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    The Virginian
    The Virginian
    The Virginian
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Virginian

    Written by Owen Wister

    Narrated by Gene Engene

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    "The Virginian's pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. With a voice as gentle as ever, a voice that sounded almost like a caress, drawling a very little more than usual so that there was almost a space between each word he issued orders to the man Trampas: "When you call me that, smile!" And he looked at Trampas across the table. Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing; and silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooks in Motion
    Release dateDec 15, 2010
    ISBN9781605488301
    Author

    Owen Wister

    Owen Wister (1860–1938) was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt’s at Harvard University and an editor of the Harvard Lampoon. He frequently traveled in the American West, and the region inspired much of his fiction, including the groundbreaking novel The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains, considered by many to be the first true Western.

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    Reviews for The Virginian

    3.5/5

    343 ratings24 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Westerns were never on the list of genres I had an interest in. I tried to read All the Pretty Horses once and got so depressed I couldn’t finish. However, The Virginian is a classic that started it all, first published in 1902. I once heard a man say it taught him how to be a man. It is the prototype for the man with no name, the strong silent type. He starts as a cow poke, becomes the trusted hand of a Wyoming judge, and routs the bad guys. He loves animals, nature, and the local school marm. Civilizing the wild west, he makes his fortune and happily weds his girl. Every western tale since has drawn from this story.
    • 3/5
      "When you call me that, SMILE." Clearly written for Teddy Roosevelt's enjoyment.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1902, this book is considered a seminal novel of the American west. Set in Wyoming Territory in the 1870’s and 1880’s, the book’s narrator is met at the railroad station by the Virginian, and they gradually become friends. The Virginian works as a cowboy on a cattle ranch. He develops a romantic interest in the new schoolteacher, recently arrived from Vermont. He faces a gradually increasing animosity from a dishonest and jealous opponent. He experiences mental anguish over his role in frontier justice.

      At the time it was written, this historical period was not that long in the past. Dramatic tension is established through the underlying conflict between Eastern and Western views of what should constitute “civilization” with the East represented by the schoolteacher and the West by the Virginian and his employer. Action oriented scenes are fewer than expected. Much of the narrative is spent in describing the landscape, riding horses, and engaging in dialogue. The Virginian’s friend, serving as narrator, becomes omniscient in places where he could not have been privy to events and conversations.

      This novel is remarkably clear of Hollywood tropes. For example, it contains minimal gunfighting and Indians play only a background role. The story itself is entertaining and more complex than I had expected.
    • 3/5
      "Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader."

      For much of this novel, there is certainly no danger there. As a Western ("the first!"), it is quite a slog: the author perhaps set out to do a character study, and ended up writing a courtship novel. Now, a romance certainly plays a part in many Western tales, but when the pinings and longings outnumber the ropings and shootings, there's a bit of a problem.

      The tale has an occasional narrator: a Brit touring the American frontier, and progressing from hapless city boy to accomplished (well, at least not so hapless) trailsman. I found the narrator much more interesting than the Virginian, whose character is fixed from the first few pages, and neither disappoints nor surprises. A bit more of what the narrator got up to while off-screen, and a bit less of how good the Virginian was at cattle/personnel/resource management everything, would have been quite welcome.

      There is a climactic shootout, of course, and in this scene the book gets full marks. Expertly done, really. The participants both have heavy misgivings, but having made their grievance public, and perhaps run the ol' mouth off after a lunchtime whiskey, they are obligated to a firefight, lest they lose their respective followers due to the appearance of cowardice. There is none of that stand-in-the-street-at-noon nonsense either: each wants to kill the other and not be killed in turn, and it is all gone about quite sensibly.

