Discovering Zane Grey

Zane Grey at Monument Valley

The name of Zane Grey has been familiar to me ever since childhood. I remember a local NYC TV channel showing syndicated episodes of ZANE GREY THEATRE, which I don't think I watched, and only in the last week or so while going through Zane Grey material on eBay, did I realize that we had a Zane Grey Whitman book in the room my brother and I shared. That artwork on that book had a strange effect on me, which I'll get to in a future blog post, but I certainly never read the book, and I don't think my brother did, either. I've no idea for whom that book was intended or if was a present or something one of us bought. I also remember promotional material about the Zane Grey library. It's possible that my parents had several books in this line.

Despite all this and my early fascination with reading (Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer), I never felt particularly drawn to read a Zane Grey novel until maybe two years ago, when, going through the Leisure paperback edition of RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE at Barnes & Noble at Union Square, I read, via John Tuska's introduction, that the original had been censored and that Leisure was offering up for the first time the uncut, uncensored version of the novel. This was enough to hook me, as I love bibliographic discoveries like this, particularly of important authors of popular fiction.

I bought the book and started reading. I took a pause after a chapter or so, not because I found the work lacking or uninteresting, but due to obligations that drew my attention and energy into other matters. Then, perhaps a year ago or less, I picked it up again, and was drawn to read more and more, till, again obligations took me away. But I knew I would have to finish the novel, as I had reached a point in it, where Surprise Valley is discovered and explored. I will get more to the novel and Surprise Valley in a later entry. The point to be made is that by this time that I knew I had discovered an author who surprised me by his power of plot and description, and his clear artistic talents. His writing style was not a clunky, artificial Victorian I had expected, but very modern, smooth and clear and forceful. It took a long time coming, but finally I was ready to plunge into reading the works of Zane Grey, one of America's most successful and popular authors of all time--that is if the novel would live up to its promise. When I finished RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, I knew for certain that my journey into the world of Zane Grey could not stop with just this book. I bought its sequel, THE DESERT CRUCIBLE, also in the Leisure uncut, uncensored version, and just finished the book a couple of weeks ago. While I had some problems with parts of the book (again, which I will write about in a future entry), there are so many wonderful pages that confirmed to me that Grey was a novelist to be reckoned with and one that should, in this new century, still be heralded as he was in the past one. It's dismaying, but perhaps predictable given the world we live in, that these new unexpurgated editions of Zane Grey's work that Leisure has been offering are not generating the publicity and discussion and media attention that they should be.