Max Brand Uncensored

[Still]

I own a dozen or so Max Brand novels I've obtained over the years. Some of these are used book club editions.
This doesn't include the numerous multi-volume e-books I've purchased recently.

My understanding is that for reasons unknown many of Max Brand's novels, novellas, and stories were censored over the years - possibly out of respect for the post-millennial faint-of- heart, politically-incorrect-sensitive reader.

Could you folks kindly tell me which books and e-book collections are uncensored/unedited and appear as originally published?

Thanks

[James]

The books weren't exactly censored, but I've been told that the books published in hardback by Dodd, Mead and then reprinted in paperback by many different publishers were edited and in some cases rewritten by Frederick Faust's son-in-law, Robert Easton, so they're not the original pulp versions, although often they're pretty close. Also, some of the pulp editors edited Faust's manuscripts pretty heavily. The most pure-text editions are the ones published in paperback by Leisure and in hardback/large print by Five Star, Center Point, and Thorndike.

[James]

Oh, and the e-books currently published by Skyhorse should be pretty close to the original versions.

[Still]

James wrote: "Oh, and the e-books currently published by Skyhorse should be pretty close to the original versions."


Thank you, James.
This will help immensely.

I've read newsgroup posts where people damn the son-in-law for attempting to sanitize Max Brand's writing.
Have to assume that later various editors were heavy-handed given that Mr. Faust was only being paid a penny a word, if that while toiling the fields of pulpdom.

You have to shake your head at the presumptuousness of the son-in-law, though.

[Tim]

James wrote: "Oh, and the e-books currently published by Skyhorse should be pretty close to the original versions."

Thanks for that information James, I recently read & reviewed "War Party" aka "Call of the Blood", and I see that Skyhorse has all three books in the series available on Kindle with a different title for the first book: The White Indian: Book One of the Rusty Sabin Saga.

[HornFan2]

Thanks for the info. James, have read a bunch of Max Brand's books in teens and 20's, reading what I could find used, but now with so many out of print being published as ebooks, definitely getting reacquainted with his work.

[James]

One thing you have to look out for is title changes. Some of the current e-books are actually novels that have been reprinted many times in the past under other titles, such as IRON DUST, which was reprinted earlier as FREE RANGE LANNING. So if you're looking at a book on Amazon and the description seems familiar but the title doesn't, that's probably why.

[Still]

James wrote: "The books weren't exactly censored, but I've been told that the books published in hardback by Dodd, Mead and then reprinted in paperback by many different publishers were edited and in some cases ..."

OK
Those dozen or so Max Brands I own turn out to be 5 hardback Dodd, Mead and 6 paperbacks "by permission Dodd, Mead".

Guess I'm stuck with the Skyhorse Kindle editions Tim referenced or else hunting library sales for donations of Leisure paperbacks or the large-print editions.


Anyone know why the son-in-law rewrote the original Faust novels?

[Tim]

I'm reading a segment in The Max Brand Companion titled FREDERICK FAUST AS I KNEW HIM by Robert Easton (page 103, found it online also https://books.google.com/books?id=5rR...

[Tim]

So far I've found no reference to that, maybe James might know where you could find out more about it.

[Still]

Tim wrote: "I'm reading a segment in The Max Brand Companion titled FREDERICK FAUST AS I KNEW HIM by Robert Easton (page 103, found it online also https://books.google.com/books?id=5rR......"

Lord Have Mercy!
This thing is almost $65!
Plus postage!!

[James]

I've read a bunch of the Dodd, Mead editions and the paperbacks reprinted from them over the years, and I think unless you're really a Faust purist, they're fine for reading purposes. In cases where I've been able to compare the Dodd, Mead versions to the original pulp versions, the differences were pretty minor, more along the lines of things a copy editor would do. I've never had access to Faust's manuscripts, so I don't know what the pulp editors might have done, other than in one of the Leisure paperbacks the introduction indicates that they might have cut a few things to eliminate what they saw as Faust's wordiness. Robert Easton's rewriting was intended similarly, I think, to streamline the stories a little and in isolated cases modernize some of Faust's more old-fashioned style. I don't know if you'll find anything about this on-line, but it was told to me (not in confidence, by the way) by someone connected with the Faust estate who was in a position to know about it.

By the way, Easton's biography of Faust, THE BIG WESTERNER, is well worth reading.

[Still]

As always, thank you for your expertise, James!

[Tim]

Still wrote: "Tim wrote: "I'm reading a segment in The Max Brand Companion titled FREDERICK FAUST AS I KNEW HIM by Robert Easton (page 103, found it online also https://books.google.com/books?id=5r..."

Found my receipt! $36.50 + $3.99 shipping 02/22/2013