What do you think?
Rate this book
The Last Cowboy
Portrays the life of a man who strives to be "a proper cowboy" despite radical changes which have propelled the Old West into a New Southwest characterized by industrialized agribusiness.
- GenresNonfictionJournalism
148 pages, Hardcover
First published December 15, 1988
1 person is currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
Jane Kramer
33 books16 followers Jane Kramer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1964 and has written the Letter from Europe since 1981.
Before joining the magazine, Kramer was a staff writer for the Village Voice; her first book, “Off Washington Square,” is a collection of her articles from that paper. She has published two collections of essays from The New Yorker, “Allen Ginsberg in America,” (1969) and “Honor to the Bride,” (1970), which was based on her experiences in Morocco in the late nineteen-sixties.
Since 1970, most of Kramer’s work for the magazine has covered various aspects of European culture, politics, and social history. Many of these articles have been collected in three books: “Unsettling Europe,” (1980); “Europeans,” (1988), which won the Prix Européen de l’Essai “Charles Veillon” and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction; and “The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Germany,” (1996).
A notable exception to Kramer’s European reporting was her 1977 Profile of the pseudonymous Texan Henry Blanton. It was later published as a book, “The Last Cowboy,” (1977), which won the American Book Award for nonfiction. Parts of her book “Lone Patriot,” (2002), on the right-wing American militia leader John Pitner, also first appeared in the magazine. Her article on multiculturalism and political correctness, “Whose Art Is It?,” won the 1993 National Magazine Award for feature writing and was published as a book in 1994.
Jane Kramer lives in Paris, New York, and Umbria, Italy.
Before joining the magazine, Kramer was a staff writer for the Village Voice; her first book, “Off Washington Square,” is a collection of her articles from that paper. She has published two collections of essays from The New Yorker, “Allen Ginsberg in America,” (1969) and “Honor to the Bride,” (1970), which was based on her experiences in Morocco in the late nineteen-sixties.
Since 1970, most of Kramer’s work for the magazine has covered various aspects of European culture, politics, and social history. Many of these articles have been collected in three books: “Unsettling Europe,” (1980); “Europeans,” (1988), which won the Prix Européen de l’Essai “Charles Veillon” and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction; and “The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Germany,” (1996).
A notable exception to Kramer’s European reporting was her 1977 Profile of the pseudonymous Texan Henry Blanton. It was later published as a book, “The Last Cowboy,” (1977), which won the American Book Award for nonfiction. Parts of her book “Lone Patriot,” (2002), on the right-wing American militia leader John Pitner, also first appeared in the magazine. Her article on multiculturalism and political correctness, “Whose Art Is It?,” won the 1993 National Magazine Award for feature writing and was published as a book in 1994.
Jane Kramer lives in Paris, New York, and Umbria, Italy.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 21, 2012
I think it was Larry McMurtry who made a reference to this book and got me curious enough to find a copy of it. Written in the 1970's by a writer for The New Yorker, it's very much a product of its time and reminds me in many ways of the downbeat mood of "The Last Picture Show," which dates from the same period.
A work of nonfiction by a nonwesterner (Kramer lived and worked in Europe), the book does its best to deromanticize and demythologize the American cowboy and the business of ranching. She has picked as her subject a middle-aged cowboy, Henry Blanton, who has lived and worked most of his life on ranches in the Texas Panhandle.
The grandson of Texas cowboys, Henry has always yearned for his own cattle ranch, but turning 40 he is still working for other men. His current employer is a well-to-do ranch owner who, according to Henry, wouldn't get out of his car if there was a cow within 100 feet. Fiercely proud, Henry is disappointed with his life and at times feels ashamed of his failed dreams. He drinks too much and with his brother Tom gets too easily into fist fights that end with broken windows, taking exception to police officers, and spending the night in jail.
A skilled ranch worker, with a vast knowledge of raising cattle, Henry's role models are the men in Hollywood westerns. He emulates their strength of character and stoic self assurance. Yet Kramer finds little to admire in him, revealing his scarcely disguised racial prejudices, his chauvinism, his hatred of "hippies" and "Easterners," his rigid conservatism, his self-pity, his rage, and his envy of men who have grown rich through luck, cleverness, or anything but perseverance and hard, back-breaking physical labor.
His wife Betsy, former high school cheerleader and homecoming queen, has raised four daughters in the vast, sweeping isolation of the Texas plains. Only their youngest still lives at home, an adept horsewoman and born-again Christian, who is also much attracted to boys. If Kramer shows any respect for these people, it is a pained sympathy for Betsy, who despite growing signs of depression tries to remain emotionally tough and stand by her man.
Where the men and women of the West have no doubt been idealized in popular imagination, this book tries single-handedly to correct the balance. As such, it's a tough read and may seem less than even-handed. If you approach it as a story about individuals who could be living anywhere, it's a grim but compelling account of hard lives and disappointed hopes.
A work of nonfiction by a nonwesterner (Kramer lived and worked in Europe), the book does its best to deromanticize and demythologize the American cowboy and the business of ranching. She has picked as her subject a middle-aged cowboy, Henry Blanton, who has lived and worked most of his life on ranches in the Texas Panhandle.
