Renegade

by Arthur O. Friel

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1926

About the author

During much of career Arthur Olney Friel was one of the bestselling writers of pulp fiction in the United States.

Born in Detroit, Michigan,Friel, a 1909 Yale University graduate, had been the South American editor for the Associated Press which provided him with real-world experience. In 1922, he took a six-month trip down Venezuela's Orinoco River and its tributary, the Ventuari River. His travel account was published in 1924 as The River of Seven Stars.

After returning from the Venezuela trip, many of Friel's stories were set in that part of the world. He remained a popular writer of adventure stories throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1930s, his short stories began appearing regularly in the various pulp magazines. His stories were almost always set in Venezuela.

The 1920s were his most productive time as a fiction writer, with an average of 5 appearances per year in Adventure during that time. The thirties were less productive, but he still managed to have one or two stories every year published in Adventure, except 1937, when he had none.

He seems to have stopped writing fiction by the time WW2 came around. The decline of the pulps may have been a contributing factor.

Arthur O. Friel died in Concord, New Hampshire in 1959 at the age of 73.

Reviews

[Checkman · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pulp-fiction novel from 1925. Set in Venezuela it's a simple tale of an American expatriate who is an embittered WWI veteran and a failed revolutionary turned river-bandit. He comes across the remains of a small American scientific expedition and rescues the sole survivor (a beautiful young woman) from a tribe of cannibals. From there they travel down the Orinoco River encountering bandits, revolutionaries, corrupt government officials and the river itself in the effort to return to the United States. It's very fast moving and gripping despite being almost 100 years old and rather archaic. In many ways it reads like a Hemingway novel only the hero in "Renegade" isn't prone to bouts of alcohol fueled self-pitying and hatred. Forty-two years ago, I was infatuated with the old pulp fiction writers and their creations (The Shadow, Tarzan, Doc Savage) and "Renegade" would have been a big hit with me. This novel has everything that I wanted and loved. I would have stayed up late and devoured it in a few hours.

However, 1980 was a few months ago and I'm not twelve years old anymore. Some books age better than others and "Renegade" isn't one of those. I'm fairly certain that the novel was written for young, white, (American) men in their late teens and early twenties. Young men who had missed WWI and were now gainfully employed in some type of profession and feeling like they had missed out on the chance to prove themselves. Fortunately, the Great Depression, Spanish Civil War and World War II were on their way, but they couldn't know that and until those events arrived, they satisfied their taste for adventure reading serials and two-fisted adventure novels like "Renegade". Additionally, many young white American men during this time period were both sexist and racist. This was the norm and not many people got all that excited about the state of affairs (well at least not white people) as it existed in 1925. As a result, "Renegade" is chocked full of descriptions of swarthy Latins, dark skinned monkey like savages, dark-skinned males lusting after the tender young white woman and so forth. It's all very matter of fact and ruins what is otherwise a pretty good adventure novel.

I understand that older books are products of their times. I've often criticized those who attack an eighty-year-old novel as if it is a recent work, but in the past few years I have to admit that I have read more than a few older books that make me uncomfortable. I'm not going to pontificate on why things seem to have changed nor am I advocating that we should destroy old books that make us uncomfortable. Just understand that this novel is very much an artifact.