Freddy the Cowboy by Walter R. Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Porcine Cowboy vs. The Perfumed Cowboy, or Reputation, Racism, Gender-Bending, Cowboys, and Animals In Freddy the Cowboy (1950), Walter R. Brooks' 17th Freddy book, the mice are bored with the dull life on the NY state Bean farm, so Mrs. Wiggins the cow suggests that all like-minded animals head off in different directions and return in a week to recount their adventures. Freddy the pig (detective, poet, editor, banker, and pig of many interests) and one mouse, Quik, go northeast and quickly come upon a man beating a horse. Freddy, who can't abide cruelty to animals, intervenes and ends up buying the horse (called Cy) from the guy for $50. The man, Mr. Cal Flint, is a western cowboy who's running a dude ranch for easterners. Mr. Flint is also suspiciously interested in the First Animal Bank on the Bean farm when Freddy makes a withdrawal to pay for Cy. With great enthusiasm and Cy's encouragement and expert advice, Freddy learns how to play the cowboy, learning to ride, to lasso, to strum the guitar and sing cowboy songs, and to dress the part, wearing "a bright red shirt with a design of yellow and blue lightning flashes on it." But what about the threatening letter he's received from the "Horrible Ten" in which they threaten him with execution unless he turns over the jewels he stole—even though he has no idea about any jewels, let alone the identity of the Horrible Ten? And what will happen when Freddy, armed with a water pistol and a gun loaded with blanks, makes a bitter foe of a sadistic cowboy with real guns with real bullets? In Brooks' usual humorous, philosophical, and unpredictable way, he answers those questions and concisely develops some side-plots, like the black cat Jinx teaching a group of field mice how to avoid traps, Mrs. Wiggins working in an antique shop for a spell, and the Horrible Ten moving from the realm of prank into that of reality. The core plot of the novel is oriented around reputation. Freddy discovers the dangers of being taken for a tough cowboy. "You go and build a reputation for bravery, and then the first thing you know, there's a fight on your hands. And maybe you don't feel specially brave that morning. But you've got to act as if you did." The Horrible Ten play up their bloodthirsty reputation to feel empowered. Freddy's friend the Centerboro Sheriff is concerned about his reputation in town for making things too cozy in the jail for his prisoners. And Freddy's ad hoc attempts to resolve his feud with Mr. Flint involve reputation. The animals in this novel may be read as satirizing racial discrimination, as when Mr. Flint and his henchmen say things like, "Animals don't need money. They ain't got any right to money. That's what burns me up—that pig, talking as if he was people, with money in the bank and all." And even "this here feller ain't a man, he's a pig. And there wouldn't be any jail sentence for shootin' a pig." Most of the local humans don't find anything strange in animals having banks or talking etc., and Mr. Bannister (a wealthy man's butler) greets the animals as "gentlemen" and gives them (even Mrs. Wiggins) rides in his big car. Brooks also of course has great sympathy for animals as animals. As in his other books, in this one the bad guys are obvious by their mistreatment of animals (Mr. Flint beating Cy, kicking cats, eating squirrels, shooting at Freddy, etc.). Brooks sympathizes with small animals. The mice point out that they wouldn't get far walking off by themselves, so the big animals take one each with them when they go on adventures; Jinx saves a group of field mice from the extortions of a squirrel; one mouse, Howard, vitally helps Freddy by some bold action. And when Jinx is setting out on his adventure he has to be careful on the road, "For you never know what might be hidden by the turn and more than one careless cat has spent a week or two in the hospital by stepping around the corner too quickly. All small animals have to be careful about such things." As in the other Freddy books, this one has an appealing non-violent thrust. When Freddy shoots his gun while learning to be a cowboy, the bullet passes through his pigpen wall till it "smacked into a framed enlargement of a snapshot of Mr. and Mrs. Bean, taken on their honeymoon, smashing the glass and replacing Mr. Bean's pictured head with the round black hole." It's a scary (if comical) demonstration of how dangerous guns are around the home. No wonder Mr. Bean tells him, "Don't allow my animals to have firearms." Thereafter, Freddy shoots only blanks. Freddy learns through his adventures as a cowboy that "There are two ways of getting rid of people: one way is by shooting them; the other way is by making them look ridiculous." Freddy doesn't usually solve his problems with violence, and violent characters are usually villains. Freddy does learn how to look and act like a cowboy, but Brooks undercuts the violent core at the heart of the western genre in his novel's climactic show down, which takes place in the women's section of a department store and features strategically applied lipstick, rouge, eye shadow, and perfume. Finally, despite all its good parts, Freddy the Cowboy is not as good as the best Freddy books (e.g., Freddy and the Clockwork Twin, Freddy the Politician, and Freddy and the Popinjay). There is some sloppy writing, like when Brooks authoritatively says that bats are not social animals, and then a few pages later has Sydney the bat recruit the aid of countless other bats because his many relatives are having a big reunion party type gathering, to which many other unrelated bats have invited themselves. And the middle part drags a bit. Still, below average Brooks and Freddy are much better than most other children's books, and anyone fond of vintage talking animal stories or children's literature written with style and wit (much of which is only appreciable to adults) should enjoy this book. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University