Cowboys Are My Weakness

by Pam Houston

"I've always had this thing for cowboys, maybe because I was born in New Jersey. But a real cowboy is hard to find these days, even in the West," says the narrator in the title story of Pam Houston's critically acclaimed collection. In these strong, shrewd, and very funny stories, we meet smart women who are looking for the love of a good man, and men who are wild and hard to pin down. Our heroines are part daredevil, part philosopher, all acute observers of the nuances of modern romance. They go where their cowboys go, they meet cowboys who don't look the part -- and they have staunch friends who give them advice when the going gets rough. Cowboys Are My Weakness is a refreshing and realistic look at men and women -- together and apart.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Westerns, Book Club, Romance, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

171 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Houston is the Director of Creative Writing at U.C. Davis. Her stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. She lives in Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

She says that cowboys are her weakness, but the weakness is a deeper one. And what is this weakness? It is a need to love a certain kind of guy and a willingness to accept what that certain kind of guy dishes out. Or more to the point, what he doesn't dish out: affection, support, constancy, loyalty, empathy, understanding, a genuinely loving word or touch rather than silence or a physical knock-around. She's a tough gal but there is a gap in her sense of self that she feels only her romanticized version of a cowboy can fill. But this "cowboy" barely exists as a reality; he's the signifier and the signified combined into the sign of Cowboy. But this Cowboy does not come to the rescue.

But who is this "she" after all? One of the many wonderful things about this collection is how these stories are arranged. Except for 2-3 stories, the protagonists are different women. They are different women with similar hopes and challenges; they are also similar women at different stages in their lives. So as we read these stories, from first to last, we see the women in them gain a greater sense of who they are and why they want what they want, we see these women, this "she" as she grows in resilience, strength, and independence. By the end of this collection, she isn't even thinking about cowboys, she's supporting her best friend who will die by cancer. "Cowboys" as a romantic figure have become meaningless; if anything, She is the cowboy. By the end of the book, She is a maverick and the collection has become less about lovelorn women and more about the strength of women. An ideal ending.

None of that could have been accomplished if the writer didn't put their all into these stories. The prose is lovely and evocative, all hard edges and soft centers. Which is to be expected as the author is very well-regarded. But what is particularly notable is how lived-in these stories feel. All authors put themselves into their works, but this collection feels especially real. Pam Houston knows these places, she's been on these trips and adventures, she's been these women. The realism and the empathy on display is admirable.

Favorite parts: the last story detailing the friendship between two women, one with cancer (I cried, thinking of the people in my life who've dealt with similar challenges); the parts in the two overlapping stories that detail the personalities of two very real dogs (I laughed, thinking of all the wonderful dogs I've had in my life); and a rather guilty favorite, the very short story about the gal who - despite her judgmental relatives - finds that she is perfectly content with her affectionate relationship with a handsome, dog-loving, downwardly-mobile redneck (I smiled, and was reminded that not all cowboys are trouble and that perhaps they are a weakness for all sorts of people *cough*).

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing here is whip-smart and I would pay a hundred dollars for the reaction I have in my gut when I read this book. Pam Houston helps me locate the memories I forget I carry: the glittering world inside a trout, the mystery and excitement of peeling a deer’s skin from its body, the satisfaction of sewing bait fish onto sturdy, sturgeon-catching hooks—my earliest arts and crafts, mostly forgotten.

I grew up plucking ducks and geese in the West with a complicated outdoorsman father who is not unlike some of the men in this book.

Also, side note: Houston will always have a special place in my heart for writing the passage: “You might forget, for example, that you live in a city where people have so many choices they throw words away, or so few they will bleed in your car for a hundred dollars. You might forget eleven or maybe twelve of the sixteen-in-a-row totaled cars. You might forget that you never expected to be alone at thirty-two or that a crazy man might be waiting for you with a gun when you get home tonight or that all the people you know—without exception—have their hearts all wrapped around someone who won’t ever love them back.” (From the essay, “The Best Girlfriend You Never Had”). Read her.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I told Debra about the passion, the hours in bed, the best (I actually said this) sex I had ever had, and as I said the words I believed them to be true. I didn't tell her about the time he got out of bed during foreplay and I found him naked and caulking the bathtub. I didn't tell her that in all the times he's been inside me, he's never once met my eyes.