      Not much more to say about it, really - not sure it is worth the time to read, but there is certainly worse fare out there if you're stuck on a plane or at a holiday dinner. One last Wisterism for ya:
      In gatherings of more than six there will generally be at least one fool, and this company must have numbered twenty men.
    • 5/5
      This one really surprised me and in the best kind of way. I sheepishly admit that going into this one I assumed I wouldn't like it one bit (I generally don't cotton to westerns), but despite its setting - and the fact that its main character is a cowboy, through and through - well, reader, I loved it. Excellent story, with a nice sprinkling of good side stories, and great characters, too.
    • 5/5
      Lost a half star because it took me four attempts to get past the introduction, but I thoroughly enjoyed the novel.
    • 4/5
      This classic is considered by many to be the first 'Western'. It certainly has most if not all the tropes now considered to be standard for that genre! The hero, whose name we never learn, is a young man of about 24 when the story opens and at that time, he has already been on his own for 10 years and has traveled and worked in most of the West.

      The descriptions of life in Wyoming in the period after the Civil War (~1870s) was well drawn and the romance between the cowboy and the schoolteacher from Vermont allowed some discussion about the differences between the settled East and the "Wild West".

      Overall, I liked this book more than I had expected. Even if you think Westerns aren't for you, this one is worth trying.
    • 4/5
      Originally published in 1902, The Virginian by Own Wister depicts life on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, a classic American novel and considered the first true western ever written. A number of events in this book have become clichés of the western genre. Along with the lynching of cattle thieves and a dramatic shoot-out we also have the original cowboy prototype, a tall, lean, quiet man who speaks with his deeds and has a strong moral code. This is the fellow that all the women admire and the men want to be whether he is telling the villain to “smile when you call me that” or discussing poetry with his school teacher sweetheart.

      But this is more than a romanticized tale of the west, Wister is also portraying the end of an era. This book is showing the changing of the western frontier. Schools are springing up, women are coming west, the gentling influence of home and family are slowly changing the way things are done. The old “wild” west is giving way to more moderate ways and the time of quick and harsh justice for lawbreakers is coming to an end.

      I found this a little dated yet still a strong historical story. I was surprised at how much of the book was given over to the romance, which to me was the weak area of the book as it seemed over idealized and rather passionless. I much preferred the love story the author wrote about this place and time in American history for in his colorful descriptions and varied characters one can find the passion that the main characters lacked for each other.
    • 1/5
      I only saw ebook editions of this, although I have an old hardback at home & downloaded the audio book from the library. I read this as a teen, maybe 40 years ago & liked it a lot better. I have a feeling I skimmed through a lot of the first part. Listening to it just got to be a drag.

      It's told in a rather odd way by a guy that knows the Virginian, a third person limited, but then it slips into third person omniscient in other places. That didn't harm the story at all, though. It was also well read.

      What really got to me is that it just dragged on with the romance & I didn't find the dance of any real interest. The subtle word play in the conversations didn't delight me, either.

