Beau Geste is the most famous survival of what apparently was an entire sub-genre of the pulps, namely French Foreign Legion stories. There are some good ideas in the story; it’s been filmed four times (three for theaters, once for TV) and recorded for the radio five times. Sadly, the book commits the worst possible sin a pulp adventure can make.
It’s boring.
It opens with a relief column coming to a French fort in the Sahara. Everyone inside is dead, but has been propped up on the walls to make it look like the fort is at full strength. One man lies dead in the center of the fort—stabbed through the heart with a French bayonet. How did this happen? Who stabbed the commander and left? We’re not told. The story skips back in time, to the youth of the Geste brothers as wards in the home of their wealthy aunt.
The following chapter is, I think, Wren’s attempt at writing a mystery. It’s also terrible. When I read it, I thought the chapter was about three hundred pages long. In my first attempt to read Beau Geste, I ran aground here and stopped. The problem is that Wren’s idea of “investigation” is for the various children suspected of stealing a gem is for the kids to ask each other: “did you do it?” And then reply: “I didn’t do it, and I know you didn’t do it. None of the girls did it, because we all know that Girls Don’t Steal. Who did it?” There are so many repetitions of this conversation that the story grinds to a halt.
Mostly out of anger at the book, I powered through this chapter. The Geste brothers, one at a time, run away from home to join the French Foreign Legion and distract attention from the real thief, whomever it may be. We get some more boring bits of the narrator traveling to Paris, enlisting in the Legion, traveling to Algiers, and getting settled in the legion.
At long last, after a hundred and fifty pages of dull interactions, the Gestes are sent into the desert to the aforementioned fort—Fort Zinderneuf. There’s a mutiny brewing; we get a little more of the dull “investigative” conversations, and the fort is attacked.
The defense of Zinderneuf is exciting. The outmanned garrison dwindles away, everybody knows a mutiny is brewing, and the Geste brothers expect to be killed by whomever wins the battle, whether Arabs, mutineers, or loyal Legion officers.
The fighting ends, the relief column appears and finds the fort occupied only by the dead. The Geste brothers (and some friends) steal some camels and desert. They take off across the Sahara, fleeing for the safety of British territory. Now comes the most frustrating lines in the book:
I could fill a large volume with the account of our adventures, as Touaregs of the Sahara, on this ride that began at Azzigig, in the French Soudan, and ended (for some of us) at Kano in Nigeria, in British West Africa.
It was perhaps the longest and most arduous ride ever achieved by Europeans in the Sahara—few of whom have ever crossed the desert from north to south without an organized caravan.
That sounds awesome! I want to read that book. Too bad I had to read Beau Geste instead.
Final rating: not recommended. It avoids a lot of the pitfalls of the pulps, but it’s boring. Don’t waste your time.
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