So I have no idea what caulking is but I liked Houston's narrative voice that is, by turns, witty, self-deceiving, wry, divided, knowing, cynical and strong.

At the heart of these stories is a concern with women's relationships with a certain type of man: the one that culture has long conditioned us to desire - hyper-masculine, tough, risky, macho, dangerous, sexy, strong, laconic, with a capacity for violence... think Heathcliff, Mr Rochester. Only Houston's tales show that this strong, silent type is also emotionally absent, incapable of intimacy, more at home with sex than affection and given to infidelity and moving on. Not to mention, in these stories, a strong propensity for hunting, shooting and a rather stomach-churning handiness with a knife to gut those animals he's just killed.

Houston's women are no shrinking violets and their smartness co-exists with a weakness that undermines their happiness - and it's no big surprise that the deepest and most fulfilling relationships in these stories come from those with a horse, a dog, and a female friend with cancer.

For all that, there's wit in this writing, and a kind of self-knowledge that keeps the mood buoyant even when the matter of the stories is at its bleakest - and it's clever the way each tale shades into and throws light on the others so that there's both unity and development across the book. This is kind of like the underside of the romance genre, and put together with thought, nuance and a welcome sense of humour.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories told by women about their mostly doomed love for cowboys. The phrase love is blind leaps to mind. My favorite was ‘A blizzard under blue sky’. A clinically depressed woman decides to go into the winter wilderness with her two digs to stay overnight in a ice cave. She realizes during the 14 hour night she had not thought about her man, bills and deadlines. All if us I think can relate to thinking about problems, dwellings on depressing thoughts and feelings low. I know when my mind is occupied by other thoughts that those problems disappear or seem unimportant. She did this worrying about surviving the night in below temperatures. In a nutshell it put life in perspective.

The stories were also about survival such as Selway and surviving rapids, Dall hunting in Alaska with a man a woman fell out of love to Highwater when a pregnant woman is abandoned by her partner. The last story ‘In my next life’ to me was a precious reminder about living and accepting death as part of that journey.

Emotional, amusing and sad stories of love and loss. Stories of men who are emotionally uncommunicative and strong women who should know better but get drawn in to danger and disappointment. The stories were written in 1992 and the sad thing is they could have been written in 2021.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is comprised of 12 short stories primarily about women’s relationships with men in the modern West. Houston is a super talented writer and does an excellent job of integrating the ‘outdoors’ into all of these stories which makes them special. Here were my four favorites.

1. How to Talk to a Hunter - a young woman is working to understand her relationship with a man who struggles with honesty.

2. Selway - a highly realistic story of an ill-fated whitewater trip during a flood. From the first page it is clear that the man in particular and by extension his girlfriend are taking too many risks.

3. Dall - a woman is hired as an assistant guide in Alaska on a Dall sheep hunting trip. She and the lead guide are romantically involved and he does not treat her with much respect. She becomes upset at the way the sheep are treated in unsportsmanlike ways- left to die in some cases. All this just to please their wealthy hunting clients’ whims. Probably the best story of the bunch in describing the raw wilderness and the incongruity of man and the wilderness.

4. Cowboys are My Weakness - this title story was the deepest and the saddest of the short stories - at least for me. Homer is an emotionally distant love interest who just seems incapable of empathy until it is too late.

4.5 stars. Penned in 1992, Houston’s writing in this collection reminded me a good deal of Rick Bass who happens to be one of my favorite authors

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cowboys are NOT my weakness....and they're not Pam Houston's either.

I would never pick up a book with this title except that I heard that it was not what it sounds like and that much was true but I still had to hide it in my purse out of embarrassment. It's about relationships but mostly what is lacking in relationships between men and women and in the end Houston's most meaningful relationship is with a woman. It's well written and whip smart.