      As I recall, the story does get better, but it's just not doing it for me in this format, so after several hours, I'm moving on to another book.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful book that recreates the Wild West as we've come to know it, (which probably means not too realistic). But I enjoyed it immensely.
    • 4/5
      “The Virginian’s pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man Trampas: ‘When you call me that, smile.’ And he looked at Trampas across the table.” This novel, the first true western that paved the way for other famous authors such as Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, covers a span of five years and chronicles the acquaintance of the unnamed author/narrator with a strong, silent stranger known only as “The Virginian,” a young man in his twenties who works on Judge Henry’s Shiloh Ranch at Sunk Creek in the Wyoming territory.
      The account begins when the narrator arrives in Medicine Bow, WY, around 1886, to visit Judge Henry and the Virginian is sent to escort him to Shiloh. During the succeeding years, the Virginian, who was born in old Virginia but had left home at age fourteen and come west, woos the pretty Miss Molly Stark Wood, who comes from Bennington, VT, to be the school teacher at Bear Creek, WY; is made foreman at Shiloh Ranch; and must deal with an ongoing enemy named Trampas, a roving cowboy who works for a while at Shiloh then turns to rustling. Will the Virginian win Miss Wood’s affection? What will happen to Trampas? When I was young and still living at home, I remember seeing a television show also entitled The Virginian (1962-1971), based on characters from this novel. It starred James Drury as the Virginian, Doug McClure as Trampas, and Lee J. Cobb as the Judge. However, the television series bore little resemblance to the plot of the book.
      The Virginian is an interesting story in which several subplots develop over time. There are numerous references to smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, gambling, and dancing. In addition to several instances in which “curses,” “oaths,” and “profanities” are mentioned, the “d” and “h” words occur a few times and the Lord’s name is occasionally taken in vain. The phrase “son of a -----“ is used as quoted (not spelled out). In fact, this is what Trampas had called the Virginian when the latter responded, “When you call me that, smile.” The nearly equivalent term “ba*t*ard” is found once (completely spelled out). Nathaniel Bluedorn recommended the book in Hand that Rocks the Cradle: 400 Classic Books for Children, but I would urge great caution with younger children unless done as a read aloud where the offending language could be easily edited out. Otherwise, it does present a good, balanced viewpoint of what young manhood should be, with both toughness when needed and gentleness when required.
    • 5/5
      The first piece of news is that this does not take place in Virginia. (I NEVER SAW THE MOVIES OR THE TV SHOW!) It takes place in Wyoming. Considered by some to be the first Western (or so the internet tells me), this is a series of related stories about the Virginian of the title, who is apparently so impressively manly that the narrator never mentions his name, he is always "the Virginian" doing this or that, or saying whatever. The manly stuff he does involves being a cowboy, catching cattle thieves, and courting the local school marm in a very romantic fashion (and sweet, making allowances for the culture of whenever this takes place, which I think is about 1880).

      Obviously some of it is a little dated, but it doesn't take away from the story. A little more challenging is that it jumps right in with a lot of dialogue written out in, I guess, "cowpoke dialect" and it is a little grating to keep having to parse that out, but it's used to set the scene initially and then in following episodes, isn't so front and center.
    • 5/5
      What a delightful book! I hesitate to call it a 'western', per se, but an entertaining story about people in the western areas of the USA back in the late 1800s. The book has some drama and action, but is mainly about people and situations, without a lot of description of cows and cowboys and gunfights. There is humor and sadness, human emotions of all types well described within its pages.

      This book is going back on the shelf to be read again, and is being classified as a 'favorite'.
    • 4/5
      This was the prototype Western, the one that spawned Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, Jack Schaefer and even our image of John Wayne. In that sense, the book is at a disadvantage. We've had over a century of follow-ons that have turned many of the themes into clichés: the tall, laconic cowboy; the beautiful young school marm; the villainous rustler.

      If you can't set those aside, this isn't a book for you...just pass it by. On the other hand, if you can put yourself in mindset where it's 1902 and this is a departure from the dime store novellas and novelettes that are the only Westerns to date, this is worth a read.

      Wister's portrayal of the original man with no name gives us a thinking character, someone who is more evocative of the intelligent courage and emotional depth of Gary Cooper in High Noon than the shoot-'em-up John Wayne in something like Big Jake. The story is nominally told through the eyes of an inexperienced young man who has come west to visit a friend. This device allows Wister to contrast the genteel society of the East with the wilder existence of Wyoming. I say nominally because, once the comparisons are made, we get the Virginian's story even when the narrator is not present.

      The result kept me captivated. You know the guy is going to win the struggle with the villain. You know the guy is going to get the girl. And yet, it doesn't matter because the journey there, not the ending, is what's good about this story. In a sense, it's travel literature, a book written by someone who had actually seen the Old West and loved it.

      On the Gary Cooper front: it's funny that, as I finished the book, I thought, "sounds like a Gary Cooper role." It turns out that it was: 1929 with Victor Fleming directing—somehow I've missed that all my life. I'll have to find a copy.
    • 2/5
      This book, published in 1902, has been hailed as the first Western. The Virginian of the novel is the forefather of Hondo and Shane and every other strong but silent cowboy found in films. Here's a snippet:

      The Virginian's pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man Trampas: "When you call me that, SMILE." And he looked at Trampas across the table.

