FICTION

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF MAX BRAND edited by Robert and Jane Easton (University of Nebraska Press: $35; 415 pp.) Was he a hack or a pro? A pounder of pulp or a skilled writer whose work falls just the wrong side of literature? Whatever, he wrote so fast it’s hard to tell; 30 million words, the equivalent of 530 books! Westerns, of course, whole herds of them, but also crime, historical romance, espionage, fantasy, stories about businessmen, about doctors (notably Kildare). He’s still being published, an average of a book every three months for the last 75 years--and he only lived to 52. He made a pot to money, spent it all. Ironically, what he really wanted to be was an epic poet, and he never was. Growing up “poor and desperate” in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1890s, Frederick Schiller Faust decided to publish under the snappier “Max Brand;” Faust was reserved for his poetry (none of which, unaccountably, is published here). In 1918, down to his last 50 cents in unforgiving Manhattan, he sold “John Ovington Returns” to the pulps for $60, and never looked back. “Ovington” is reprinted here--a wistful piece with a touch of O. Henry about a great-grandson winning the descendant of a girl his ancestor had lost. “Above the Law,” also 1918, Brand’s first Western, is typically moralistic, simplistic, melodramatic. He gets better as he gets older. “The Wedding Guest,” cryptic and evocative, is set in France (by then, Brand was living in Europe); “The Outcast Breed” is a predictable but effective early swipe at racism; “Pringle’s Luck,” a haunting tale of cowardice in war; “The Sun Stood Still,” a first-rate exercise in irony. Not all are as good, “A writer of enormous and diverse talent,” say the editors. We’ll be the judge of that.