Brave Cowboy by Edward Abbey Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Brave Cowboy
Book Review: Abbey's Second-Best Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Edward Abbey's first-best book is, of course, "Desert Solitaire," that fictionalized non-fiction work that so eloquently celebrates the pristine Southwest wilderness and mourns its destruction at the hands of industry and politics.
"The Brave Cowboy" is known to many through its filmization with Kirk Douglas. Despite the inane title, "Lonely Are the Brave," it is an excellent movie. But the book is even more excellent.
If you see this work purely as social commentary -- the individual at odds with society -- you miss the point. That aspect of the book, while it is an impassioned message from one of this country's best nature writers, is almost too obvious to deserve mention. The message -- and the beautifully detailed setting of Western plains and mountains -- is the background.
The foreground is a character study of Jack Burns, a man in perpetual rebellion against authority and incapable of commitment to anything outside of himself. He is generous and caring, but he allows no one to penetrate his stubborn exterior. He refuses to be vulnerable to love or to any of the normal compromises that permit even the most hardened of us individualists to survive in the real world.
He is inevitably doomed by his own intransigence, and that is what makes the story more than just "sad": it is a genuine tragedy. And like all successful tragedies, it is uplifting. The book's triumph is that, even while we know the outcome, we envy Jack Burns.
This book is a youthful work. You won't find a Hemingway or a Fitzgerald in the writing style, or even a Jack London. It is a popular book, more like a best-seller than "literature." Nevertheless, the excellence of its story raises it above the main. It is simply a great, and greatly affecting, read.
Book Review: Abbey's free-spirited, fugitive, and very mythic cowboy. . .
Summary: 4 Stars
It was one of Edward Abbey's regrets that he was appreciated more for his nature writing ("Desert Solitaire") than his fiction. And it was another regret that he was mostly forgotten as the author of the story on which the movie "Lonely are the Brave" was based. However, after reading "The Brave Cowboy," I'd have to vote with those who find his nonfiction far more inspiring and satisfying. It's a novel that still rewards the reading, but almost 50 years after its publication in 1956, it seems somewhat dated, while "Desert Solitaire" remains as fresh and relevant as if it were written yesterday.
Abbey was still in his twenties when he wrote this novel, and its point of view is that of a young man full contradictory passions and attitudes. The brave cowboy of the title, a prototypical figure on horseback, is the central character in maybe half the pages of the novel. A younger college friend, imprisoned for refusing to register for the draft, is another character. The local sheriff gets a large section to himself. The novel also follows the progress of a long-haul truck driver across the country. The lives of these four characters intersect in the narrative, while each of them also represents a different perspective. And they don't all quite converge in a single point of view. But that was Abbey, an outspoken man who wasn't afraid to contradict himself.
To its credit, the novel can be read on more than one level. It uses the cowboy to represent free-spirited, libertarian ideas set in conflict with brute ignorance and repression. It decries urbanization and celebrates the limitless, stark beauty of the mountains and desert (the novel is set in northern New Mexico). It's also a prison drama, and it tells a satirical yet gripping story of heavily armed but mostly inept law officers in pursuit of a fugitive. A reader interested in a 1950s view of the West and its people in post-war transition will find much to enjoy in Abbey's youthful book about a mythic cowboy's adventure and the lives it disrupts.
As a companion volume, I'd also recommend James Galvin's "Fencing the Sky," which tells a similar story about a cowboy pursued across a Western landscape by the law.
Book Review: An Ed Abbey Classic, but it's no Moneky Wrench Gang
Summary: 3 Stars
If you're a fan of Ed Abbey, you really ought to read this book. It's not his best work, because his views are presented with a very thin plot. The image of the cowboy riding down the freeway was lovely, however and it doesn't feel too preachy. I would recommend Monkey Wrench Gang or Desert Solitaire to anyone just breaking into Abbey's work. They're simply better peices and frankly, they appear to have been written for a more educated audience than Brave Cowboy.
Brave Cowboy is a quick, easy read that will entertain you and will help clarify Abbey's views on freedom, men and women. It's unlikely you'll agree with him, but the subtext of the book will make you think more than the plot itself.
Book Review: Born in the wrong time
Summary: 4 Stars
When Jack Burns encounters a barbed-wire fence as he comes across the West Mesa (Albuquerque)on horseback he scans in both directions for a gate before he clips the wire to ride through. He wouldn't have cut it if it wasn't in his way, or if there'd been a gate nearby. Thus begins the book with a scene that tells much about the main character.Burns is a man who doesn't merely cling to ideals of loyalty, privacy and individual freedom. His internal machinery accepts no alternative at any level. Jack Burns is a man who won't cut a fence unless it stands in the way of where he wants to go. He recognizes the existence of the creeping encroachments and compromises to his choices and ignores them. The modern acquiescence by the rest of society is foreign to him.
Burns descends the mesa into Albuquerque, encounters modern city life and is battered by it without 'losing' in the usual sense of the word, and leaves on the run from the legal instruments intended to keep us all on the straight and narrow. The end is inevitable.
Readers who know Albuquerque will enjoy the ride across the 'Volcans', the places in the Rio Grande Valley still recognizable despite the years since Abbey wrote the book, the harrowing climb up the Sandias pursued by the military and law enforcement community. Those who don't know Albuquerque or New Mexico will appreciate the type of individual Burns portrays: a man born too late, unable to compromise.
I haven't seen the movie mentioned by other reviewers. I also didn't see the shortcomings of the book mentioned by several. I saw only a writer who created a character much as Abbey saw himself, as many people today see themselves, and a plot that carried those traits through to the end. No one, I imagine Abbey would say, can dodge the steamroller.
Book Review: Brave Author, Great Publisher
Summary: 5 Stars
While other reviews will give you a plot synopsis and their reaction to the book, or a comparison with the movie, "Lonely Are The Brave," I will limit my review to a few off the wall observations. First, I liked this book a lot and believe the adaptation by Dalton Trumbo to be one of the most faithful by any screenwriter. Often it is difficult not to think of the movie a book is based on while reading it (if you've seen the movie first). But Abbey is so good he made me forget I'd seen the movie and allowed me to lose myself in his words and story. So, a great book, well written, that didn't back away from some of the political hot potatoes most writers and publishers would rather avoid (draft dodging, property rights, etc.).
Few books have made me cry at the end -- usually it's when I think of the time and money wasted on them. This one left me in tears because of a profound sense of loss of another kind, the loss of men such as John W. Burns, the loss of the maverick, the loss of a true voice of the west, and the loss of a west that we will never know except through books and movies.
But one thing impressed me as much as the contents of the book -- its binding. Rarely does anyone discuss this, but I have to say that this edition is the best bound I've ever read. The spine was not stiff and the pages were very flexible allowing me to read one handed almost anywhere. If all paperbacks used this same binding, I wouldn't have to replace my often-read books every eight or nine years. So, from this perspective, the publisher is allowing Abbey's work a much longer life in one edition. Possibly a tribute to Abbey's philosophy, or merely a coincidence, either way I remain impressed by this. This may be the only paperback I own that I can pass to my grandson, as is, for his enjoyment in the future.