The Genre Explorers discussion

The polls have just ended and January's Pre-1960s Western groupread is The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister, from 1902.

Short summary: The Virginian's unwavering beliefs in right and wrong are soon tested as he tries to prove his love for a woman who cannot accept his sense of justice; at the same time, a betrayal by his most trusted friend forces him to fight against the corruption that rules the land.

The GR description also has this to say: With remarkable character depth and vivid passages, "The Virginian" stands not only as the first great novel of American Western literature, but as a testament to the eternal struggle between good and evil in humanity.

It can be found as a free Kindle e-book.

I can't wait to start this once the new year comes, it will be interesting to see the difference between Western movies and Western lit, and from what I've read this book should be quite formative of the genre :)

I'm certainly no expert on the genre, but I've been noticing that a lot of the old western movies were first novels.

Interesting. I only know of True Grit, which I really enjoyed both as book and the new movie version.

I've started this today, but haven't gotten far yet as I'm in the middle of another book as well. So far it's readable lol.

I've started it too. Can't really say what I think of it so far. I'm only about 30 pages in.

I'm only at 15% so far, I find it a bit slow, so other books keep distracting me. I hope it picks up a little soon.

Aleta wrote: "Interesting. I only know of True Grit, which I really enjoyed both as book and the new movie version."

Shane was a film I loved as a tween. Never read the novel, though.

Wiki has a list of some of 'em:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category...

Oh cool, thanks for the link! Wow, there are four different movie versions of this book.

About the book, I'm still wondering a bit when the action starts. And it sometimes doesn't quite make sense in how the events jump around.
Is anyone else wondering why the narrator even went to Wyoming? I find it odd that we don't learn anything at all about him.

I'm a bit confused on that as well.

Also, I'm a bit annoyed with how the story's written in first person, but focuses entirely on someone who's not doing the narrating. Do we even know the narrator's name? We probably do, I just can't recall it.

Same here! And no, we don't know it. And now I've come to a point in the story where we don't even know how the narrator knows what he knows. It's as if he's suddenly omnipresent (nope, that's not the right word is it? I can't seem to remember the correct English word for it)

I'm almost halfway, but devoted two days to finishing another book. Now that it's done, I'll hopefully get this read tomorrow or the day after that.

I'll be honest, I'm really struggling with this one. And I'm only 16% into it.

It does interest me, though, that supposedly Wister was one of the first to use the cowboy as a literary hero. Before, they were always either minor characters or had less than honorable roles. But I think since then the role has become quite romanticized.

So am I. Which is bordering on being embarrassing as I'm the one who nominated it! Lol

I'm at 75% though, I think I skimmed a few chapters around the middle which is so extremely rare for me, but I just couldn't handle the fact that nothing relevant to the story happened. I keep reading other books instead of finishing this one, but I'm stubborn and will succeed! Eventually.

I agree Ally, that's quite interesting. I think Wister himself definitely already romanticized the cowboy though, seems to me he started the trend of that as well, in fact this book most of all reads like a romance..

I finally managed to finish it! I can't believe how misleading the GR description was. I kept looking for the plot, and it was there, yet somehow felt non-existent and didn't quite correspond with the blurb.

The narrator was a mess, in the sense that we have no idea how he knows what he knows most of the time or why he even went to Wyoming. He's there in the beginning and a few times afterwards, but most of the time is pretty non-existent.

Maybe if you love Westerns this is a good book, or at least okay book, but in my opinion it's no great piece of literature and has made me realize that I in general find the genre to be quite boring. It brought to mind why I've never seen more than two old Westerns and felt put to sleep by both.

Its notions of justice and 'a real man' and what women should or should not know, felt really antiquated and basically just illogical (it might even be possible to toture Spock by making him read this, much like the Vogons' poetry in HGTTG!)

All in all, it proved to definitely not be my cup of tea and I felt sort of silly that I nominated it lol :)

That's unfortunate. I'm not sure if I'll finish it or not. I don't think Western's really my genre, either.