The grandson of Texas cowboys, Henry has always yearned for his own cattle ranch, but turning 40 he is still working for other men. His current employer is a well-to-do ranch owner who, according to Henry, wouldn't get out of his car if there was a cow within 100 feet. Fiercely proud, Henry is disappointed with his life and at times feels ashamed of his failed dreams. He drinks too much and with his brother Tom gets too easily into fist fights that end with broken windows, taking exception to police officers, and spending the night in jail.
A skilled ranch worker, with a vast knowledge of raising cattle, Henry's role models are the men in Hollywood westerns. He emulates their strength of character and stoic self assurance. Yet Kramer finds little to admire in him, revealing his scarcely disguised racial prejudices, his chauvinism, his hatred of "hippies" and "Easterners," his rigid conservatism, his self-pity, his rage, and his envy of men who have grown rich through luck, cleverness, or anything but perseverance and hard, back-breaking physical labor.
His wife Betsy, former high school cheerleader and homecoming queen, has raised four daughters in the vast, sweeping isolation of the Texas plains. Only their youngest still lives at home, an adept horsewoman and born-again Christian, who is also much attracted to boys. If Kramer shows any respect for these people, it is a pained sympathy for Betsy, who despite growing signs of depression tries to remain emotionally tough and stand by her man.
Where the men and women of the West have no doubt been idealized in popular imagination, this book tries single-handedly to correct the balance. As such, it's a tough read and may seem less than even-handed. If you approach it as a story about individuals who could be living anywhere, it's a grim but compelling account of hard lives and disappointed hopes.
February 27, 2024
Usually when journalists lean into a more literary style, the end result usually calls attention to itself. But in the case of Jane Kramer's excellent book, the prose-poem she spins about Henry Blanton -- abiding by a Texas Panhandle cowboy way of life that is now completely dead in 2024 -- is eloquent, moving, and perfectly condign to the story she weaves here. One feels Blanton's heartbreak as his fortunes decline and his life becomes harder. Yes, downward mobility -- an even heightened problem now -- afflicted so many in the 1970s and the 1980s as the twin cancers of stagflation and Reaganomics began the war against the middle-class. But that we see this from the cowboy's vantage point makes the chronicle more painful -- largely because the cowboy is tied into the allure of American culture. And just look at the elegiac parallels Kramer draws while depicting this erosion:
"He figured that over the last nine years he had put in more time breaking in his string of pickup trucks than he had ever spent breaking in his horses, and each of these trucks had been as personal to him as a favored horse. He had shaped them to his needs and his temperament, the way he had trained Pepper as a colt, until they suited him precisely."
So, yeah, nowhere to go, nowhere to turn to with that code, that way of living.
Kramer is also unflinching in the way Blanton treats women. And yet I found myself empathizing for his situation anyway. I realize that such a distinction is lost on a certain type of social media addict. But you cannot accuse Kramer of being dishonest here. This is a classic.
"He figured that over the last nine years he had put in more time breaking in his string of pickup trucks than he had ever spent breaking in his horses, and each of these trucks had been as personal to him as a favored horse. He had shaped them to his needs and his temperament, the way he had trained Pepper as a colt, until they suited him precisely."
So, yeah, nowhere to go, nowhere to turn to with that code, that way of living.
Kramer is also unflinching in the way Blanton treats women. And yet I found myself empathizing for his situation anyway. I realize that such a distinction is lost on a certain type of social media addict. But you cannot accuse Kramer of being dishonest here. This is a classic.
February 2, 2012
If you grew up with real cowboys and real Indians like I did you will understand this book. The author is more of an anthropologist from New York if I remember right, it has been some years since I read it. At the end of the book she dismisses what she wrote and misses the point of it by analyzing it from her perspective as an outsider to cowboys. But, she manages to capture just what cowboys and the empty West are in the pages of the book. If you expect the romance of the movies and dime novels you misunderstand what cowboys are.
January 3, 2009
Read this alongside Brokeback Mountain and you have a vision of a world that's gone now, not too far away, but almost never explored. This is not a novel, but the main characters are richly portrayed and although there's sympathy for the men trapped by the situation, there's also no hiding their violence either.
April 29, 2009
Many times I've dreamed of becoming a cowboy (or cowgirl) and riding off into the sunset with my faithful steed -- Kramer tells the story of Henry Blanton and his dreams of owning a ranch of his own instead of working on one. In the end he realizes that he is what he's always wanted to be -- a cowboy.
November 1, 2009
A bit too heavy with the facts and figures for my liking but the writing was wonderfully engaging.
May 11, 2025
Knew too many Henry Blanton’s growing up to find this interesting or charming
March 13, 2010
Jane Kramer makes cowboys sound like they are all women-hating, animal-abusing alcoholics with no morals and little dignity. This book, and its characters, are pathetic, and I truly hope no one in America thinks that the cowboy is dead-- although I truly hope, for the sake of America, that Jane Kramer's version is.
September 7, 2014
Crisp prose and a fascinating story. It represents a dying (if not now dead) lifestyle, and reading it almost 40 years post-publication was interesting for that reason. Made me wonder how it was received at the time....
November 23, 2015
a different perspective on the dwindling need for traditional cowboys in the c20th and unemployment that follows. not a page turner tho. I mostly just found it boring. written by a female author I was still perplexed by the portrayal of women and rigid gender roles.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews