Name: Virginian
Rating: 3.714285714285714 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 0743238028

Owen Wister

a horseman of the plains

Virginian

The Virginian

Edwin Lang

Were I asked to recommend this book for one reason then I would say read it for the purity and intensity of the love between The Virginian and Miss Molly Wood. The second reason is that Owen Wister faithfully documents, for us, a time when there were giants in our midst. I loved the book, a rich and robust novel, full of fascinating and real major and minor characters. On the Virginian there seemed a reverence, based on the epithets: not a person you’d trifle with; the man; the lover (of Steve; of women; of married women; of Molly – every time I see you it counts); the tall rider; the Gamesman (C13 through C16); a man and his hawss; grave in bearing; quiet; saturnine; of infrequent speech / taciturn; respectful in the face of authority; good listener. Do what is good. This was Cicero’s summary of friendship, which he thought the greatest of all things. And in the “Goodbye Jeff – I could not have spoken to you without playing the baby” we caught the essence of what made the Virginian so special in the story’s and in the reader’s eyes. That in spite of his seeming to be something of a giant among us and a man one wouldn’t trifle with the Virginian epitomized in his love for Steve, in his spontaneity, in his genuineness and in the fidelity of his heart the very essence of the good man and friend. This is the theme that I enjoyed most in the book. The from-time-to-time depiction of the friendship between the Virginian and Steve. We know very little about Steve and even in his last moments alive still know little – what Owen Wister narrates is the love that these two men have as friends. The friendship takes second place to the Virginian sense of honour and sense of what it means to be a man: Romeo was not a man, and yet there’s a sense that while Steve and the Virginian’s friendship included a lot of mischief and womanizing (the book begins, in chapter 2, with the Virginian leaving town after bedding a married woman – who husband’s away – and who we readers witness looking out of her window, somewhat discretely, with longing for the Virginian’s touch. There is also (on page 266 of my edition) an admission by the Virginian, indirectly through the narrators summary of the ride he and the Virginian were on following Steve’s death, and the Virginian’s grief, that his love for Steve embraced at times the carnal. Which given what we know of the Virginian and his love for Miss Wood is something of a shock. I guess what made the book so riveting and why I basically read it twice over the course of my 50 Book Pledge (goals be damned!) is that it seemed as real and complex and contradictorily, and as beautiful, fulsome and engaging, as life is. It was just a beautifully written story, with the richness of anything we can hope for. Edwin

Virginian a horseman of the plains

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