The Virginian (Signet Classics) [Paperback]

Owen Wister (Author), Max Evans (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2002

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill STEVE TREATS It was for several minutes, I suppose, that I stood drawing these silent morals. No man occupied himself with me. Quiet voices, and games of chance, and glasses lifted to drink, continued to be the peaceful order of the night. And into my thoughts broke the voice of that card-dealer who had already spoken so sagely. He also took his turn at moralizing. "What did I tell you?" he remarked to the man for whom he continued to deal, and who continued to lose money to him. "Tell me when?" " Didn't I tell you he'd not shoot ? " the dealer pursued with complacence. " You got ready to dodge. You had no call to be concerned. He's not the kind a man need feel anxious about." The player looked over at the Virginian, doubtfully. " Well," he said, " I don't know what you folks call a dangerous man." " Not him!" exclaimed the dealer with admiration. " He's a brave man. That's different." The player seemed to follow this reasoning no better than I did. " It's not a brave man that's dangerous," continued the dealer. " It's the cowards that scare me." He paused that this might sink home." Fello' came in here las' Toosday," he went on. " He got into some misunderstanding about the drinks. Well, sir, before we could put him out of business, he'd hurt two perfectly innocent onlookers. They'd no more to do with it than you have," the dealer explained to me. " Were they badly hurt ? " I asked. " One of 'em was. He's died since." " What became of the man ? " " Why, we put him out of business, I told you. He died that night. But there was no occasion for any of it; and that's why I never like to be around where there's a coward. You can't tell. He'll always go to shooting before it's necessary, and there's no security who he'll hit.. But a man like t...

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Western/Action/Adventure --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

About the Author

Robert Shulman is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Washington. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Signet Classics; 100th Anniversary edition (April 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451528328
• ISBN-13: 978-0451528322
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #860,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No doubt about it -- a great Western romance . . ., October 16, 2004

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Virginian (Mass Market Paperback)

For anyone fascinated by how the myth of the Western hero came into being, this is the book to read. Published in 1902, it became hugely popular for decades and inspired movies (a version with Gary Cooper in 1929) and a long-running TV series (1962-1971). A modern reader could easily guess the storyline without reading a synopsis - the classic elements are all there: tall, dark, handsome cowboy hero; pretty schoolmarm from back East; the villain who must finally face justice at the end of a gun.

Few historical novels are dedicated to American presidents, however, and another whole dimension of the novel opens up with the name appearing on the dedication page -- Theodore Roosevelt, a college friend of the author's. What Wister does, besides telling a story of adventure and romance, is portray a particular kind of heroic figure, a natural man whose integrity is untainted by the corrupt (though civilized) values of the East.

The book is a deliberate and often worshipful character study for the age of Teddy Roosevelt-style masculinity. The young Virginian charms us (and the narrator) with his courage and modesty and his thoughtful attempts to understand a world in which some men (even good ones) act dishonorably and make cowardly choices. Stoic and cool on the surface, the currents of sentiment run deep in this man. So does the will to self-improvement, as he reads Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott.

This book connects with so much of American myth over the last 100 years that you could easily write another book about it. Or you can simply enjoy it for what it is, a historical romance so well conceived, in spite of its sometimes dated views, that you keep on reading through each episode of the story, glad that Wister was in no hurry to cut to the chase. This is a book for any reader of Western literature, fiction or nonfiction. In it the many traditions of the western come together in popularized form for the first time.

Readers who enjoy this book will also like Elmer Kelton's novel, "The Day the Cowboys Quit." While it's more historically accurate in its portrayal of working cowboys, it captures many of Wister's same narrative elements, in the courage, modesty and thoughtfulness of its hero, its portrayal of the relationship between a top hand and his boss, its fateful pursuit of cattle rustlers, an account of a troubled friendship between two men, and of course the loneliness and yearning at the heart of a man who loves a woman from afar.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When you call me that, smile!, June 9, 1999

By 

R. D. Allison ([e-mail]) (Gainesville, Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Virginian (Signet classics) (Paperback)

This is the classic story by Wister (1860-1938) of the ranch foreman, known only as the Virginian, his courtship of Molly Starkwood, the "schoolmarm" from Vermont, and his conflicts with Trampas. In 1977, the Western Writers of America voted this novel as the top western novel of all time. It probably started the whole genre (even if one counts the pulp fiction popular in the late 19th century). Historians have always pointed out that there never really was a "Code of the West." This was just something thought up by writers, journalists, and film makers. The West was made up of both good and bad men, just as today. But, in my opinion, this book challenges that concept. Wister based his characters on real people he interacted with in the West a few years earlier. There really were men like the Virginian. There really were people who, unknowingly, followed a Code (just as there are today).

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wister used "Virginian" to elaborate fundamental human truths, April 30, 2006

By 

Bruce Bain "Romans 9:33/Remember Jackie Robinson" (Englewood, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Virginian (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

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VIRGINIAN -by Owen Wister ( first reviewed 30 April 2006)

Though "The Virginian" has a standing as a Western novel, it is philosophically rich, and Owen Wister used this novel to articulate certain fundamental truths. (I always find great clarification from older books, books written before TV, before Computers, and even before Radio. In these, one can still find clarification of values, that is not easily found in modern literature, when those who write books don't know the difference between "Come!" and "Go sic'em!" ) Wister's book is not just a "shoot'em-up". The reader needs to be aware of the depth of the philosophical arguments offered by his characters

(1)
the definition of a "gentleman" (in Chapter Two)

(2)
the conflict between GOOD (the Virginian) & EVIL (Trampas, the cowhand turned rustler and worse, corrupter of men, resulting in their destruction

(3)
the definition of "love" ; NOT the romantic love between the school teacher and the cowboy. Rather, it was the love the Virginian showed to his fellow cowhands, who were vulnerable to manipulation and deceit by crooked men, and in trying to shepherd souls along the lines of the soul's deepest strengths. (Example: the Judge's hired hand who loved horses).

