Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston

Abstract

256 Western American Literature individual’s search for identity, regeneration through violence) with a heavy hand. Yet so is Melville, a writer with whom Owens ultimately shares a deeper kinship than with, say, Tony Hillerman. By choosing The Sharpest Sight as the first volume in its American Indian literature and critical studies series, the University of Oklahoma Press has raised the hope that this series will thrive on being unconventional and taking risks. PAUL HADELLA Southern Oregon State College CowboysAreMy Weakness. By Pam Houston. (New York: Norton, 1992. 171 pages, $25.99/$19.95.) If cowboys are not your weakness, you may not like Pam Houston’s book. Her cowboys are the virile, independent men to whom some women are strongly attracted, despite the often brutal or ambivalent attitude these men hold toward women. Houston’s stories illustrate the adventure found in relationships with these men who carry women with them as they live on the edge as hunters, whitewater rafters, and, of course, cowboys. Consequently, the excitement is not so much in the men themselves as in the way they live, an enticing existence that heightens sensual awareness. However, the characters that are most interesting are not the men, but the women who seek them. Houston’sfemales all enter their relationships not quite understanding why they are attracted to men for whom women are secondary considerations. Thus, the stories are often told with a dry humor, characteristic of women who find themselves attracted to men who aren’t good for them, but who excite them all the same. One narrator muses, “I wondered whoever taught me to be so stupid about men.” Nevertheless, Houston demonstrates that such relationships provide emo­ tional fulfillment in these women’s lives. Even if the relationship falls apart, the woman gains a new recognition about herself and about the need for relation­ ships that are based on physical need, even when that need does not result in a sexual bond, but in the bond of shared physical experience. In “Selway,”where the narrator and her lover traverse dangerous whitewater, the narrator analyzes her reasons for risking her life and acknowledges that . . maybe it didn’t matter at all why I went because doing it for me and doing it for him amounted, finally, to exactly the same thing.” Whatever the thrill, we all somehow want it. Houston doesn’t write about safe relationships, but about the people who provide us with the excitement, titillation, and danger that make our lives much more than they would be without those cowboys. DIANE DRAKE ThiefRiverFalls, Minnesota ...