There was no way I could relate or even care about the tale of a naïve guy in the 1960s with rose-colored dreams of taking New York City by storm as a male prostitute. I mean those aren't shoes I walk in or have even come close to walking by. Yet, James Leo Herlihy makes me walk in them, makes me become involved as after being sucked into Joe Buck’s lonely, seedy and reckless world, meeting the depressing little lump that is Rico “Ratso” Rizzo, thrown about the underworld of New York’s shivering and starving nights, and then being released from all of that confusion and soil with a hard shove out the door by novel’s end --- I was nodding my head. I got it. I understood. I formed compassion, and in a lot of ways, I related. I got it all completely and now I’m left feeling numb and consumed by this classic tale of friendship, hard lessons, and isolation.This is an extremely H-E-A-V-Y story. Sorry for the caps, but it has to be emphasized that this isn't an easy, breezy sunshine of a read. I hadn't seen the notorious X-rated movie before reading the book as all I did know of the film was that it won a Best Picture Oscar, starred Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, and from the poster, these dudes looked shaaady as all get out.My vagueness on the story and the movie helped me to enjoy being kind of shaken out of my plush environment. I’ll admit this isn't the type of book that I would immediately pick up, and I wasn't sure about it when I began reading, but within a few pages I became charmed at how Herlihy has written what is the ultimate tome of isolation and the irony of being surrounded by people and still feeling as insignificant as possible as he takes us through every cracked sidewalk step into a man’s reluctant and brutal coming-of-age. All of Midnight Cowboy is written with clarity and ease, yet Herlihy has some wonderful lyrical moments that make this a smart and complex character study. He even writes the sex scenes (and there are a few) as far from trashy as possible and when the scenes are hard to partake the tension and stickiness is felt. Placing us into the thought process of such a simpleton and making it easy for us to understand and even sympathize also shows Herlihy’s talent with words as its difficult to root and sympathize for Joe Buck and even find empathy for the sniveling and pathetic Ratso. I wouldn't say Joe Buck is ‘stupid’, he’s more so ‘ignorant’ and ‘naïve’ as Joe lives in a fantasy world. He would be since he lacked a solid father figure, his guardian was an irresponsible grandmother, and he was raised by the glorious lie that is television. I always find it fascinating that there is someone out there worst off than you. As bad off as you can be, you could even be living in the same house as someone and they are having a worst time than you. Midnight Cowboy had that aspect. Ratso had been living, was living this world that Joe Buck saw as a playground of opportunity, and Joe Buck, bless his heart, he is just so eager to belong and be integrated into something after being neglected and abused all his life that he doesn't realize that he has fallen into friend’s private hell and side-by-side the hell is shared. But oddly at the core of this personal hell is a friendship, and that is between Joe and Ratso. What's really sad is that as opposite and lopsided they are this is probably the only friendship that these two have ever had, and their reliance on each other, while not conventional is valid. Another thing that fascinated me is that there isn't really a villain/antagonist in this story, at least in human form. Ratso appears to be the villain as he leads Joe on in the beginning, but I felt sorry for him most of the time because his life had just been one fail after another and crazily, Joe was the tangible bright spot in his life.I've read my share of writing books and they emphasize a lot about there being some sort of “bad guy” in a story. Midnight Cowboy made me realize that that concept is quite silly and narrow-minded. Sometimes one’s enemy is not a person or even a person who is tangible. In the case of this story, almost everyone is deplorable in some shape or form. All are greedy for money and recognition, all do each other in, and will stoop to the lowest of ways to get it, yet New York City itself can be viewed as the monster that plagues our main and secondary characters. The city makes them this way. Herlihy paints a New York that is unforgiving, malicious, and has its occupants huddling in doorways, stealing, lying, tossing morals and pride aside. Doing just about any and everything to survive and it’s all too real, as even the city I live in, while not as huge, still has its occupants that are in the throes of seedy survival. I have come to understand that New York City from the late '50s into the late '80s was not the swankiest, commercialized glittering place we see today, as all that's shown now is pretty much a veil over its past. Some fantastic movies came out in the ‘70s and early ‘80s to show NYC as wicked place. At the moment, Taxi Driver and The Warriors come to mind with these seedy, rooting for the downtrodden fables, and Midnight Cowboy shows the same murky, vicious, and soul crushing NYC. The movie (which I finally got around to seeing and ended up loving too) especially shows that aspect well, as when the characters became dirty, cold, and hungry, I became so as well. Especially Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Ratso, as with every cough and shudder I felt it, and it was unsettling (Side note: Hoffman is fucking fantastic in the role, by far one of my all-time favorite performances by an actor, if you want to see the movie see it for that performance).Another villain is actually Joe Buck himself. He’s his own worst enemy as his nativity just does him in at every turn, and as much as he tries to (naively) make a 'clean, honest' break into the world of prostitution, by book’s end he has become soiled and directionless.So if you want to be shaken out of your shoes and walk in the stench and pain of Joe Buck's cowboy boots, then by all means, read it. It's a tough book, but don't let that discourage you, it's an excellent story that is guaranteed to make you think differently about the people you may pass by in the street and about how isolation and loneliness can take us down dark alley ways.
