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THE COWBOYS
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
242 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1971
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 11, 2013
Thoroughly researched, compelling, and well crafted. I read this on a whim after I bought it at a used book sale, and wondered how I'd ever missed this as a cowboy and horse loving kid. Far more complex than the wonderful John Wayne movie.
February 7, 2021
I enjoyed this coming-of-age tale, and I couldn't picture anyone other than John Wayne when reading about Wil Anderson, the hard-bitten ranch owner and main protagonist. He was by far the most developed and interesting character in the book and is haunted by the death of his two sons, tormented by the question of whether he could or should have done things differently in raising them. He is also weighed down by the responsibility of getting his herd to market, a journey that will either make or break his business.
The first two-thirds of the novel are a fairly standard western adventure as our band of wannabe cowboys learn from Wil and from the experience of being on a cattle drive, and start to grow up. Once the rustlers show up, however, things go in a decidedly Southern Gothic direction, and the last third has a very different tone than what has gone before. To my mind, this was a change for the better, as the story was at risk of petering out with not much of interest having happened. By the end, I wouldn't be surprised to see one or two of the boys turning up in a Cormac McCarthy novel as their boyish innocence is lost forever. The Cowboys is a great movie, but this is better.
The first two-thirds of the novel are a fairly standard western adventure as our band of wannabe cowboys learn from Wil and from the experience of being on a cattle drive, and start to grow up. Once the rustlers show up, however, things go in a decidedly Southern Gothic direction, and the last third has a very different tone than what has gone before. To my mind, this was a change for the better, as the story was at risk of petering out with not much of interest having happened. By the end, I wouldn't be surprised to see one or two of the boys turning up in a Cormac McCarthy novel as their boyish innocence is lost forever. The Cowboys is a great movie, but this is better.
December 23, 2011
A little slow going at first, but the details of preparing for and executing a cattle drive from Montana to South Dakota make a solid foundation for the stark violence that ensues. The characters are all well realized enough that I didn't have a problem with telling all the boys apart, and the central character Wil's angst over what he sees as his failure to raise his own sons right surely made him breathe on the page, and complimented his relations with the boys as well. I think it picked up a great deal when the rustlers showed up. I don't really recall the movie with the Duke enough to say how it translates, but this did make me wanna watch it again.
July 11, 2021
A gantastic yarn about life as a cowboy. Life is tough, gritty and rough, full of good men, bad men, and boy's who become men and must make the choice over which side of the spectrum they want to stand. Fantastic book, fully worthy of the awesome but far inferior film adaption. A Great Summer read and it's sad that Mr. Jennings did not write more western fiction.
June 29, 2019
I loved this book as soon as I read the first page. It captured me and wouldn’t let me go. I have seen the movie about 40 times I guess, having watched it over and over since I was a child. As great as that John Wayne movie was the book is so much incredibly better. I think the movie needs to be remade following the book faithfully. It’s so simply and easily written in a style that maybe isn’t around anymore. It’s so good I didn’t want it to end. I laughed and I cried while reading this book and took me on an adventure, a great escape. This is what a great book should do. It might be hard to find but try to find it because it is a can’t miss linda book.
August 1, 2019
If you watched The Cowboys with John Wayne than you will love the book. I was engrossed. Couldn't put it down. Through smiles, tears, and laughter this book lives up to the Duke's call.
Follow a group of young school boys as they learn the hardships of life by way of a cattle run, and a hardened cowboy determined to get his cattle sold.
Like I said, if you liked the movie than you will love the book.
Follow a group of young school boys as they learn the hardships of life by way of a cattle run, and a hardened cowboy determined to get his cattle sold.
Like I said, if you liked the movie than you will love the book.
June 23, 2026
Discovery #1: The 1972 John Wayne movie The Cowboys was based on a novel. I had no idea until I ran across a beat-up paperback of it in a local Half Price Books. It was buried spine-out half-way down the Westerns section, but fortunately the super-groovy type treatment of the title — all fat, slanted, swirling letters in putrid orange, yellow and brown —— caught my eye. (You gotta love how publishers gave every book a super-groovy type treatment in the early 1970s, even when the book was about a cattle drive 100 years earlier.) I’d never heard of the author, William Dale Jennings, but I looked up the novel here on Goodreads, saw that it had a good average rating (4.15) and bought it. I hadn’t see the film in years but remembered it as being pretty solid — somewhere below True Grit but above Rooster Cogburn in the “Old John Wayne in a Bad Toupee” genre. (I love the Old John Wayne in a Bad Toupee genre.) So the three or four bucks I laid out for the paperback seemed like a good bet.