Houston is a tomboy with a taste for perilous adventure and the outdoors. She confides that she had broken 5 major bones by the time she was 28. So naturally she is attracted to men who feed that thrill to danger. In this series of short stories, she relates her affairs with men who share her activities and bed but don't engage her mind or emotions. She is attracted to their "bad boy" animal nature which she tries to tame and when she's successful, loses her attraction to them.....sound familiar?

There was much in this book that resonated with me. Houston talks about immersing herself in her man's activities and then realizing one day that she used to dance and listen to music i.e. she's given up things that she loves, sublimated herself to the inclinations of her lover. It's unconscious on her part and something that most women do in a relationship.

She talks about being in a relationship with a man who "lied by omission". Been there, done that! Sheesh!

In one vignette, she declares "I love you" to her guy and he responds "I feel the same way"....which when you really think about it means he loves himself....lol.

Parts of it made me laugh out loud. About one of her "cowboys" she says that Homer wasn't really a cowboy but "a capitalist with a Texas accent who owned a horse". I've known a few of those myself.

Ultimately, this was a few hours well and enjoyably spent.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book my then-boyfriend, now husband gave to me...and he turned me into a life-long Pam Houston fan. He LOANED ME One Hundred Years of Solitude first but he bought me this one...
This is probably my favorite book but everything she's written is fantastic - and while I count the days until her next book, once it's out, I SLOWLY read it...kind of like I did with John Irving when I first read World According to Garp or Widow for One Year...every page is satisfying...and although she's completely different than David Sedaris, they are the two authors I constantly look up online, just in case they have something new coming out...

[Alena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I cruised through the first 2/3 of this story collection truly appreciated Pam Houston's voice - smart, adventurous, sexy, unconventional and even a little wild. While she and I don't share outlooks or lifestyles, we are a similar age and I recognized what it was to come into my own as a young woman in the 1990s.
Then, the last 4 or 5 stories took me completely out of the rhythm. They felt almost too philosophical to me. Not bad, but knocked my rating from 4 to 3 stars.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this collection to a girl once who I was trying to woo. I truly felt as though Houston had captured the "essence" of modern femininity and that by giving this young lady such a relevant and symbolic short story book, I was on my way to...well, you know. The young woman's reaction, however, was laughter and not the kind of laughter I was seeking. It was sardonic, "you thought I would like these stories??" kind of laughter. But I kind of enjoyed the stories. Houston doesn't play games with reader; she has her formula and sticks to it, and I find her work fundamentally pleasing most of the time.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific: stark, sexy stories about women who live out West and love cowboys and hunters (as well as dogs and horses). Ten of the stories are in the first person, voiced by women in their twenties and thirties who are looking for romance and adventure and anxiously pondering motherhood ("by the time you get to be thirty, freedom has circled back on itself to mean something totally different from what it did at twenty-one"). The remaining two stories are in the second person, which I always enjoy. The occasional Montana setting reminded me of stories I've read by Maile Meloy and Maggie Shipstead, while the relationship studies made me think of Amy Bloom's work.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh wow. I never knew I had a deeply closeted obsession with cowboys and outdoorsmen until I read this collection of short stories. Houston's writing makes me want to trade my corolla for a horse, my books for guns, and my nerdy love interests for roguish deer hunters. Seriously. This is great stuff. Fast, smart, witty, and undeniably unique. A treasure.

[Carly Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The daily struggle of should I move out of the city, buy a pickup truck, and go on Farmer Wants a Wife in book form.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used to work at an independent bookstore here in town (first job I had when I moved here), until the store's landlord *jacked-up* the rent and the store shut down. Until it did, I found it relatively easy to happen upon authors I would take to (esp. if I didn't already know them by name): the rather large store was already filled with an eclectic mix; I was in charge of beefing up the classics section; publishing houses regularly sent us ARCs; Publishers Weekly was sent to the store.

Now, it's different. Finding new authors can be a lot of work. I've been spending some time catching up on classics I hadn't read - while feeling 'guilty' about not reading much that was all that contemporary (except in the area of politics). So I took a different approach. I went to some websites for publishing houses that I particularly like, to see what was in their catalogues. I happen to like W.W. Norton. That's how I found Pam Houston.