I loved this movie, and the book is a pretty direct piece of source material, so I knew I wasn't in for any major revolutions to the story. I am a bit of a sucker for reading the books of movies I've already seen. I think I just like to start a story knowing that I'm already invested in the characters. But I was amazed by how much I enjoyed Midnight Cowboy as a novel, and what a pleasure the text itself was to read through. A lot of books I've read recently either seem forced (like you can feel the author trying to sound as clever or "difficult" as possible) or so proudly focused on such a narrow slice of everyday life that's hard to even care about the insights it presents. I was hungry for a piece of writing that takes on an honest and sweeping human topic--like friendship--and captures it without showy or self-conscious writing. I'm not sure that this is a popular view, but I think the best novels are the ones where you can't hear the author in the story. That's a completely different skill than speechwriting, for instance, where precisely what you want is to convey a persona behind the words. Reading Midnight Cowboy felt like entering a world of just me and the characters, with no intermediary storyteller between us. Herlify's prose was a pleasure to read... I lost myself entirely in the story despite knowing exactly where it was headed. I loved it and I can't wait to read another of his books--one where I haven't already seen it put to film.
Do You like book Midnight Cowboy (2015)?
Midnight Cowboy is one of those books that has not profited from the reputation of its far-better-known movie version. Almost everyone has seen the great John Schlessinger movie of the sixties but very few have read the source novel, also called Midnight Cowboy. And what a shame! Herlihy’s novel is so beautifully written and executed that you fall into its spell with the first sad story of the Texan loner Joe Buck and his long voyage to the mean streets of New York City. Every incident and characterization is perfectly rendered and the reader instantly forgets that he or she is reading a novel. That is the highest praise a novel can receive. Herlihy’s reputation as one of America’s finest novelists would probably have been better served if the movie had been less successful and more people had read the book. There’s still time to change all that.
—Robert Rifkin
i often hear the comment that some "film just could not do justice to the book", despite quality of this film adaptation and the many awards to the film that comment certainly applies here. This is a book about the streets, their capacity to seduce, corrupt and destroy and the preeminent importance of solid friendship in such a toxic environment. It deals with the interface between the dwellers of the street and those who purport to live in the "normal" world but who are serially seduced by the darkness of the street. It's the story of a handsome simple young man, Joe, who just wants to be loved and accepted, who has had his life framed by circumstances and experience in such away that he feels himself disconnected, an outsider with no place. His journey to find that place brings him into the company of another, crippled and broken by deprivation and the hardness of survival without support or options in NYC Rizzo. Joe, the cowboy finds that place in his attachment to Rizzon and in his unconditional commitment to him. There is a universal lesson here that salvation only comes through the surmounting of our life's conditioning into service of another. For Joe, when Rizzo dies on the way to fulfilling a dream of life in Paradise, the question remains. Will he be able to draw forward into his new life the understandings that had him enter the human family or will he fall prey again to the streets, always the same no mater the place.It is an outstanding pice of writing, and for me, sine I lived on the streets of Sydney for a short time as a kid, it certainly holds the fabric of the truth of it. Though I always wonder whether anyone who has never had the experience can ever really relate or understand what that life is like.
—Steve Woods
In total honesty, when I finished Midnight Cowboy, I thought it was okay. According to the Goodreads rating system, that's two stars. But, in the end, I couldn't do it. The book is just too sad, and I felt like an ass giving two stars to such unrelenting misery.So, for starters, I was under the impression this was an LGBT novel. Certainly, the main character occasionally has sex with men, but always in the context of hustling, whether for money or for companionship. What Midnight Cowboy is, is a novel about poverty. It doesn't just depict economic poverty at its harshest and bleakest (some passages were hard to get through), but also the emotional poverty caused by neglect and rootlessness. This is further compounded by Joe Buck's lack of wits and smarts. This is a man who absolutely can't make it on his own, who will be cheated and swindled at every turn, and he has nobody to take care of him and no one who cares as his situation gets progressively worse. (view spoiler)[That is, until he meets Ratso the second time. (hide spoiler)]
—Aitziber
