Book review of The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time by Edward Abbey

Could be embossed upon its front cover, “Now that you’ve seen the movie, read the book!”

Much to my disbelief, I am berating a book by my favorite 20th-century American author. As Edward Abbey’s second published novel (another one or two earlier novels remain unpublished, as most first novels should remain), its plot is captivating. Unlike his first published novel, this one garnered some literary recognition, enough to be made into a compelling movie. Yet Abbey’s eloquent and painterly homages to the beauty of the natural world surface here only twice, early in page 14, then not again until pages 225-226. Worse, too many passages about our degenerate human world descend into tedium.

When we are first introduced to our hero, he builds a campfire, and soon after saddles his horse. The descriptions of his actions are so detailed that they could serve as how-to manuals, thus risking alienating any potential new readers. Same during the cowboy’s ascent up the mountainside with his horse in tow, where are chronicled nearly all of his steps, twists, and turns. Little wonder this book inspired a movie, because it is constructed like a screenplay in that it spells out the actor’s every move. Not coincidentally, the film diverges from the book in only two scenes, in the sheriff’s booking office (the movie adds a fistfight), and during the cowboy’s encounter with one of his pursuers (the movie switched the role of the posse member to the villainess prison guard).

When I first viewed on TV the 1962 film, “Lonely Are the Brave,” I was a teenager during the hippie Sixties. I did not know it was based on an Abbey novel, nor did I have any idea who Abbey was. Yet the plot of the film left an enduring impression upon me. Twenty years later, when I “discovered” Abbey the author, I learned of this book’s intimate connection to the movie. After reading nearly everything else that Abbey wrote, I decided to wait to read this novel for when I could relish it more leisurely during my retirement years, and that I just now did. Perhaps my leisure enabled me to scrutinize the text more carefully than usual. More likely, the text contains typos more careless than usual. I am appalled that so many typos have been introduced into a book that has undergone so many editions with multiple printings of each edition. (To the publisher’s credit, this paperback binding is so sturdy that after my rigorous reading it shows scant sign of use.)

Here I am referring to the 5th printing of the most recent edition published in 2016, the Harper Perennial Modern Classics paperback with its front and back covers adorned in appealing golden-landscape and blue-sky colors. Glaring typos abound. I point you to pages 28, 120, 159, 226, 233, and 280. I conducted a single spot check with my earlier 1977 University of New Mexico Press paperback edition, 9th printing 1989. No such typo exists on its corresponding page 30. Hey, Harper Perennial, are you listening?