Over the last few years on this blog, I have written extensively about the writing of Lee Maynard. In fact, I have written about every book the man ever published except this one and one more, very minor book about life in the outdoors which was his first published book and is now nearly impossible to find at a price which can be afforded by anyone except the proverbial Philadelphia lawyer. "A Triumph Of The Spirit" is likely to be Lee Maynard's last book since he died on June 16, 2017, at the age of eighty after producing a total of nine published books including that very small edition of the outdoor book. This book was published posthumously by an entity named Western Door Publishing which appears to be an entity which might be owned by Amazon Books. The copy I own is a publication on demand type book which is, in my estimation, another short coming of the computer age. The book was published posthumously. It may or may not have been in the editing and publication process before Maynard died. It might or might not have been published by his heirs and primarily edited by them and an editor at Western Door Publishing although actual editing work is a chimera in the publication on demand business. Whatever the actual answers are, the book was not published by the University of West Virginia Press which had published six of his previous books. This book is composed of numerous sections of his previous books and several other previously unpublished short stories and memoir pieces. But it is well worth reading despite the nature of the editing and publication process and the flaws which that process allowed to escape a higher quality editor.
Lee Maynard loved motorcycles, rode them all his life, and a great deal of his writing was a courtship with motorcycles. He apparently loved to ride Triumph motorcycles, hence the title which is, of course, a double meaning which also addresses a life well lived and produced success in several areas for Maynard including his writing career, work as an administrator for the state of West Virginia, time as the CEO of a major outdoor experience company, and a brief stint as a university president. The book loosely follows a timeline of Maynard's life and writing career with sections republished from all his major books including the well known and, at times, notorious "Crum Trilogy" which is comprised of "Crum", "Screaming With The Cannibals", and "The Scummers", all of which I have read and written about on this blog at the links provided. Maynard also produced and I have previously read and reviewed "The Pale Light of Sunset Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life". He also wrote and I have read and appreciated but failed so far to write about a novel called "Cinco Becknell" which is set in New Mexico and is about a man in the homeless population with whom Maynard worked as the founder and board member of a food bank in the area. I will attempt to correct my error in never writing about that book in the near future. But, right now, let's discuss the work in question, "A Triumph Of The Spirit".
While significant portions of the book are material which, to my knowledge, never previously saw the light of day, much of it is sections of Maynard's previous half dozen books. Admittedly, most of those previously published sections contain some of his best known and appreciated work. Several other short stories, and one story which can best be described as a novella, are also included in the book. Whoever edited the book, appears to have made a conscious attempt to do some chronological ordering of the sections but that work is not absolute. It does not fully provide a comprehensive timeline of either Lee Maynard's life or his published works. But, it is still well worth reading, especially if you have already read any of his work and appreciated it. Four of the stories in the book, including the novella I alluded to earlier, are good, high quality fiction. It is impossible to know if Maynard had any intentions, as he wrote those stories, of either producing a complete book of short stories or, perhaps, publishing the novella as such or expanding it into a full length novel.
There is one short anecdote about riding with a friend in Maine on motorcycles, being caught in bad weather, taking shelter in what they believed was an abandoned service station, and having the local sheriff called to remove them. The story ends with the sheriff responding to the call, as the elderly female owner requested, and then transporting the two and their motorcycles on a trailer the sheriff brought along with an obvious preconceived plan to his jail where he fed them, gave them dry clothes, and housed them comfortably for the night in his warm, and apparently empty jail, all without any animosity and a good deal of hospitality. The novella, titled "The Corn Princess" is set in a native American pueblo in New Mexico where the main character, based on Maynard himself as nearly all of his protagonists are, is an Anglo man who visits the village at times to spend time recuperating from the road and lusts after a beautiful young native woman who has a boyfriend of less than positive character. This story deserves to have become a full length novel and I honestly suspect that might have been Maynard's original intent if life and old age had not caught up with him before the job was done. Another of the better new pieces in the book is called "Scorpion" and is a somewhat long short story about a male, Anglo motorcycle rider and a Hispanic woman whose beloved grandfather has been murdered by other, less decent motorcycle riders. This story contains some of Maynard's best writing about the sexual attraction, sex, human interaction, and the potential cruelty of human nature. It also could have easily been expanded into a better than average novel.
My final conclusions about this book are these: 1) it is a shame that it is not more cohesive and chronological; 2) it is a shame that Maynard did not live to fully oversee the publication process; 3) it is a shame that Lee Maynard never published an actual collection of short stories; 4) it is a shame that Lee Maynard did not live to expand at least two of these stories into novels; and 5) I will always miss knowing that another good Lee Maynard novel is about to come hot off the press.
But, for the average reader, especially one who loves motorcycles and riding, this is a book worth the time and expense of reading.
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