Discovery #2: William Dale Jennings was a very interesting man. I didn’t learn this until The Cowboys had spent the mandatory six to ten months in the To Be Read stacks in my office closet. It was time to pick out my next book to read, I was in the mood for a Western, and there it was: that so-awful-it’s-glorious orange/yellow/brown title. Before I committed to the book, though, I Googled William Dale Jennings…then had to wonder if I had the right guy. This was the first thing I saw: “William Dale Jennings (October 21, 1917 – May 11, 2000) was an American LGBT rights activist, playwright and author.” Now, if you’re like me, when you think “Old John Wayne in a Bad Toupee” the next thing that comes to mind is *not* “American LGBT rights activist.” But after a little more research (specifically, going to William Dale Jennings’ Wikipedia page) I got my confirmation: The man who wrote The Cowboys was an outspoken, ahead-of-his-time crusader for gay rights. Fascinating! I had to read the book now, especially when I saw this a little further down in Jennings’ bio: “Another book, The Cowboys, based on a film treatment he sold to Warner Bros., caused considerable controversy among publishers due to its glimmers of homoeroticism.” Chuh?!? I didn’t remember any glimmers of homoeroticism in The Cowboys. Wait. Or did I…?
Discovery #3: There are glimmers of homoeroticism in The Cowboys! The book that is. And they’re more than glimmers. No, it’s not Brokeback Mountain: The Early Years. But the existence of sexuality is acknowledged, and it’s not just of the type you’d see between, say, John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Time for plot synopsis: The Cowboys is about a crusty old rancher (played in the film by You Know Who) who has to recruit a bunch of schoolboys to get his herd to market after his usual hands desert him to look for gold. Adventure ensues. Action, too, upon the arrival of bad guys out to steal the herd. Etc. (Can you tell I’m not a fan of plot synopsis?) Now, the usual cattle drive story might — *might* — admit that males on their own in the wilderness for weeks could feel…you know…hankerings. But this would be resolved with much yahooing and a visit to the local cathouse when the cowboys hit town. Jennings doesn’t let it go at that. He’s depicting boys on the verge of becoming men, so [SOME OF YOU WILL WANT TO SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH] we get mentions of “stiff blankets” in the mornings, and at one point a particularly sex-obsessed character (“Horny Jim”) pops off with the very un-John Wayne line “Hey, let’s all have a circle jerk!” The way the young cowboys pair up with each other, picking “bunkies” to share duties and bedrolls with, is also presented with some, let’s say, glimmer, though nothing is overt. Yet despite all this….
Discovery #4: The movie was pretty faithful to the book…minus “Horny Jim” and all that. In fact, the first two acts of the film are almost a direct, scene-for-scene lift from the novel, with chunks of dialogue surviving the transition intact. The plot mechanics are streamlined a bit in a way that actually improves on the book, though. And the depiction of the cattle drive’s black cook, Nightlinger, shifts in an interesting fashion. He’s one of the novel’s strongest characters — opinionated, sly and nurturing, in an appropriately “tough love” manner. But by casting the grandiloquent character actor Roscoe Lee Browne in the role, the movie brings out a glimmer all its own. (Modern viewers might find their gaydar pinging when Nightlinger’s on screen.) The film’s last act veers quite a bit from the book — and again improves on it. Where the movie gives us a straightforward action climax, with the young cowboys on a mission of vengeance against the rustlers, the novel turns into a longer, darker Lord of the Flies-in-chaps that’s quite a downer. There’s also a drawn-out, completely superfluous side episode about a saloon gal’s naked ride through a cowtown — apparently based on a true story — that Jennings seems to throw in because he ran across it in his research and thought it was fun. Yet despite *that*….
Discovery #5: I enjoyed the novel and the film (which I rewatched after finishing the book). Jennings’ set-up — old rancher takes literal cow-*boys* on a dangerous cattle drive — is great, and for the most part both the novel and movie deliver on it. And though I didn’t particularly need to read about stiff blankets or Horny Jim’s ideas of entertainment, I appreciated that Jennings set out to do something unique and frank within the Western. He never wrote another — in fact, he only wrote two more novels — and that’s a shame. I would have enjoyed the chance to make more discoveries about Jennings’ approach to the genre.