(4)
the definition of "spirituality"; Wister draws a stark contrast between the traveling preacher, who wears his religious "act" like a cheap black suit and poorly conceals his contempt of common men in his arrogance and superiority complex.
Moreover, Chapter Two demonstrates the essential requirement of HUMILITY that the Virginian manifests (a character trait utterly lacking in the minister).

(5)
the definition of "conflict": indeed, the entire book is about the very human fight at the very core of life. The Virginian demonstrates the singular truth, clear to anyone who actually engages life, that you cannot find an answer to life's conflict by simply turning away and riding out of town. There is no answer to life's problems in mere "conflict-avoidance", nor in folding our hands and practicing some NAMBY-PAMBY sentiment passing under the guise of LOVE.

I am not proposing that two-handed fisticuffs are the means for resolving all problems. What I am attempting to show is that at some level, whether physical, emotional, ethical or otherwise mental and spiritual, that problems must be faced on some teleological basis.

When The Virginian beats the stuffing out of one of the most despicable of human beings (the abuser of horses) he demonstrates the timelessness of the truth, that good people must stand for something. Even today, deceit and lies have been popularized so that one often hears admonitions, suggesting that we should all practice, "NON-JUDGEMENT." That only bears out, if you choose to embrace ideological horse-flop as life's dearest treasure.

Some fights must be fought, though we do not enjoy them. The EVIL that Trampas represents, will not back down, in its mindlessness. Riding away simply turns over the reins of power to the embodiment of EVIL.

(6)
the definition of "humor": (I cannot spoil the story but...the CHICKEN, the DRUMMERS, the railroad ride after the cattle sale)
There are numerous accounts demonstrating how good people find humor at every chance, and who use humor and imagination to fight evil in everyday circumstances.

(7) DUTY: As Foreman of the Judge's ranch, the Virginian endures many slights and insults to his authority by a "top hand" or two. Not once does he inform the Judge of these difficulties. Why? Because performing his duty includes these things. It is his job; and the Virginian performs his duty as a worthy hand.


The Virginian was written by Wister to a deep purpose, so deep in fact, that I believe it was largely lost on the world. True, it was made into many movies, but even in these, even the great ones, the TRUTHS Wister elaborates in the book are vastly watered down. You cannot acquire Wister's purpose merely by watching a movie. You can only find them in the book.

The book, in the wording of an older era, may seem awkward, perhaps ...slow; but I suggest you think of it as a foray into another place, the Wyoming of a hundred years ago, with vast prairies of open sky, only rarely interrupted by a human dwelling, and more rarely still, by a town. Words then, were a relief from the prairie, which alternates from being vastness of eerie silence, punctuated by violence.

In certain ways, Wister eclipses Melville's "Moby Dick". He was not credited with being the literary giant that Melville enjoys in literary history, but in my opinion, he arrived at a deeper point, and quicker. Melville's characters are melodramatic and driven, often as not, by superstition and wild, incomprehensible urges. Wister's characters are driven by a more familiar greed, a more familiar goodness, a more familiar treachery, an everyday ordinariness, if you will.

When Melville gives his characters something to contend with, they must contend with the ultimate superwhale, Moby Dick, or, it is the strange obsessive madness of the captain. These are less often encountered by people generally, in any age. Wister's evil is not, like Melville's, the Arch-Evil of some cartoonish melodrama. Wister's evil is the cattle rustler, driven by personal selfishness, and a contempt for common values. In my opinion, there is more of a lesson for us in Wister's presentation of evil as more of an everyday, and an ordinary thing, in an ordinary humanity.

There is a foreshadowing in Wister's novel, of a theme exploited to great success by Louis L'Amour half a century later: the notion of a cowhand, who has vaguely ridden on the wrong side of the law. From the start, we become aware that the Virginian is not a "saint". He is a man molded by hard living in the American West. Somewhere on Life's road, a choice was made to care for people, and not merely to steal from others to advance self. Wister's rejection of EGO-CENTRISM as a basis for living is clear. Duty to principle is the honorable alternative.

****** The ACADEMICS and their perspectives on the Virginian*********


There have been some academics who have written prefaces, introductions, and essays about the Virginian, and their natty-brained intellectualizations frequently seem to dominate the public's understanding of the Western, and Wister's tale.

Here's where they go wrong. Writing from the concrete castles of academia, these academics are far removed from the realities of life, especially from the world Wister showed us. Academics operate in an abstract realm of ideas, where they assure themselves that human conflict (and even violence) are all a thing of the past, and that their wordy perambulations have encompassed all that is known of man. After all, they tell us with great bluster and probity that the cowboy and his myth have vanished. That may be so; but what has never changed in life is CONFLICT. It was not removed when TV was invented.

There are those who afford themselves the privilege of scoffing at defining good and evil. These are people who are not engaged in the struggle. They are the spectators in life, and that is why we must guard carefully to never let such tell us how we ought to think and act. Invariably, they will discourage all action. By this philosophy, a cynical and skeptical view is proper, and paralysis, passivity, and inaction, are the order of the day.

Wister's Virginian, shows where a man's duty lies, and how he ought to go about conducting himself in facing conflict. The cowboy may be gone, but human conflict is always with us.

Though literary critics advance Mark Twain or Nabokov or Melville or some such as authors of The Great American Novel, for me, it will always be The VIRGINIAN. --Bruce Bain





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