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The Mark of Zorro (Zorro, #1)

Johnston McCulley

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Dec 15, 2024 Werner rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, historical-fiction

Like many other noted authors before and after him, Illinois-born American pulp-era writer Johnston McCully (1883-1958) learned the writer's craft as a journalist, in his case as a police reporter. After service in World War I as an Army public relations officer (another job that provided a grounding in competent prose style), he moved to Los Angeles and turned his attention to script and fiction writing. A prolific author, besides numerous film (and, later, TV) screenplays, he would write some Like many other noted authors before and after him, Illinois-born American pulp-era writer Johnston McCully (1883-1958) learned the writer's craft as a journalist, in his case as a police reporter. After service in World War I as an Army public relations officer (another job that provided a grounding in competent prose style), he moved to Los Angeles and turned his attention to script and fiction writing. A prolific author, besides numerous film (and, later, TV) screenplays, he would write some 50 novels and hundreds of short stories, creating several series characters who were popular with readers of that day; but the most enduring and iconic of these was the masked and caped, sword-wielding Zorro [Spanish for fox], an outlaw in the tradition of Robin Hood, who defends the oppressed victims of injustice. The character was introduced in this novel, originally titled The Curse of Capistrano and published serially in 1919 in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly. One of the delighted readers was actor Douglas Fairbanks, who spearheaded the making of a (silent, black-and-white) movie adaptation, titled The Mark of Zorro. (Subsequent reprints of the book adopted that title.) It proved so popular that McCulley, who had originally intended the novel to be a stand-alone, went on to write three more books and over 50 stories featuring the character. Zorro has become an American pop-culture staple, featuring so far in over 30 films and at least six TV series.

Barb and I read this in the 2007 reprint by Townsend Press, which is the one the BU library has. (A possible caveat --which I was unaware of when, in my librarian capacity, I selected the book for the library-- is that Townsend's classics series is billed as "carefully edited to be more accessible to today's students." I'm not sure whether or not this means that it's abridged here, or that the style and vocabulary are dumbed down; and I can't determine that without comparing the text with an older edition. But while I'm normally skeptical of that sort of textual tampering, this edition is so gripping and reads so well that I'm willing to endorse it without probing any more deeply. :-) )

Our setting here is southern California, around the "pueblo," or small town, of Los Angeles (here always called by the older name of Reina de Los Angeles, "Queen of the Angels;" it was evidently named for the Virgin Mary). No date is given in the text, but it alludes to the fact that the government was taking agricultural land away from the Catholic missions and harassing the friars. That would fit the situation right after Mexico became independent, when Emperor Augustin I confiscated the lands of the California missions and granted them to aristocratic crillo families, who became essentially feudal lords. (These families are the caballeros often alluded to in the book.) The Indian population is also being mistreated, along with the poor whites and even aristocratic families who aren't in the good graces of the ascendant political faction. So a date in the early 1820s seems most probable to me. (It's indicated late in the book that these conditions have been going on for 10 years, but the long war for independence may have already fostered plenty of opportunities for oppression and abuses of the law by the powerful.) A short Background Note at the beginning of this edition indicates that the rise of outlaws resembling Senor Zorro, who defended the Hispanic and Indian population from oppressive authorities, was actually a phenomenon that arose after the U.S. takeover of California following the Mexican War; but McCulley seems to have projected it back into the preceding period.

This is a very gripping and suspenseful novel, with a fast pace and a lot of action and excitement. It's also quite tautly structured, taking place over a period of about a week, in a small geographic area, and with a single, linear plot strand. (So while it doesn't follow all of Aristotle's prescribed "unities" for a drama to absolute, literal perfection --he wanted action completed in one day, and one building or other narrow location-- it certainly observes them about as tightly as a novel can realistically be expected to.) The characters are vivid and memorable (some might say that they're "types," but they're types found in actual life, and drawn with lifelike precision). McCully writes in the Romantic style, and uses one of the classic tropes of that school, hidden identity, quite effectively. As the anonymous nine-page Afterword (which briefly discusses the publication and reception of the novel and main character, but is mainly a very astute appreciation of the positives of McCulley's art here) notes, many modern readers may already know Zorro's identity, or guess it from clues in the text; but the tale doesn't lose any interest on that account.

Besides the factors already noted, Barb and I both appreciated the author's deft leavening of humor in places, and the chaste romance that enhances without overwhelming the plot (it's quick to develop, but as I've indicated in other reviews, that's not necessarily unrealistic in the pre-modern setting). There are no content issues (violence is present, but not unnecessarily graphic, and the body count is low). Though the author lacked a college education, he was a serious history buff and especially knowledgeable about pre-1848 California; besides his extensive Zorro corpus, a lot of his work is historical fiction set in the same milieu, and I felt he evoked it capably here. A hallmark of great fiction, to my mind, is dynamic character growth for the better through moral decision. IMO (and the Afterword brings this point out well), though Zorro himself doesn't significantly change here, he provokes this kind of growth in others; and I give McCully high marks for that. This is also one of the few, and first, works in American literature from this period to present a Hispanic hero; it was a part of the multi-cultural mosaic that's our heritage long before "multiculturalism" was a buzzword, much less a thing.

Both Barb and I ate this up with a spoon! I would highly recommend it to all fans of the pulp tradition, all readers who appreciate action-oriented historical fiction, and to anyone (of any age above that of young grade-schoolers) who might want to explore older classics without starting with doorstop-sized chunksters. ...more

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