Don't worry about it! Not your fault if the book didn't meet your expectations.

I would certainly have quit it if I had not been the mod/nominator! But it's always such a great feeling of accomplishment to have finished a book that was tough to get through. And I feel like I can say that I gave the genre a go now. But I will hopefully get my hands on a copy of Doc and read that as well this month and then just not bother anymore with Westerns.

I have to admit that I skimmed a lot of paragraphs though, something I almost never do.

I have just finished it!! I’m sorry for not participating before, but I’m terribly busy with my final exams and I’ve barely found the time to read!

I want to share a bit about the historical context I’ve found interesting about the book (probably people of the United States will already know it, but maybe it will help to foreign people as me :D). Be warned: spoilers ahead!

The book is from 1900, the time that we call the Loss of Innocence of the United States. UUEE was becoming industrialized: lots of cities appeared and grew with immigrants from the country and from foreign countries. For a couple of generations, the cities were full of rural people that couldn’t think of themselves as metropolitan, but didn’t quite belong anymore to the agrarian area. As a consequence (and added to the fact that the literature of the time couldn’t cope with the massive industrialization that was changing so rapidly the country), there was a movement that romanticized the rural life and longed for the country. I think we all can see this in the “The Virginian” when all the cowboys, despite being so apart from civilization and spending months alone in the wilds can still keep such a high sense of honor. :)

Other thing that has called my attention was that a couple of times it was mentioned “the New Woman”, which was also a quite curious movement of that time. The New Woman was basically the appearance of feminist ideas and the abandonment of Victorian gender roles: women started demanding an education and economic independence. So: in chapter IX, it is insinuated something like Molly was reluctant to be nice to a boy that has attempted to woo her because she was a New Woman. So I’ve come to think that all her stubbornness to fall in love came from her desire to be an independent, strong woman (we have to remember that she was disapproved in Vermont because she worked, and that she crossed alone half of the United States in order to find another job and to get rid of her suitor).

I thought it was going to be more boring, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised because I’ve enjoyed it a lot. There were also a lot of funny parts that I didn’t expect at all (I absolutely loved the encounter of the Virginian with the priest during the night).

Definitely worth the reading for me!! I’m very grateful for this group (and for Alleta for nominating the book!) so far. :D

Elena wrote: "I have just finished it!! I’m sorry for not participating before, but I’m terribly busy with my final exams and I’ve barely found the time to read!

I want to share a bit about the historical cont..."

Glad you liked it! I'm probably not going to finish it because, like I said, it's just not really suited to my taste. But the historical info was really interesting! I didn't know that, and I'm from the U.S. Thanks!

I'm really glad you liked it, Elena and that this group helps you find books you wouldn't usually read! :)

Thank you for the very interesting history facts. I can see why the book is the way it is. The main reasons I didn't like it are probably:

A) I expected something very different from what it was actually like. Which isn't really the book's fault, but the blurb's. And this kind of story just isn't me.

B) The narrator. I felt Wister could have done a better job with the literary devices, especially this one, as it's quite flawed and it felt like he didn't pay any attention at all to the narration.

What did you think of the narrator?

Yeah, the blurb of the book was terrible! It should have been described as snippets of the life of a cowboy or something like that. This way it wouldn't mislead people to think it has an actual plot...

The narrator confused me (spoilers ahead!!). At first I thought there were two narrators. One was the inexperienced person (tenderfoot) talking about his impressions of the West: he didn't know anything at all and struggled to understand what the Virginian was thinking. He also was able to address the reader because he was simply a man writing a story of his life and sometimes asked for its opinion or approbation. On the other hand, sometimes an omniscent narrator took over: he knew all the events and thoughts of the characters and was able to understand its motivations; and of course I saw natural that he didn't address the reader because this narrator wasn't part of the plot nor the story.