Discovery #2: William Dale Jennings was a very interesting man. I didn’t learn this until The Cowboys had spent the mandatory six to ten months in the To Be Read stacks in my office closet. It was time to pick out my next book to read, I was in the mood for a Western, and there it was: that so-awful-it’s-glorious orange/yellow/brown title. Before I committed to the book, though, I Googled William Dale Jennings…then had to wonder if I had the right guy. This was the first thing I saw: “William Dale Jennings (October 21, 1917 – May 11, 2000) was an American LGBT rights activist, playwright and author.” Now, if you’re like me, when you think “Old John Wayne in a Bad Toupee” the next thing that comes to mind is *not* “American LGBT rights activist.” But after a little more research (specifically, going to William Dale Jennings’ Wikipedia page) I got my confirmation: The man who wrote The Cowboys was an outspoken, ahead-of-his-time crusader for gay rights. Fascinating! I had to read the book now, especially when I saw this a little further down in Jennings’ bio: “Another book, The Cowboys, based on a film treatment he sold to Warner Bros., caused considerable controversy among publishers due to its glimmers of homoeroticism.” Chuh?!? I didn’t remember any glimmers of homoeroticism in The Cowboys. Wait. Or did I…?
Discovery #3: There are glimmers of homoeroticism in The Cowboys! The book that is. And they’re more than glimmers. No, it’s not Brokeback Mountain: The Early Years. But the existence of sexuality is acknowledged, and it’s not just of the type you’d see between, say, John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Time for plot synopsis: The Cowboys is about a crusty old rancher (played in the film by You Know Who) who has to recruit a bunch of schoolboys to get his herd to market after his usual hands desert him to look for gold. Adventure ensues. Action, too, upon the arrival of bad guys out to steal the herd. Etc. (Can you tell I’m not a fan of plot synopsis?) Now, the usual cattle drive story might — *might* — admit that males on their own in the wilderness for weeks could feel…you know…hankerings. But this would be resolved with much yahooing and a visit to the local cathouse when the cowboys hit town. Jennings doesn’t let it go at that. He’s depicting boys on the verge of becoming men, so [SOME OF YOU WILL WANT TO SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH] we get mentions of “stiff blankets” in the mornings, and at one point a particularly sex-obsessed character (“Horny Jim”) pops off with the very un-John Wayne line “Hey, let’s all have a circle jerk!” The way the young cowboys pair up with each other, picking “bunkies” to share duties and bedrolls with, is also presented with some, let’s say, glimmer, though nothing is overt. Yet despite all this….
Discovery #4: The movie was pretty faithful to the book…minus “Horny Jim” and all that. In fact, the first two acts of the film are almost a direct, scene-for-scene lift from the novel, with chunks of dialogue surviving the transition intact. The plot mechanics are streamlined a bit in a way that actually improves on the book, though. And the depiction of the cattle drive’s black cook, Nightlinger, shifts in an interesting fashion. He’s one of the novel’s strongest characters — opinionated, sly and nurturing, in an appropriately “tough love” manner. But by casting the grandiloquent character actor Roscoe Lee Browne in the role, the movie brings out a glimmer all its own. (Modern viewers might find their gaydar pinging when Nightlinger’s on screen.) The film’s last act veers quite a bit from the book — and again improves on it. Where the movie gives us a straightforward action climax, with the young cowboys on a mission of vengeance against the rustlers, the novel turns into a longer, darker Lord of the Flies-in-chaps that’s quite a downer. There’s also a drawn-out, completely superfluous side episode about a saloon gal’s naked ride through a cowtown — apparently based on a true story — that Jennings seems to throw in because he ran across it in his research and thought it was fun. Yet despite *that*….
Discovery #5: I enjoyed the novel and the film (which I rewatched after finishing the book). Jennings’ set-up — old rancher takes literal cow-*boys* on a dangerous cattle drive — is great, and for the most part both the novel and movie deliver on it. And though I didn’t particularly need to read about stiff blankets or Horny Jim’s ideas of entertainment, I appreciated that Jennings set out to do something unique and frank within the Western. He never wrote another — in fact, he only wrote two more novels — and that’s a shame. I would have enjoyed the chance to make more discoveries about Jennings’ approach to the genre.
