Saturday, March 05, 2005

Frank Yerby

Talking about Harold Robbins the other day got me started thinking about other authors who were very successful at one time but are almost forgotten now, and it just so happens that I'm currently reading a novel by one such author: CAPTAIN REBEL by Frank Yerby.

Beginning with his first novel, THE FOXES OF HARROW, in 1946, Frank Yerby was a major player in the historical novel game for the next twenty-five years or so. His books sold well and received good reviews. Three of them -- the above-mentioned THE FOXES OF HARROW, along with pirate novel THE GOLDEN HAWK and Crusades novel THE SARACEN BLADE -- were made into movies. I've never seen any of them, but I have read THE GOLDEN HAWK and THE SARACEN BLADE and enjoyed both books. Yerby also wrote some contemporary novels, but the ones I've read seem to be lacking something, as if he was more comfortable with historical settings for his stories. The theme that runs through all the Yerby novels I've read is that of redemption. His heroes are nearly always cads and scoundrels, capable at first of almost any sort of immoral behavior. Over the course of the action, though, the hero suffers through a series of tragedies, often of his own making, before emerging as a changed, better man. Put that way, it sounds a little hokey, but Yerby was capable of making it work. The idea of the wastrel reforming and becoming a decent person is a powerful one. It's much easier for the reader to identify with a flawed character than with one who's too perfect.

CAPTAIN REBEL is a Civil War novel, a genre that I read sparingly. To tell the truth, I have trouble reading most historical novels because I've written so many of them, about quite a few different time periods. It's inevitable that some of them produce a feeling of "been there, written that" when I try to read them. But I still find the good ones very enjoyable, and Yerby's work falls into that category because he writes more about the people involved than he does about the history. Give me interesting characters doing interesting things and I'll read just about any novel, regardless of genre or setting. Although his work deteriorated late in his career (he died in 1991 and wrote well into the Eighties), for a long time Frank Yerby could be counted on to deliver the goods.

7 comments:

mybillcrider said...

I read several of Yerby's books long, long ago, and I think Judy's read just about everything he ever wrote. It's funny, but when people talk about African-American writers, they never mention Yerby.

Anonymous said...

While I am sure it was no secret, I do not believe that most of Yerby's readers ever knew he was African American. You would have to go back to his original hardcover books to see if there was a photo, or any reference to the fact he was black. I suspect that there was not, nor does his last name provide any clues that he was.

You can find some additional background on him by going to Google, including
www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1132/Frank_Yerby_was_an_award_winning_novelist

where I found the following. Steve

Frank Yerby rose to fame as a writer of popular fiction tinged with a distinctive southern flavor. He was the first African American to write a best-selling novel and to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for a film adaptation. During his prolific career, Yerby wrote thirty-three novels and sold more than fifty-five million hardback and paperback books worldwide.

As a Black author, Yerby was widely criticized for not giving more attention to racial problems in his fiction. But though Yerby himself said that writers should amuse and not preach to their readers, some critics see in his writings a savage critique of historical myths, especially of the United States and the American South. Discrimination in the United States caused Yerby to leave and live in self-imposed exile in Madrid from 1955 until his death Nov. 29th 1991 in Madrid, Spain.

Lee Goldberg said...

Richard S. PRather is another hugely bestselling author who out-of-print and unknown now... so is John O'Hara.

Juri said...

I've never read anything by Frank Yerby, even though I've been toying with the idea. Now I have to rush to buy his books! Thanks, fellas! (There is an abundance of his books in flea markets. The second hand book stores don't sell them, because nobody wants them. Sad but true.)

What about F. Wyck Van Mason? Thomas Chastain? Hervey Allen? Does anybody read them? I've read some books by Kenneth Roberts and they were consistently good. Does anybody read him any more?

James Reasoner said...

Thanks for the comments, guys. I never heard about Yerby being black until the late Sixties or early Seventies. The dust jackets of his early novels that I've seen don't have an author photo.

As for Richard S. Prather, I guess I've read almost everything he wrote. When I was growing up Shell Scott was one of my favorite characters, and I still remember Prather's books very fondly. I've read APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara, but that's all. I've read NORTHWEST PASSAGE by Kenneth Roberts, but again, that's the only one of his novels I've read. Thomas Costain and Hervey Allen I've never read, though I've seen their books around in libraries for decades.

F. Van Wyck Mason had an interesting career that can be separated into three distinct areas. He wrote a lot of pulp serials for ARGOSY, most of them historical in nature. I've read a couple of them and liked them quite a bit. Then he wrote quite a few big historical novels during the historical novel boom of the Forties and Fifties. I haven't read any of them, but I imagine they're good, too. I first encountered his work, though, in the Colonel Hugh North novels he wrote as Van Wyck Mason, back in the Sixties when I read anything I could get my hands on that looked like an espionage or secret agent novel. I really liked the Colonel North books. Later I found some of the early novels in the series, when Hugh North was still a major, and thought they were even better. One of them, THE BUDAPEST PARADE MURDERS, originally published in 1935, is sitting right beside me as I type, in the abridged Bestseller Mystery digest edition, published by Lawrence Spivak sometime in the Fifties, I'd guess.

Juri said...

Oops! Of course I meant to write Thomas Costain, not Chastain, the seventies and eighties hack. He has written some Nero Wolfe books, hasn't he? Does he still write?

Thanks for the opinions on Mason, Costain and others, James!

James Reasoner said...

Juri,

The funny part is, even though you wrote "Chastain", because of the nature of the discussion my eyes saw "Costain". I didn't notice what you'd actually written until you pointed it out. But anyway, Thomas Chastain wrote a few Perry Mason pastiches. It was Robert Goldsborough who wrote Nero Wolfe pastiches.


Sarah,

I have Maritta Wolff's novel WHISTLE STOP somewhere around here, bought it not that long ago, actually, but I haven't read it yet. I also found a DVD of the film version not long ago, one of those dollar jobs that also has DETOUR on it. As for Don Carpenter, I hadn't heard of him, but I looked him up on the Internet and found www.doncarpenterpage.com. Sounds pretty interesting, so I'll look for some of his books.