Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION - Posts Tagged "an-accidental-cowboy"

In the dark night of the soul, it is always three A.M.

In my life, many books have inspired me and left deep, very welcoming marks on my spirit. But only four have actually triggered a physical reaction, a heart-hammering response to what I was reading: "The Keep" by F. Paul Wilson, "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris, "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King"...and "An Accidental Cowboy" by Jameson Parker. This is not a perfect book, but it is a terrific one, so much so that I felt compelled to reach out to its author and tell him just how terrific it was (and yes, he was kind enough to respond).

Full disclosure: Jameson Parker was a staple of my youth. And by portraying A.J. Simon on the long-running and excellent detective show SIMON AND SIMON, he fooled me into thinking he was just like his character: tough and resourceful in a pinch, but also snobbish, fussy and very much a city-slicker, the sort who would get annoyed if the wine was a degree off in temperature or the salad fork was in the wrong arrangement next to the soup spoon. In reality, Jameson is an outdoorsman, horseman, hunter and all-around dude. In other words (if you know the show, you'll understand the reference) he's more like Rick Simon than A.J....but never mind.

COWBOY is the story of how Jameson, who was a remarkably hot acting property in Los Angeles the 1980s (for example, he also starred in John Carpenter's cerebral horror movie PRINCE OF DARKNESS in 1987), ended up living and loving the life of a small-time rancher in the Sierras, a place where being a hot actor counts for less than a shovelful of horseshit. A bullet runs through his tale: actually two of them, fired point-blank by an unstable and psychopathic neighbor, who blasted Jameson twice over a piddling dispute involving Jameson's dogs. Unlike his character, which would have shrugged off such trauma with a quirky remark, the real-life man had to deal with the trauma, the aftereffects, the post-traumatic stress. How he did that is this book.

COWBOY is a memoir told in the style of an introspective thriller, suspense story or even mystery. I say that because Jameson begins in the 90s, when he has already turned his back on Hollywood to a degree, and is trying to learn how to cowboy from the very best cowboys and ranch hands that California has to offer. He takes us through the complex, beautiful and often brutal mechanics of ranch life, from the glory of riding 1,200 pounds of quarter horse to the exhausting, sweat-drenched reality of herding cattle, to the disgusting necessity of lancing a balloon-sized abscess full of pus on a heifer's jaw with a jackknife, and back again. If you ever wondered whether cowboys still exist and what they do in the twenty-first century, from Stetson to rowel, saddle horn to horseshoe, it's all here. But the dusty reality of ranch life is only part of the story. Jameson also reveals to us that he is terribly depressed, socially anxious, panic-prone, rage-filled, and generally screwed up. He doesn't tell us why: he merely hints at it. As the story progresses, the hints, in the form of flashbacks, pile up, but like a good poker player, he doesn't show his hand. At last, somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the way through the book, he sticks his jackknife into his own mental abscess, and tells us how one of the more successful TV actors in Hollywood ended up turning his back on L.A., the industry, and acting generally -- not out of choice per se, but because it was where his life led him, perhaps in the same way a divining rod leads a man to water. Parker was a skilled and accomplished actor, but his heart belonged elsewhere, and if you'll forgive the phrase, when the bullet hit the bone, he stumbled on this fact. He truly was an accidental cowboy.

As a writer, Jameson is the real deal. There are touches of Hemingway in both his style and his philosophy, but his scope of reference, the combination of historical facts about California cowboying and amusing personal tales, the erudite phrases and the poetic prose, the see-saw between the Olympian and the vulgar, are a flair all his own. Once in a while he'll overload a sentence in the way of the (talented) amateur, but this book is only amateurish in the literal sense of the word, an amateur being "one who plays the game for the game's own sake." J.P. is not flattering his own vanity or putting on airs by attempting a book. He is not a spoiled actor whose lunging ego has caused him to foray into a strange arena in which he does not belong. He is gifting us his talent by succeeding in writing a work of lasting value. He not only shines light on the sadly dying breed of the contemporary cowboy, but examines with terrifying honesty the aftereffects of casual violence on a human being. The pre-victimization Parker had it all: looks, fitness, talent, intelligence, character, money, and a degree of fame. His willingness to expose just how little any of this mattered in the aftereffect of his trauma is worthy of admiration, and serves as a valuable exploration of human weakness, and also human resiliency. We even get tantalizing glimpses -- all too few for my taste -- of the perils and pitfalls of being a once-successful actor struggling to remain relevant in Hollywood after cancellation and middle age take ahold of him. There are so many great quotes in this book that to single out any one of them would do injustice to the others. You have to read this, and read all of it, to appreciate how damned good it is.

In short, AN ACCDIENTAL COWBOY is a terrific book. It takes a little patience here and there, because Parker is telling the story at his pace (the way a cowboy would), but its well worth the wait. I look forward to reading everything else he has written.