What I realize now is that Houston has put out a bunch of books since this collection of 12 stories from 1992. She seems to have fans who have remained loyal to her no matter what. She also seems to have taken hits from those who think her subsequent books have not been up to the level of 'Cowboys Are My Weakness' (great title; which also piqued my interest).

Houston's shtick appears to be a process of reinventing herself as different people in story after story, roman à clef-style. At least in this collection, all of the protagonists may as well have been identified as the same person. Not that that bothered me much (it seemed to allow her moments of pure fiction) - just that it was noticeable.

Also noticeable is a clear division between the stories dominated by a masculine tone (the ones focused on rough activities like white-water rafting or ram hunting, etc.) and the ones revealing a more feminine longing for hearth and home. Basically there are 6 stories of each; the former, overall, are more... formal; the latter are breezier, funnier and full of acerbic wit.

As depicted in these stories, Houston is a nature gal. And she loves animals; she loves their wildness. That's also what she loves in men. As it says in the title story, "You fall in love with a man's animal spirit, Jonathan tells me, and then when he speaks like a human being, you don't know who he is." Houston's doppel​gäng​er has a dilemma: the kind of man she longs for is not the kind of man who is likely to stay.

I found these stories largely entertaining and often quite well-written. At the same time, I sort of worried about the author. (I later learned that she came from a troubled background so I applaud her survivor skills.) I certainly hope that, now 30 years later, she's in a good place re: the care of her heart.

In the last story, 'In My Next Life', Houston does a real switch and writes about a deep friendship with another woman ("...I've never had a woman lover, and yet with Abby it would have been possible."). The woman ultimately becomes ill and in need of the writer's care. As described, the bond has more layers than anything, up to that point, involving a man.

[Kaiti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haley bought me this book for our silly cabin book swap because its title is Cowboys are my Weakness and the cover is evocative of a porny romance novel but UMMMMMMM it was randomly amazing ??? Perfect stories about the west and the desert, about nature and wilderness and the relationships we create with it, about HORSES (I want a horse I want to be a horse girl so bad), about masculinity and how intoxicating it can be to lean in to something you know is not good, about the mythologies we create for ourselves and for each other, and something that I knew and felt but did not know I needed to read in someone else’s words but as soon as I did felt sooo right which is stories about two people’s relationship with each other where the land is a third character with equal presence and weight

I was attempting to walk through SeaTac in the peak holiday rush while reading this bc I did not want to put it down so I haveeee to give it five stars but it realistically is probably a 4.5 bc it was written in the early 90s and at times felt dated forsure lol

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading several raving reviews of this book, I had high hopes for it. The title made me laugh and piqued my curiosity. Its a book containing ten or so short stories about different women and their cowboys... The first short story was absolutely horrible, I didn't like the style of writing and was so annoyed by it that I almost put the book down. But I gave it a chance, and thankfully the rest of the stories were narrative and I wasn't distracted by the writing style.

In general, I couldn't relate to any of the characters, and the stories were so short that I didn't get a chance to connect with them. I found most of the characters to be very flat and unrealistic. With the exception of a couple stories, I found the plots to be uninteresting and shallow.

Overall, I was disappointed in the book. I guess you could say that cowboys aren't my weakness... Now, if the book was about snowboarders/surfers, I may be more intrigued. :)

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved these stories, beautifully written and spare of words. Spot on observations between females and males.
I love stories that are far removed from my life and these certainly fill the bill.
My favorite story is Dall, a story about a hunting trip to Alaska, hunting Dall sheep. A fascinating story. All were enjoyable. I especially liked the shortness of some of the stories. It made it easy to sit and enjoy a quick story. I enjoyed the bad boy attraction and the ultimate dumping of the bad boy.

[Chelsea List · Rating 5 out of 5]

Per the recommendation of Julie at Honest Dogs I read this as a little pallet cleanser. I enjoyed all the little stories and felt really connected to a few of the women in these stories. Lots of underline-able moments! I would totally recommend to any girlie in her 20’s (bonus points if you’ve gone out with some men that are absolute characters).

