Silver Light

by David Thomson

From 1865 to 1950, the multi-faceted world of the American West, its rich, colorful characters, and its many faces - historical, mythic, and cinematic - are captured in the story of a reclusive, elderly photographer and her friend, a writer of Western comic books

Set in 1950, the novel tells the tale of two 'relics' of the old Susan Garth, a reclusive octogenarian photographer, and her friend Bark Blaylock, an equally reclusive 75-year-old writer of Western comic books. Their life stories tell the tale of the West, a place of 'silver, space, the epitome of liberty.'

Susan and Bark cross paths with the characters of movies such as Wagonmaster, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance . They had also been witness to the slaying of Billy the Kid, the cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Combining history, fiction, and the fabricated realities of film, Thomson examines the mythic image of the West and its meaning for Americans.

Genres: Film, Novels, Westerns, Fiction

448 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2022

About the author

David Thomson, renowned as one of the great living authorities on the movies, is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its fifth edition. His books include a biography of Nicole Kidman and The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Thomson is also the author of the acclaimed "Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. Born in London in 1941, he now lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've long loved this author's (and famous film critic's) novel Suspects and so was excited to stumble upon this one, where he plays around with classic Westerns, rather than film noirs, expanding upon the lives of various characters from films like Red River, The Searchers, and Heaven's Gate, following them after the movies end and mixing them with actual historical figures and a few characters created expressly for the book. The novel consists of a few intertwined narratives -- including that of an old woman who was an early photographer, a boy who may be the son of Wyatt Earp and who grows up to be a writer of dime-store western novels, and Matthew Garth, Montgomery Clift's character from Red River -- and various letters and transcripts of tapes help tell their stories. It's part western adventure tale, part love story, part meditation on art and the West, and part family saga. I know, sounds like a lot, but it all holds together somehow and is for sure never boring with its constantly shifting focus and some really beautiful writing. There's a river crossing scene that is one of the greatest action bits I've ever read. Seek this out if you love the old myths and the hard truths of the West as much as I do.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stylistic follow up to Suspects, which was based in film noir, Thomson bases many of his Silver Light characters on characters from Westerns—Red River, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. And then traces their connections and interactions with each other and real figures from the old West, like Judge Roy Bean, John Ford, and Pat Garrett. One might say that he’s simply repeating himself, using the same style as Suspects. He is, but it’s fun to see how far he takes the connections, although it doesn’t work as well as in Suspects. There, he had something to say about family and failure (“We’re all suspects.”). In Silverlight his point is narrower; deconstructing the Western genre. He has it all—cattle drives, saloon girls, even the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He really strains to make all his connections work, which he does in short chapters which skip back and forth through time. Maybe not for those who aren’t familiar with Westerns, like Suspects was really for film noir fans. If you are a fan, then it’s an interesting read.