However, I was totally lost when almost in the end of the book, in chapter XXXIII (the one where Molly discovers that the Virginian has hanged the cattle thiefs) the omniscent narrator speaks directly to the reader. The judge was trying to excuse this behavior, and THEN the omniscent narrator address US and starts asking about our moral system and what do we think of this event. It totally baffled me: I thought that the omniscent narrator had no voice, but only echoed the thoughts of everybody; and suddenly he developed a character and started asking about our impressions and also gave his opinion when trying to excuse too the Virginian's behavior.

Does this mean that the tenderfoot was actually the two narrators, but sometimes he spoke about his impressions and sometimes he had unlimited knowledge? Or was he inventing and presupposing all the things that he couldn't have possibly known (for example, the thoughts of everyone)? Or... were they actually two narrators, and the omniscent narrator addressing the reader was a clever way of catapulting the reader out of the story and its fictional background, and challenge our *actual* moral system of the real life context?

Anyway, I think this is enough rambling about the narrator. I don't know if I've expressed myself clearly, I hope you get the idea!

Yes, I was quite surprised at the slow tempo when the blurb promised action!

I see as there only being one narrator the entire time. It was only when the narrator was elsewhere that the narration turned omniscient. But if you remember, in the beginning, the narrator told us he started writing with the Virginian after leaving Wyoming the first time. His letters were supposedly where he got his information from. I think Wister just kind of... forgot... about him. Especially since he didn't even bother giving him a story, background or the reason for why he was even in Wyoming to begin with.

It seems to me that the narrator was only there to serve a purpose - to introduce the reader to the rough community of the frontier through the eyes of someone you can feel like you're in the same boat as, for those readers who'd never experienced the frontier. The ones that lived a frontier life themselves could relate due to the all the other people in the book, so he needed someone everyone else could relate to. But once the reader had gotten a sense of what it was all about, how that society works, he didn't need the "tenderfoot" narrator in the same way, and so just forgot him until he needed him again - (view spoiler)[during the scene with the hangings. Because why did the Virginian even need him there? He didn't. In fact, irl he probably would've preferred to keep his friend away from the whole deal as evident by his being meant to arrive after the hangings were over and done with. But Wister needed someone to contrast the brutality of it, to pacify the anger a reader might feel toward the cowboys taking the law into their own hands. Someone who'd have the necessary conversation with the Virginian to make him show his doubts and regrets about the whole thing. He would never have talked like that with any of the other frontier guys. Once that was done with, he again forgot about the narrator, because he didn't need him anymore, now Molly would take over as the "civilized" mind. (hide spoiler)]

Well, I've finally met someone on here who rambles as much as I do lol! Feel free to ramble away, I know I won't stop doing it... Couldn't even if I wanted to ha. And yes I got what you meant :)

(I've just discovered with your comment that I can hide spoilers. NICE)

Yeah, you're probably right about it being the same narrator. But I don't really like the idea of the character of the tenderfoot switching his narration between personal history and godlike knowledge.

Also, as you say, it seems that the tenderfoot is just a mechanism following a purpose and doesn't even matter as a character. (view spoiler)[ I hadn't noticed that he appeared again just for the hanging! I really liked you interpretation. He needed the tenderfoot to show... I don't know, some kind of contrast between them, some kind of understanding of the Virginian's motives from the civilized part of society. Because, come on... Given that is one of the climax of the story (along with the final encounter with Trampas), shouldn't it have been more useful to have an omniscient narrator that is not only able to imagine or presuppose the sorrow of the Virginian (as the tenderfoot does), but *actually* talk about it and show his thoughts and his mind? (hide spoiler)] I don't get at all the purpose of this double narration. Sigh.

Yes hiding spoilers is such a useful tool!

I'm right there with you, I don't get the narration either and it really left me confused and annoyed. And yes, an omniscient narrator all the way through, or at least the "tenderfoot", would have made it a much better story in my opinion, more focused. As it is, I often felt yaked out of the story and into real life, by being made aware of the author.