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paul_cornelius's review against another edition
4.0
What makes Tiger River interesting is not so much its standing as a work of literature but as a sort of social document of its times. That's not to say it's poorly written. Friel is a competent writer and he plots out an intriguing storyline. And there are fewer instances of purple prose in this entire book than in the average chapter alone of a Zane Grey novel. But it's what he tells about American popular culture and concomitant national character one hundred years ago that is striking.
Popular culture can explain a great deal about a society. Look at the films, television, and popular novels of today and you see high-tech adventures on one end and grimy, debased urban noir on the other. Plots dependent on smartphones have replaced those of yesteryear that featured a six-shooter. Hordes of Navy SEALS with their body armor, satellite connected headsets, and drone guided missiles take the place of men on horseback, explorers climbing mountains, crossing rivers, and discovering the hidden recesses of remote lands. High-tech reliant protagonists directed by wheezy, overweight old women and men back in DC war rooms dominated by big screen monitors supersede independent, self-reliant range hands and explorers.
Friel's Tiger River exemplifies the earlier America. Like the aforementioned Zane Grey, his heroes are marking out new territories, discovering new people, lusting after adventure. (And, by the way, the valley of gold in Tiger River should remind readers of the lost valley in Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage.) It's not hard to imagine a generation of young men (it would mainly be young men) who were just a few years too young to have experienced World War I directly looking up from their desks in 1923 and hoping for romance and something better than the workday in the city or small town. For them, McKay, Ryan, and Knowlton, the World War I veterans and heroes of Tiger River, may have seemed like big brothers or even father figures. People who provided dreams of exploration that were just imaginably true enough.
Tiger River has a torpid beginning but soon casts off into an engaging tale. Its story is a conventional one: explorers taking on the wilderness, an encounter with unknown Indian peoples, and the journey to find a secret treasure of gold, hidden away in remote mountains. It could be an American Western. But Friel has relocated the action to South America and the rivers and mountains of Peru and Ecuador. This displacement of the American frontier to South America would go on to become something of a staple in adventure novels and especially films up until the middle 1950s.
All in all, the novel is a nice read. It makes you want to pick up another volume in the series. Apparently, Friel himself was a newsman turned adventurer in South America. And it seems he used his own experiences (while borrowing imagery and plot devices from The Odyssey and Zane Grey) in his work.
Popular culture can explain a great deal about a society. Look at the films, television, and popular novels of today and you see high-tech adventures on one end and grimy, debased urban noir on the other. Plots dependent on smartphones have replaced those of yesteryear that featured a six-shooter. Hordes of Navy SEALS with their body armor, satellite connected headsets, and drone guided missiles take the place of men on horseback, explorers climbing mountains, crossing rivers, and discovering the hidden recesses of remote lands. High-tech reliant protagonists directed by wheezy, overweight old women and men back in DC war rooms dominated by big screen monitors supersede independent, self-reliant range hands and explorers.
Friel's Tiger River exemplifies the earlier America. Like the aforementioned Zane Grey, his heroes are marking out new territories, discovering new people, lusting after adventure. (And, by the way, the valley of gold in Tiger River should remind readers of the lost valley in Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage.) It's not hard to imagine a generation of young men (it would mainly be young men) who were just a few years too young to have experienced World War I directly looking up from their desks in 1923 and hoping for romance and something better than the workday in the city or small town. For them, McKay, Ryan, and Knowlton, the World War I veterans and heroes of Tiger River, may have seemed like big brothers or even father figures. People who provided dreams of exploration that were just imaginably true enough.
Tiger River has a torpid beginning but soon casts off into an engaging tale. Its story is a conventional one: explorers taking on the wilderness, an encounter with unknown Indian peoples, and the journey to find a secret treasure of gold, hidden away in remote mountains. It could be an American Western. But Friel has relocated the action to South America and the rivers and mountains of Peru and Ecuador. This displacement of the American frontier to South America would go on to become something of a staple in adventure novels and especially films up until the middle 1950s.
All in all, the novel is a nice read. It makes you want to pick up another volume in the series. Apparently, Friel himself was a newsman turned adventurer in South America. And it seems he used his own experiences (while borrowing imagery and plot devices from The Odyssey and Zane Grey) in his work.
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