A short story dealing with the serch for self-esteem set in the American West, in the XXth Century?

September 23, 2007 4:34 AM

Help me find a story, maybe by Raymond Chandler, of a man trained into courage and self-respect by a woman who makes him wear a dog collar.

I read this story growing up and was pretty impressed. I am pretty sure it was Raymond Chandler, although it could have been Hammet.

The story is set in the American West at the start of the XXth century (they already have motorcars) and it is a pretty lawless town. A man who has no self-esteem nor courage asks a brave, independent woman called Bertha to teach him how to be brave. The woman raises dogs, so she makes him wear a dog collar. There is a showdown, and the man proves himself.

posted by kandinski to Society & Culture (4 answers total)

Oh man, I think I have a book with this story in it but I'm travelling for work and it's at home. I'm not certain it's Chandler or Hammet - is there any way it's Jim Thompson (though I'm not certain of that either)? I'll try to find it when I get home, but it'll be a couple of weeks.
posted by Nabubrush at 2:20 PM on September 23, 2007

Response by poster: Nabubrush, I would be chuffed if you could dig it out.

On one hand, I would be surprised if it were Jim Thompson, as that's not what I remember having at my parent's home. On the other hand, it would explain why I haven't been able to find it again.

If you don't mind, I will remind you in a couple of weeks.
posted by kandinski at 7:09 PM on September 23, 2007

Yes, please do - for some reason, James M. Cain occurs to me as well.
posted by Nabubrush at 8:37 PM on September 23, 2007

Mod note: Final update from the OP:

I finally found it! Rather, a friend who is on a mailing list for reference librarians (aka the Wombats mailing list) asked the Wombats, and one of them found it using simple tools I could have used myself: they wrote "Bertha" and "dog collar" into the Google Books search box, and it was one of the first three or five results. Fishing lessons for the price of a free fish dinner!

The story is called "The Valley of Little Fears". It's by Erle Stanley Gardner, and has been published in a collection titled The Case of the Crimson Kiss.

OpenLibrary has a virtual copy of the book they can loan out:

https://archive.org/stream/caseofcrimsonk00gard#page/98/mode/2up

The story is pulpy, but I think this is part of what makes it work so well; after all, it's supposed to be an archetypal tale. As a sample, the narrator is a frontier type who tells the story from the viewpoint of a hardboiled protagonist.

A++ would search for decades until I could read it again, again.

posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:50 PM on October 7, 2019 [2 favorites]