Brave Cowboy by Edward Abbey Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Brave Cowboy
Book Review: One of Abbey's best!
Summary: 5 Stars
Edward Abbey's first published novel is a modern-day western set in New Mexico. Its hero, Jack Burns, is a man unable to come to terms with an increasingly civilized west, who becomes a fugitive from the law after he attempts to help his friend break out of jail. Hunted by the authorities, he complicates his escape by refusing to leave his skittish horse behind. Despite the awful title, it is a well-written, entertaining novel that explores the tension between personal freedom and modern civilization against a backdrop of stark natural beauty. Made into an even better film under the title Lonely Are the Brave. Coincidentally, I read this book after finishing Rand Johnson's excellent new novel "Arcadia Falls", which tho set in the suburban east, is thematically very similar.Book Review: Raw Abbey
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of Abbey's first books and will seem to be crudely written if you have read him before. For me it was interesting to see how far he came in his writing style. But this is a good story just the same. Although it moves very slowly and takes a while to develop it is quite good. You will recognize that the speed of the story is very similiar to the speed of life in desert towns and countryside if you have ever spent any time in either. Much of his message is transparent from the beginning of the book but it still an enjoyable read. If you like the book you will really appreciate the movie being that it is a very good interpretation of the book. It is called 'Lonely Are The Brave' and stars Walter Mathau and Kirt Douglas.Book Review: Tedious Reading
Summary: 2 Stars
I am a great fan of Abbey. But after reading several of his books, I am almost convinced that he was a far better essayist than a novelist. This book takes a laboriously long time to develop, and it isn't until the end that the reader even begins to comprehend what Abbey is getting at. (In fact, I'm not sure I get it now.) One possible explaination is that he was trying to draw a parallel between Thoreau and Emmerson. Abbey was a great admirer of Thoreau, and, I believe, took great pride in being compared to him. In this novel Bondi (Emmerson) is the high-browed educated thinker, and Burns (Thoreau) the simpler, more admirable, doer of the word. The story progressively exposes more and more of the differences between the two. But Abbey's prose is incredibly long winded, almost as if he is writing this book to show off how many literary tricks he can use, at the expense of the reader and the story. But it is not until the end of the work (almost as difficult to arrive at as the top of the mountain for Jack Burns) that the reader will feel truly ripped off and cheated. My advice is to stick to Abbey's essay collections, although I truly enjoyed "The Monkey Wrench Gang."Book Review: a moving tale of friendship and the cost of progress
Summary: 5 Stars
A tale of friendship and loyalty in the new west. But the main character Burns is definitley from the old west. It brings up the question of progress; is progress a good thing? It also makes you question what is right and what is wrong. The author Edward Abbey loves to make you question authority and he does it well in this book. A very good read.Book Review: check out the movie too
Summary: 4 Stars
Q: What's your occupation? A: Cowhand, sheepherder; game poacher. Q: Where's your papers?...Your I.D.--draft card, social security, driver's license? A: Don't have none. Don't need none. I already know who I am.
Edward Abbey is one of the patron saints of the modern Environmental movement; right up there with Rachel Carson. Desert Solitaire, his memoir of working in a National Park, is an impassioned statement of preservationist principles and his comic novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, is a virtual primer for ecoterrorism. But my personal favorite of his books is the little remembered Brave Cowboy, the basis for the excellent but equally forgotten Kirk Douglas film, Lonely Are the Brave. It belongs on the shelf with the other uniquely American paens to independence and rugged individualism: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest(read Orrin's review), Cool Hand Luke, From Here to Eternity (read Orrin's review), All the Pretty Horses (read Orrin's review), etc.
Set in the mid 1950's, the novel tells the story of Jack Burns, a latter day cowboy, now reduced to working as a hand on a sheep ranch, who gets himself thrown into prison so that he can help his draft dodging friend escape. But when his buddy refuses to compromise the moral purity of his concientious objector status, Burns is forced to break out on his own, assuming that a vicious Mexican prison guard he has aggravated doesn't kill him first. In the meantime the authorities have realized that Jack too is unregistered and that while they were in college together, he helped his friend with some radical causes, however ineffectual. So when he does manage to escape, Jack ends up being treated as a dangerous fugitive, instead of as the fairly harmless eccentric that he is. Pursued by locals, feds, the military and the sadistic guard, he takes off into the desert, his only allies a high spirited horse, who's as much trouble as help, and a phlegmatic local sherriff named Morlin Johnson.
In a broader sense though, what the book is really about is the clash between the values of the old West and the bureaucratic, mechanized, regimented and federalized modern West. Though it lacks the memorable set-pieces that distinguish the other books cited above and is admittedly none too subtle in portraying the menace of modern life, it succeeds nonetheless because the character of Jack Burns evokes such nostalgia in the reader and like Don Quixote, we find the mental world that he lives in more attractive than the reality that has begun to crowd in on him. I like the novel very much and especially recommend the movie.
GRADE: B+