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pam has managed such touching, gutsy and hilarious collection of stories here. I absolutely loved this collection. Absolutely. Every story is written in spare and precise prose which almost always mirrors the sparse wildernesses her characters inhabit. It’s genius and insightful to say the least. & Bravo! This is a masterfully crafted work of art.

[Ben Loory · Rating 4 out of 5]

He winked and touched the horse's flank with his spurs and it hopped a little on the takeoff and then there was just dirt flying while the high grass swallowed the horse's legs. I leaned against the door of my pickup truck watching my new cowboy riding off toward where the sun was already low in the sky and the grass shimmering like nothing I'd ever seen in the mountains. And for a minute I thought we were living inside my painting, but he was riding away too fast to tell. And I wondered then why I had always imagined my cowboy's truck as it was leaving. I wondered why I hadn't turned the truck around and painted my cowboy coming home.

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have complex feelings about this book. A former boyfriend gave me a copy of it when it was first released. He told me the main female characters reminded him of me. The main female characters are fiercely messed up and incapable of being in a healthy relationship with men (or women). I read and threw away the book in disgust (back then) but bought and re-read the book recently. It is sad and dated and stuck in time.

[Meagan]

“Something in the air smells a little like salvation, and you breathe deeper every minute but you can’t fill your lungs.”

This has been a to-read forever, that I will read many more times, and that will be leaving me with a lot of thoughts

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll admit it, I picked this up based on the title. I mean, what a great title, right? Unlike most books chosen based on title, though, this one paid off. It's a great book of short stories, mostly centered around women's relationships with men who are unsuitable for one reason or another, generally due to being one kind or another of "cowboy."

Which I realize doesn't make it sound very good. In fact, it makes it sound pretty fucking trite. But it's mostly not. Houston's female characters are strong and self-aware, even as they become enmeshed in or unraveled from men who are not good enough for them. They are thinking, feeling, acting women, and are fun to read about for that reason. She writes about them with empathy, but without pity, and although the strands of autobiography are certainly there, they don't seem to cloud things too much.

The best of the stories, though, are the ones that don't center around weak relationships, but around strong ones. The first of these, "For Bo," is a fairly simple tale of a day in the life of a woman, her husband, her dogs, and her pain-in-the-ass mother. It had me laughing hysterically, and it also had an underlying romantic feeling--real romance, not the flowers and lace kind--that left me feeling lighter for having read it. The second, the book's last story, "In My Next Life," is the heartbreaking tale of a friendship between two women, one of whom is dying of cancer, and of its unrealized potential. Though the story is very sad, Houston's decision to have it end a book of stories mostly about unsatisfactory relationships between women and men is telling--I love the implication that, as Abby says in the story, there is so much more to life than romantic relationships with men.

Other reviews of this book have criticized the similarities between Houston's female characters (almost all Easterners in love with the West, almost all women in love with untameable men, blah blah blah), and those criticisms are valid. However, given the shortness of the stories and the differing conclusions (or un-conclusions) the women in them come to, I was not bored by this similarity. I felt it gave the book an overarching narrative, something that tied all of the short pieces together, and I liked that.

I'll admit that cowboys are my weakness, too. Not in the sense of specific men, as is the case in most of Houston's stories, but in the sense of my having a natural predilection towards anything "
"Western." I get a pass on it, because I'm actually from the West, but it may have biased me in favor of this book. Be that as it may, though, I enjoyed the stories a lot and would recommend them.

[Ulla Libre · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I were to credit any book with making me want to write, it’s this one. I remember first reading this when I was in fifth grade. I snuck it into the bathroom so my mom wouldn’t see it, and sat (on the toilet) reading it for hours. I had just had my first birds and the bees lesson, and this book was like my first introduction to what men could be like. I used to catch myself identifying the men in my life as characters in Houston’s stories. Even now, I feel as though I have the soft spoken cowboy in the painting.

