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Summary: check out the movie too
Review: 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+
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Summary: Inspiring to wrestle with one's angels and go to the mts.
Review: 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.
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Summary: Brave indeed
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Brave indeed
Review: 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.
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Summary: Raw Abbey
Review: 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.
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Summary: Raw Abbey
Review: 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.
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Summary: Born in the wrong time
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Born in the wrong time
Review: 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.
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