something as ridiculous as it was seemed fitting, too.  He thinks he is standing up for principal, to keep an oppressive government from taking his land, but he's been more than willing to take what wasn't really his all through his own life.  I also liked that he lived long enough to see his own demise portrayed on television news as it happened.  Until his power was cut off, anyway.    But you're referring to the very last page, which is certainly something, wherein Lee Garland appears to narrate the last words he hears as he lays dying.    I liked it.  It is a bit silly, and one could argue that it's not great work on the part of Mr. Kiefer.  I'm certainly not going to defend it as good writing.  But I enjoyed it.  I thought it was a good way for Lee Garland, Outlaw, to finally go.


You can read Sandy's answers to my questions here.