Audiobook · read by volunteers
Trailin'!
Max Brand (1892–1944)
Read by Rowdy Delaney · 41 chapters · 7 h 23
About the book
Max Brand was the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, one of the most prolific writers of western fiction, and Trailin’! shows his early flair. Forty-one quick chapters carry the reader through a story of the West with the pace of the pulp magazines where Brand began his career. The chapter titles, among them Sporting Chance and Social Suicide, hint at the colloquial humour and the western talk that run through the book, and the incidents follow one another without a pause. Brand mixes action, danger and sentiment with a clear sense of right and wrong, as readers of the genre expect. Read by a single LibriVox volunteer, the whole story lasts about seven and a half hours. If you enjoy fast, colourful westerns of the early twentieth century, this will be a satisfying ride.
Introduction
Max Brand is the most-used pseudonym of Frederick Schiller Faust, who lived from 1892 to 1944. He is best known today for his western fiction, though he wrote in many genres. Faust began in the early twentieth century by selling stories to the pulp magazines, and he went on to produce an enormous body of work under various names.
Trailin’!, published in 1919, belongs to the western genre and dates from the early years of his career. Its forty-one short chapters reflect the habits of magazine serials: they are quick, ends are left open and each section moves the plot along. The titles, which include La-a-a Dies an’ Gen’l’mun, Sporting Chance and Social Suicide, show the colloquial humour and the western dialect that appear in the book.
Faust was an energetic storyteller, and his stories tend to emphasise action, courage and clear lines between right and wrong, while also allowing room for sentiment. As with other pulp-era westerns, a modern listener will notice that the book reflects attitudes of its time, including a conventional view of gender and of the peoples of the West.
The recording is read by a single LibriVox volunteer, which gives the long tale a consistent voice, and lasts about seven and a half hours. The short chapters make it easy to listen in instalments. Today it is worth hearing for those who like classic westerns, or who wish to sample the work of one of the most productive writers in American popular fiction.
Public domain
Max Brand died in 1944: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text