August 24, 2020
A familiar story. We watched one of my favorite John Wayne movies with Evie and discovered it was based on a book. I'm certain I first saw this movie and my Grandma and Grandpa's house while they played bridge with my parents. I was around the same age as the kids in the movie and needless to say it made a big impression on me. Anyway, the novel is excellent, full of detail and amazing characters. Read it for the language alone. I was looking forward to reading other books by the author, but this is his only western. One of his other books looks interesting, but I have no real urge to read a retelling of an ancient Buddhist tale. I was surprised by the author's biography. It was not what I expected from the author of a western novel. Jennings was an interesting guy, you should look him up.
March 22, 2019
A coming of age story set in 1877 in the Montana-Wyoming cattle country. Wil Anderson agrees to use a ragtag group of school boys to help him drive his cattle 400 miles to Belle Fourche. Before the drive is over the collective group grow and develop from boys into young men in this rugged tale of what it takes to earn respect, and develop individual character, and see a job through to the end.
May 19, 2023
Another book from high school that I decided to revisit. A wonderful and adventurous story about the power of friendship and love. Both funny and poignant, you’ll easily fall in love with all the boys and root for them every step of the way. I would suggest reading over the western definitions and history provided in the back of the book first.
March 31, 2024
This book was made into one of my favorite western movies. Even though the movie is pretty violent - Bruce Dern's performance is particularly disturbing - it doesn't come close to the bloodiness of the book. I definitely would say the movie is better 😉
September 17, 2026
This is the basis of the 1972 that I've grown to love more as the years go on.
Very much captures the spirit of young men.
It does have some odd flourishes at the conclusion, but enjoyed the ride up until then.
Very much captures the spirit of young men.
It does have some odd flourishes at the conclusion, but enjoyed the ride up until then.
August 30, 2019
The book was very good and I've seen the movie before reading the book.
October 26, 2020
A much needed escape to a Western.
July 21, 2022
Fantastic book. Great characters and story, expertly written. I highly recommend this book.
December 12, 2016
I can definitely see why they changed certain details for the movie.
June 23, 2021
This book took a min for me to get on board with but it never stopped ramping up and had a rather poetic ending. By the end of this book I was fully on board and impressed. I loved it!
April 2, 2008
This book, along with The Cowboy and the Cossack were both recommended to me by my grandfather. It's the story of a cattle rancher who's cowboys all leave to search for gold and hires all the school boys in the town to herd his cattle 800 miles to market. In this story, the author conveys the gruff, unrelenting way the rancher trains the boys, along with the pain of seeing one or two die.
This novel was also adapted into a movie starring John Wayne and Roscoe Lee Brown back in 1971. As always, the book is better than the movie, for you get a much better understanding of the characters, their thought process and feelings.
This novel was also adapted into a movie starring John Wayne and Roscoe Lee Brown back in 1971. As always, the book is better than the movie, for you get a much better understanding of the characters, their thought process and feelings.
May 20, 2011
According to Wikipedia, Jennings wrote this book based on a film treatment he had sold, which was made into a movie with the same name, starring John Wayne. That happens to be one of my favorite movies, I’ve watched it many times and the book follows the movie pretty closely (or vice versa).
Also on wikipedia it says the book “caused a lot of controversy among publishers due to its glimmers of homoeroticism”. I’d say those few glimmers are the main things that pop out as not being in the movie. And they aren’t major things, just glimmers, like the article says.
If you are a big fan of the movie, you’ll probably enjoy reading the book too.
Also on wikipedia it says the book “caused a lot of controversy among publishers due to its glimmers of homoeroticism”. I’d say those few glimmers are the main things that pop out as not being in the movie. And they aren’t major things, just glimmers, like the article says.
If you are a big fan of the movie, you’ll probably enjoy reading the book too.
January 23, 2008
This is the difinative novel about a cattle drive. The vocabulary is dead on and Jenning's research is thorough. This is a must read for any old west fan. Of course it was made into a great John Wayne flick.
May 28, 2011
I remember being practically scarred by the end of this book. However, it was so long ago I read it that I can't trust my memories of it.
November 13, 2011
Read this book over and over and over again when I was a kid.
May 5, 2013
a western by one of my favorite authors. One that I will read again.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews