Brave Cowboy by Edward Abbey Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.90 You Save: $6.09 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.37 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Brave Cowboy
Book Review: Brave indeed
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a novel about a man born into the wrong era. Jack Burns is a cowboy through and through--unaccustomed to having his freedom restricted and driven by a strong sense of loyalty and honor. The problem is he lives in post World War II America, and his old-fashioned values and desire to roam the country freely often clash with the modern society in which he lives. This causes many problems for Burns, some simple, some complicated: he has a hard time getting his horse to cross the highway, people don't respect him, he doesn't register for the draft (which was compulsory then). He is put in jail trying to help a friend, and it is here that the conflict of old and new really begins to unfold.Without revealing too much of the plot, Burns tries to beat modern society with his old-fashioned ways. The final section of the book deals with the physical conflict between old and new, between horse and horsepower, and it is clear that Jack Burns simply does not belong in the era into which he was born. This novel details the struggle for disappearing values, the desperate attempt to hold on to the past (and the consequences this sometimes brings). Edward Abbey is an excellent writer, and his prose is vivid and descriptive. The Brave Cowboy is a classic work of American Western fiction.
Book Review: Craft, sharp wit, keen perception, start here.
Summary: 5 Stars
For those who weren't lucky to have read Abbey chronologically, I'm afraid there are layers that you have missed. (The cowboy for instance.) All advance climbing necessary to reach comfortable rock to lean against while reading "Fool's Progress". Since "Jonathan Troy" is long out of print, fried salted mutton and beans over juniper coals at dawn is not a bad place to begin. Abbey, in this story, dives into the great and growing conflict between the wilderness and the coming of the machine, the struggle of those living between the reality and the romance. Or maybe just two realities. Abbey's comment back in the early 50"s on big brother and the BS rings true today.Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
After reading "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and his opus "A Fool's Progress", I was let down by this particular Abbey effort. The cliched character of Burns, the beleaguered cowboy, riding out of the purple-hazed past to rescue an old buddy from the perils of modern times, is shopworn at best. Abbey's prose, usually spectacular, just doesn't seem up to his standards here. Missing, too, were the pyrotechnic polemics that make Abbey so much fun to read. The ending was so thoroughly telegraphed, I felt slightly insulted. Avoid this book, and read "A Fool's Progress", Abbey at his finest.Book Review: Inspiring to wrestle with one's angels and go to the mts.
Summary: 4 Stars
The philisophic dichotomies Abbey establishes with Bondi and Burns shows the two sides of a consciousness (cuate). This book inspires me to want to teach it to high school students. It shows how both philosophies of cultural acceptance of the established narrative and an acceptance of creating one's own narrative are just as viable and valid and can even be friends with one another. This is my second book by Abbey and my enjoyment of it is only marred by the fact that I have to keep a dictionary (English and Spanish) nearby.Book Review: One of Abbey's Earliest
Summary: 4 Stars
I liked Edward Abbey long before I read his work as I saw the movie adaptation of this book "Lonely Are The Brave" back in the Sixties. Abbey’s protagonist, Jack Burns, the uncompromising rebel from another America, is as free spirited as his creator. Constantly at odds with modern life, he eventally violates enough of its ways to become sought by the law. Hunted relentlessly he chooses to stay with his horse and chance his escape across rugged mountains rather than abandoning him and fleeing on foot.... Burns is not your typical cowboy hero; he is a reminder that the individual is sometimes far grander than the shackles he creates by the imposed rules of society.