Book Club: Discuss/find out about a Classic Tale Set in Wyoming: The Virginian

[Front-Ranger]

I am missing my own Ennis very much tonight....and it is comforting to read The Virginian, because it reminds me so very much of him.

[Front-Ranger]

Here is what the historian John Nesbitt (who appeared with Annie Proulx at a literary panel in Casper, Wyoming) has to say about The Virginian:

First, on the myth of the cowboy: yes, I think the mystique of the cowboy has to do with his association with fertility and virility, but I think in more modern terms (say, from the 18th century onward), his kind of character in fiction and legend has much to do with chivalry and horsemanship as those honorable pursuits are carried out (in more egalitarian times) by the common man, or, as he was called in the nineteenth century, nature’s nobleman.

As for The Virginian, I see the novel as many do, as a literary attempt to pull together or harmonize cultural values of the late nineteenth century.  First, the Virginian is a horseman; we see that in the subtitle, and we see it in the opening scene when he catches the horse in the corral (end of first paragraph: “That man knows his business.”), and as I said during the panel discussion, horsemanship is a defining characteristic of the cowboy.  As a cultural emblem, he is the embodiment of southern chivalry and natural nobility; his courtship of and eventual marriage with the schoolteacher is a blending together of east and west with north and south, in a kind of vision of a unified nation.  In my interpretation, the novel itself is a blending together of the novel of manners (in the style of Jane Austen and Henry James) and the historical romance (in the style of James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott, the latter being a source of Wister’s ideology of the cow-puncher as a latter-day Ivanhoe).  The main character’s being from Virginia is, as I see it, representative of the South, as Virginia was the seat of the Confederacy.  The one time someone calls him by a given name, the name is Jeff, as in Thomas Jefferson (the first great Virginian) or his namesake Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.  I have never gotten any virginal connotations from the title, although there is an interesting view of virginity and sexuality in the chapter on Em’ly the hen, which is referred to later in the book.

[Front-Ranger]

Here is a quote which illustrates what Nesbitt was saying, above. This is from page 23 of the Pocket West edition:

Truth untamed sat here for an idle moment, spending easily its hard-earned wages....More of death [this Rocky Mountain place] undoubtedly saw, but less of vice, than did its New York equivalents. And death is a thing much cleaner than vice. Moreover, it was no means vice that was written on these wild and manly faces....Daring, laughter, endurance--these were what I saw upon the countenance of the cowboys.

In their flesh our natural passions ran tumultuous; but often in their spirit sat hidden a true nobility, and often beneath its unexpected shining their figures took a heroic stature.

[Ellemeno]

Lee, I bought The Virginian a couple of days ago, but then left home yesterday for two weeks, and didn't bring it with me.  I'm looking forward to it.  The copy I bought has a very oldtimey font, that I think will enhance the experience.

[Front-Ranger]

Okay, Clarissa, but if you get some free time, Toast has posted a link to two sources of the online book, above!

[Front-Ranger]

Chapter Three, Steve Treats, is a kind of tall tale about the shenanigans that go on around the Virginian. It tells how TV gets a bed of his own, winning a bet with another cowpoke Steve, and how Steve subsequently buys drinks all around, leading to a party that ends suddenly with the news that the engineer's wife is sick and is suffering because of all the caterwalling going on. The next morning, TV manages to assuage and charm both the engineer's wife and the eating house proprietress. As Chapter Four, Deep Into Cattle Country, begins, TV is leading the narrator out of town on the 263-mile trek to Judge Henry's ranch, due west of Medicine Bow. (This country is EDelMar's favorite part of Wyoming, he tells me.) The narrator has come from the East at the invitation of Judge Henry and his wife. As they ride away from Medicine Bow, the narrator keeps looking back and noticing that, by a curious foreshortening effect, he can still see the town clearly, although it keeps getting smaller. TV tells him this effect is noticeable all over the West, particularly in Arizona, where shooting stars can be mistaken for train lights and vice versa. Then they have an enlightening discussion on the effect when looking at a whiskey bottle. As always, TV's droll wit carries the dialogue along smartly.

[Front-Ranger]

I heard a chilling story on radio today...it made me think that what I am doing is right. If even just one person reads this, and comes to discover the difference between literature and pornography, then none of my posts will have been in vain.

A woman in rural Missouri was surfing the Internet, and she started to read about cults, and she realized that she had been involved in a cult for several years. As a result, she and her husband left the rural town and moved away.... she did not realize that she had been manipulated. She thought the sex-laced activities she had been involved in were part of Christianity.

[Daniel]

Oh my, Lee... We share such a common thread, you and I... The other day, I was writing to my publisher.

If this work can touch just one life. If it can make even one person consider their life or the universe in a different way that brings them closer to themselves and their personal truth, I will have considered it a success.

It reminds me of that beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life
the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

[Lynne]

Nice poem by Dickinson, one of my favorites...I'm still behind, but I am loving the Virginian's sardonic wit and self-confidence, arising from within.  I also love the language of the early 20th century  - reminds me of Dickinson's 'formal feelings.'

[Ellemeno]

 If even just one person reads this, and comes to discover the difference between literature and pornography, then none of my posts will have been in vain.

Lee, that reminds me of the excellent little paragraph in Chapter 2:

"Talking of conductors," began the drummer. And we listened to his anecdote. It was successful with his audience; but when he launched fluently upon a second I strolled out. There was not enough wit in this narrator to relieve his indecency, and I felt shame at having been surprised into laughing with him.


Thanks for pointing out Toast's post with the online links.  I somehow missed that.  I'm now on Chapter 3, and enjoying the book's descriptions and humor very much.

Has anyone figured out what a drummer is yet?