Midnight Cowboy

by James Leo Herlihy

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70 ratings, 3.86 average rating, 12 reviews (more data...)

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5		28%
4		40%
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2		5%
1		2%

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published

August 27th 2002 by I Books

binding

Paperback, 256 pages

isbn

0743452496 (isbn13: 9780743452496)

description

Midnight Cowboy is the powerful and unforgettable novel of the compelling need of human beings for one another -- a wrenching story of pain and loss. ...more

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Mark rated it:

(review of isbn 0743239733)

08/24/08

bookshelves: one-book-per-week---08-09

Read in July, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

It's no wonder that this story resonated with me at this time in my life. Joe Buck has a somewhat fragile sense of self. He is confused, attractive, inexperienced, and a daydreamer. After a loss, he decides to leave town and seek his fortune on the other side of the country. The similarities end there; I have no ambition to dress and act like a cowboy and become a hustler. But the character's psychology and emotions often felt like a bizarre distortion of things very familiar to me.

The ...more It's no wonder that this story resonated with me at this time in my life. Joe Buck has a somewhat fragile sense of self. He is confused, attractive, inexperienced, and a daydreamer. After a loss, he decides to leave town and seek his fortune on the other side of the country. The similarities end there; I have no ambition to dress and act like a cowboy and become a hustler. But the character's psychology and emotions often felt like a bizarre distortion of things very familiar to me.

The main theme of Midnight Cowboy is loneliness and Joe's escape from it. In one of the most important scenes of the book, Joe, newly arrived in New York City and thinking that he is meeting a potential employer, is tricked into talking with a slightly crazy preacher. The preacher talks at length about loneliness as a choice: “Did you hear anything in there about the lonesome? Even one word? Oh, you head about the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, and you head about them that do hunger after righteousness Sure you did. But... you didn't hear a purr, not a purrrr! about the lonesome. And you know why? Cause they's no Beatitude for the lonesome. The Book don't say they are blessed. Not once! Lonesomeness is something you take! You take it! You hear me, dammit, I say you take it, you take it!”. Joe leaves as soon as he realizes that he has been scammed, but the message sinks in sometime later: “while he thought about such things as the condition of his feet and color of the sky and wondered idly how dirty the floor of the truck was, there was an awareness entering him too momentous to acknowledge: he was a nothing person, a person of no time and no place and no worth to anyone at all. This knowledge, too terrible to be accommodated in his mind, found other corners and crevices of his being to fit itself into”.

Joe finds him way out of this unfulfilling and lonely life through a codependent relationship with Rico (Ratso) Rizzo, the crippled homeless man who conned Joe into meeting the preacher. Rico is obsessed with the idea of going to Florida, which he has idealized in much the same way that Joe had idealized NYC. Joe and Rico believe that the grass is greener on the other side, blaming their surroundings when they feel down and unimportant. To get there, they need to rely on each other; Rico is so sick that he needs Joe to physically take care of him, and Joe has an unacknowledged need to care for someone else. Rico's role is to bring about a transformation in Joe's thinking:

“'Ratso. I mean Rico. Um, when we get to Miami, I'm fixing to go to work, did you know that?' Joe hadn't known it himself. He hadn't known he was going to say that at all... 'I got to do that, 'cause see, I'm no kind of a hustler. I ain't even a good bum. The way things is been, I ain't even nothing'... Joe laid a hand on Ratso's knee, and he looked past him and out the window at the dark landscape rushing by. 'My whole point is, working, I'm gonna be able to look out for you, too. Not just me. Okay?'... And so now here he was with this burden on his hands, responsible for the care of another person, a sickly, crippled person at that. But oddly enough, he liked the feeling it gave him. It was a curious kind of burden under which he felt lighter instead or heavier, and warm.”

As an aside, I have felt this way before. 75 miles into a 100 mile running race in 2005, I had some friends running with me during the night to keep me on pace and awake, encourage me, and help me navigate the woods. It felt terrible, and I keep slowing down and eventually dropped out of the race soon after. The next year in the course of a different 100 mile race, I came across an inexperienced runner as dusk fell. We were both feeling like dropping out of the race, but I encouraged him to run with me for the next few hours. Just like for Joe Buck, for me the “burden” of helping out this kid made me feel lighter instead of heavier, and I discovered that I had enough motivation to keep running. The kid dropped out a few hours later, but I continued on and finished the race. Unfortunately for Joe, as he dreams and looks forward to his new life of responsibility, he notices that Rico has died. The book ends: “And then he did something he'd always wanted to do from the very beginning... He put his arm around him to hold him for a while, for these last few miles anyway. He knew this comforting wasn't doing Ratso any good. It was for himself. Because of course he was scared now, sacred to death”.

Joe's in for a rough ride; he just lost the person that he mattered most to, in fact the only person he had ever really mattered to. Joe needed Rico just as much as Rico needed him. Will he seek out someone else to replace his friend? Will he return to his hopeless and unfulfilling life? Being a fairly optimistic person, I would like to think that Joe will emerge with his new state of mind intact, be able to function independently and make a real life for himself. But it won't be easy. Rico helped Joe to learn that he had worth and that he could matter to someone, and now Joe needs to remember that his worth is inherent rather than something that he needs to acquire from someone else. This isn't a “happy ending” sort of book, so this probably isn't what the author had in mind. But a guy can imagine the best, right?...less

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