      There is some amusement in finding out where all those elements of the Western came from--the poker game that leads to a quick draw, the beautiful school marm and more. However, despite its venerable age, I can't call this a classic. True classics live because they have rounded characters who feel real, male and female both, instead of being filled with stereotypes. And they endure because of strong prose styles. This novel can boast neither.

      This is the kind of book that indicates obscenities with blanks but allows racial epithets to be casually flung about. It's told by an unnamed first person narrator about the unnamed title protagonist, at times drifting into a kind of third person as events are narrated the point of view character never witnessed. Mark Twain this ain't.

      There is some some smile-worthy humor and a fine turn of phrase here and there, but overall this reads like a rather creaky, if bloated, dime store novel. Comparing this to the other books on the Western recommendation list I was working through, I found this a more entertaining read than Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage or Louis L'Amour's Hondo, but not as well-written as Elmer Kelton's Many a River or Jack Schaefer's Shane. And the book certainly isn't up to the gold standard of novels like The Big Sky, Little Big Man, True Grit or The Ox-Bow Incident.
    • 5/5
      Wister, Owen (1902). The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains.
      The story begins with an 'easterner' arriving on the train in Medicine Bow, WY to encounter a tall, quiet cowboy originally from Virginia. The tale continues over the next five years and weaves together the lives of the greenhorn, the unnamed cowboy, a schoolmarm from Vermont, and a villainous cowboy named Trampas. Shortly the Virginian is made ranch foreman and begins to court the schoolmarm, Molly Starkwood. His life is marred by continued encounters and conflict with Trampas, the cowhand who later turns to rustling.

      The author pieced together a string of short stories to create a historical novel - - a western that was one of the first to feature real-life characters rather than mythical figures. The Virginian is a must read for those interested in identifying and understanding the roots of western literature and the portrayal of the American cowboy. lj (Apr 2011)
    • 4/5
      The original telling of that conflict between love and honor, set in America's West during the short reign of the cowboy--turned into a template by lesser writers and fed to us in copy after copy. This beats all the copies.

      It's not faultless literature: the narrative vioce isn't consistent, there's some superfluous description, and a peculiar exposition on something like situational ethics, but the characters are superb and the conflicts deep and familiar. None of that gets in the way of the story, though, and it's a great story.
    • 3/5
      Substance: Basically a romance, but at least the characters learn something about each other's character after the initial bout of love-at-first-sight (a feature conspicuously missing from the contemporary novels I have read lately). The hero (never named) is something of a contradiction inpersonality: taciturn but turns neat practical jokes; upright but not averse to lynching horse thieves. The Heroine is stalwart but unused to the rugged west, however, she learns to love it as well as her man, after she saves his life.
      Style: Mostly narrated by an observer, with later omnisicent-narrator passages as the Tenderfoot bows out of the story. Almost a Boswellian effect. Not as dry as I feared, but overdoes the dialect (a feature of books of this era).
    • 5/5
      This is one of my favorite books. Written in the early years of the Twentieth Century, it's in a class by itself, full of Western anecdotes, real Western atmosphere from the short era of the cowboy, and a love story that will make you laugh, cry and wring your heart. Don't judge this book by the movie or TV shows that used it's title, they bore not the slightest resemblance to the book.
    • 4/5
      The Virginian is cow-puncher living in Wyoming. The melodrama is scant, and the drama is not overly tense. The theme is universal, in portraying the life of a good man. The scope of the theme is narrow. The Virginian is not taking on the world; he's simply meeting the events of his own life with honesty, courage and creativity. This is a relaxed "western" novel, that brought a smile to my face.
    • 4/5
      I cannot believe that I sat in American Lit reading Hawthorne when I could have been reading this. If you have never heard of this book, then I am not sure why; just as I am not sure why I had never heard of it. It is surely Romantic, and sometimes Heroic, but there is a depth of emotion, wit, and thought in this work which made me question how American it could be.

