S. Craig Zahler is best known for having written and directed the films Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete. In addition to A Congregation of Jackals, he has written other novels including another western called Wraiths of the Broken Land, and a crime thriller, Mean Business on North Ganson Street. His first novel, A Congregation of Jackals, which was published in 2010, is a vicious revenge story set in an Old West of exaggerated oppositions. Zahler’s filmmaking and writing are sold and discussed as violent and gory without enough mention of the pastoral and domestic elements that such violence threatens in his stories, and the basic principle of contrast in all the work. Here the main men have done horrible deeds and are grimly prepared to do them again. Some talk fancy, some simple, and one who’s had his tongue cut out doesn’t talk at all. The women are innocent of violence, though sometimes concupiscent. The comforts of new marriage, of hearth and home are threatened by those long ago doings. Even for the most reformed of the sinners, the turn to carpentry and Christ is not worldly protection against the consequences of running with a very bad crew.
© 2024 Kaz
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