COWBOY ANGST-C

By Jasen Emmons

Dennis McCance is on his way home for the summer to Prairie View, Montana, and he's a little nervous. Five months ago he dropped out of law school and hasn't yet mentioned it to the family. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569470219
• ISBN13: 9781569470213
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

I just wanna dance with you. . .

Montana novels are often about brothers (think of "A River Runs Through It," "The Power of the Dog," "In Open Spaces"). This is another one, and a very entertaining one. The narrator is a law school dropout whose family is giving up hope that he will ever turn out to be more than a drummer in a C & W band. The brother, in this case, is a deputy sheriff, whose own aspirations have been frustrated by circumstance and who deals with adversity and his own bottled-up rage by being fiercely self-reliant and intimidating -- not someone who should have easy access to firearms. From the moment he steps into the story, he is both a menacing and comic presence.Our hero blunders from one mischance to another, struggling to recover some self-esteem in a family where his litigator father smacks him across the face when the truth of his son's aborted law career becomes known. And his mother adds insult to injury with her undisguised scorn and disappointment. Only an older sister is able to provide some solace in this domestic storm. And there is welcome relief in the gigs he plays at local dance halls and bars with a hometown band, the Cloverleafs.Emmons gives us a wonderful comic vision into the "angst" of our young hero. I laughed out loud often at the unexpected turns of plot, the quirky turns of conversation between unlikely and off-center characters, the free-for-all fist fights that break out in bars, the cowboy machismo that spills unwelcomed from pickup trucks with gun racks. A particular pleasure is the insight into the psychology of playing sets of dance music for a beer-drinking bar crowd. The prose takes flight in these scenes.Although all does not end happily for everyone, the author pulls things together for our musician hero, providing him with a love interest, the beginnings of resolution with his parents, and a good lawyer to help him beat a felony rap. (You'll have to read the book.) I happily recommend this novel to anyone with an interest in music and musicians, domestic comic-drama, Montana (there are actually two Montanas in this book), and cowboy culture.

Life - you CAN get there from here

This is a comfortable story, easy to read and believe. You find yourself wishing Dennis McCance was your friend. If he was, he'd go out in a storm to get more wood for the fire and, while he was at it, run by the store and get another six-pack. Dennis is a young man in turmoil, too young to be having a mid-life crisis, but that's what it feels like all the same (without being pathetic, though - maybe he's just a forward-thinking sort of dude). Dennis is examining his values, his beliefs, his morals. Okay, his life. But in a deliberate and endearing way, one that draws you in and makes you feel like a confidante. Dennis may think he's stymied, bottomed out on a dead end road, but little by little he's putting his life in order. Just maybe not the order he had in mind.

By all means read this book

Forget the "slacker" and "Gen-X" labels, this book trascnends generations. Anyone who reached their twenties without a clear path or calling will relate to the issues Dennis faced in this story. The tensions within the family that simmer and then erupt are told in fluid prose that moves like a swift current in a deep stream. My only regret is that the book ended. If Emmons is up to it I would sure like to read the rest of Dennis's legacy.

A Quick Fun Read

If you like the twenty-something slacker genre, you should enjoy this book. Emmons is not a pretentious writer, instead his words flow off the page. Here's hoping he continues the story of Montana and Dennis on the road to Austin.

Simply put - a fun read!!

It could be said that Cowboy Angst deals with alot of the issues facing that 20-something crowd with job, education, parents, parents expections, siblings, relationships and life goals. But it is better to say that it is a fun and entertaining story with a mid-American counter culture twist of a man who tries to always take the path less traveled in the face of his parent, siblings and mid-western conformity. A bit of an On The Road feel for the Gen Xers.