Houston is smart and fun and sexy. Or so the New York Times Book Review says on the cover. I once told my (friend?) Jeff Sharlet that this was one of my favorite books. He scoffed. “Really? Are you serious?”

In truth, the stories aren’t that smart. The romance is predictable; man breaks woman’s heart because man is evil and woman is good. The strength in these stories is not the love story in the traditional sense, but the love-story-side-quests: the relationship between the narrator and her dogs, the narrator and the rams her boyfriend is hunting, the narrator and her female friendships. Also she uses so much second person. I hate second person. It never works.

I’m giving this five stars because these this book isn’t necessarily the best written. I’m giving it five stars because it is deliciously important to me. It’s silly and wonderful and simple and sometimes, that is what you need.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend of mine is on a quest to find the female Bukowski. And while I don't think Houston qualifies that, she certainly found the Carver of my heart. I love stories about people, not events because the most changing events occur when we don't expect them to, over a period of unforseable time. It could be a moment, it could be days, it could be the length of an illness, or a night in the snow with your dogs. Houston does a great job with this. It's a little too gender stereotypical at times and when she tries to find strength, I find the expected. But all of her women (and this is a book about the women in each story) are strong, independent, vulnerable and tough.

[Bekah Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

A co-worker recommended this book to me and I am so glad she did! The cover and title both scream "romance" to me and, not being a fan of the genre, I wouldn't have given this book another glance. But--and this is precisely why it pays off to have well-read friends--this collection of short stories was phenomenal!
Well developed characters, which can be very hard to achieve in short stories, made each tale rich and satisfying. I loved the rugged western landscapes.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed Houston's prose and her adventure stories, but admit that near the end of the book, they seemed to sort of all meld together into one long story. And seemed to verge on creative nonfiction. Other people obviously enjoyed this effect, however, as it was a huge bestseller. I think her best quality is in her narration--simple, yet profound.

[Leesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm so in love w/this book and her stories. i LOVE reading abt camping and hunting and campers and hunters and horses and cowboys and men and women in love. so i do believe this book will be in my list of favorites, indeed.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a great deal more than I expected to. I've kind of gotten burned out on western wilderness books, but this had such a different feel to it. It was fresh at the same time that it was still spare and solid. Very nice writing.

[Syd Botz · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I thought about the way we invent ourselves through stories, and, in a similar way, how the stories we tell put walls around our lives. And I think that may be true about cowboys. That there really isn’t much truth in my saying cowboys are my weakness; maybe, after all this time, it’s just something I’ve learned how to say” (116).

Overall, these are cynical, “sad” stories; none of which have an easy to digest happy ending. Pam Houston’s idea of love is complicated and much more about how we love the world and ourselves as imperfect women who often look for that love in imperfect men. Each of these stories is told from the first person. I might even say this book has one narrator, and it is this insightful narrator who ties these different short stories together and, ultimately, ties together the many women reading this book.

I loved this collection; I am left thinking about the ways that I reach out to the world, the stories about love that I invent for myself (do they put my life in a box?), and all of the different kinds of intimate love that I already have in my life—women, animals, parents, and forty-below winter mornings.

Below are my favorite stories:
* “Selway” (river rafting)
* “High-water” (two friends; one pregnant and both have dweeby boyfriends)
* “Dall” (sheep hunting in Alaska; contains domestic violence)
* “Cowboys Are My Weakness” (romanticization of the west and falling in love with an image v. reality)
* “A Blizzard Under Blue Sky” (where do we find love in solitude? the world gives us what we need if we receive it (and what we need is not always what we think we need))
* “In My Next Life” (a love story between two women; the most intimate and healthy relationship described in the collection)

[zuzu · Rating 5 out of 5]

the first time short stories have hit for me!!!!! i think this book did a fantastic job of portraying the value of a life, and what that means in varying kinds of relationships and environments. the wildness of the settings gave these stories such depth and connection to humanity’s impact on nature, and the romantic insights reminded me of lily king (my FAVORITE). the whole time i was reading i kept thinking “i can’t wait to reread this” - definitely a new favorite book for sure!!