      Of course, the author spent some schooling-time in Europe, and holds a dear enough place for Austen and Shakespeare not to descend into the self-important drear which has so long left American Literature moth-eaten.

      However, it has also the rawness and adventure which we have been lead to expect from this frontier land. Both the dime-stores and megaplexes have profited so much from this sense of adventure that red-plumed explosions have become ho-hum. There is then a certain irony in the fact that in opening this book, I was shocked and surprised by its emotion more than I have been by an exploding car or knife-weilding killer. Perhaps that says something in and of itself about the repetetive nature of our arts: that we will make something uninteresting two times instead of something interesting once.

      I could not resist the gentle humor nor the deep-felt influence of both the high British and the Russian realists in this book, and found it surprised me not in the least because it took a road other than either the expected or the contrary.

      Though the author sometimes falls to that most grievous of sins: telling instead of showing, one gets the impression that this is because he knows his limits and would spare us the blunder of exceeding them. One also sometimes gets the sense of his desire to fondly remember this era, and to Romanticize it, but if that was ever a crime of Literature, it was only laid upon those we didn't like. I like The Virginian, and not the least of which because the author is humble enough to excuse himself from his crimes before making me do it for him. Too many modern books are started by the authors but finished by the readers.
    • 4/5
      1088 The Virginian, by Owen Wister (read 25 Oct 1970) For reasons not clear to me I read this book. Much of it I had to force myself to read, yet it got better. It is so an idyll--unbelievably so. The ending had me in tears! It is so easy to se it never was, but so nice to believe. It was well to read, and memorable.
    • 5/5
      Should have read this long ago when I was robbing trains in the Santa Cruz Mountains (no lie). Obviously the proto-Western. Wister sets the tone for all future Western romances. Amazing insight into a pivotal time in Western American history, in this case the gradual decline of the culture of the open range and the settling of the West. Very entertaining and enlightening.
    • 2/5
      The Virginian is a "fix-up" (i.e., a novel cobbled together from previously published short stories with some new material) first published in 1902 that retains a very disjointed, episodic feel. Given that Wister was a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt (and the two men were both friends of Rudyard Kipling), it might be expected that Wister's socio-political weltanschauung will be problematic at best for many modern readers (including this one); such expectations are met and exceeded in the pages of his one enduring novel, from the sneering misogynism (Molly Wood, the unnamed Virginian's love interest, is described as "his" before they even court; after they commence their courtship, Wister refers to the Virginian as "her lord") to the neo-feudal, anti-democratic exceptionalism that would make Ayn Rand proud, The Virginian was often difficult for this reporter to read without scraping the enamel off his teeth.

      That said, anyone even remotely interested in the western genre (even as manifested in "spaghetti westerns" or Sam Peckinpah films) owes it to himself to read The Virginian at least once; and there are occasional bursts of effective writing, particularly when the Virginian twits a boorish travelling preacher into departing the ranch far earlier than he'd intended (Chapter XXI: "In a State of Sin," far and away the funniest episode of the book), the lynch episode which is Wister's commentary on the so-called "Johnson County War" (Chapter XXXI: "The Cottonwoods" and Chapter XXXII: "Superstition Trail"), and, yes, the showdown between the Virginian and Trampas (Chapter XXXV: "With Malice Aforethought"), which would serve as the bible for the classic 1952 movie High Noon. Readers of a certain mindset may well derive some amusement from the not-so-subtle homoeroticism that permeates The Virginian; "What did you think those saddles and boots was about?," indeed.

      Richard Slotkin in his Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier Nation in Twentieth-Century America (1992) addresses many of my misgivings about The Virginian, particularly in Chapter 5: "Aristocracy of Violence: Virility, Vigilante Politics, and Red-blooded Fiction, 1895-1910" (subsection: "The Virginian (1902) and the Myth of the Vigilante"). However, Jess Nevins in his The Encylopedia of Fantastic Victoriana regards The Virginian with much more favor than Slotkin (or this reader...) does.