"THE LAST AMERICAN MAN"
 Elizabeth Gilbert

 Reviewed: Jim Abbott April, 07

  Can you still be Davy Crockett in America today? Can you still be an explorer, an adventurer, a frontier-liver?  Eustace Conway, who IS Elizabeth Gilbert’s “last American man,” says, emphatically, “Yes you can!” And that’s the initial draw to Eustace and to the book: We all --maybe especially us in northern Vermont--have got at least a little inner frontiersman in us that wants to embrace the guy that’s actually doing it. 

  Gilbert has written a truly engaging book about America’s unique and often sub-conscious infatuations with confronting wilderness and frontiers with independence and determination. Eustace Conway is her iconic example.  He left home at 17 and made his home in the Appalachian Mountains for 20 years.  He rode a horse across America, eats and wears possum, and can make a fire with two sticks. Is he a hero type guy or what?

  Eustace is the dream person for a whole raft of people who want to rekindle a reverence for an American hero figure. Gilbert believes that she’s one of many who want to say thank God there’s still at least one genuine mountain man/frontiersman/pioneer/maverick out there.  That for all of us at some deep emotional level there’s a longing desire that Americans are—despite all evidence to the contrary—still a nation where people grow wild and free and strong and brave and willful…instead of lazy and fat and boring and unmotivated. Go Eustace! Who needs Crocodile Dundee?

  It’s a Man’s story written by a woman, and in a lot of ways that’s what makes it great. Gilbert’s your East coast tomboy turned western ranch hand turned talented writer for GQ magazine and is ideal for this narrative. She explores aspects, emotional and sexual, of Eustace—and of American heroes past--that are refreshingly unexpected.  Where were the girlfriends and where was the romance in Paul Bunyon, The Deerslayer, Moby Dick or Huck Finn?  And yes, Elizabeth, “Davy f*ing Crockett did not date!”

  Gilbert’s theme is hero figures, role models, and utopian visions. They’re great to have, but can they stand up to critical examination.  The only downside of the book is the revelation of the downside of our hero figures. A bit deflating.  Gilbert portrays Eustace as real, vulnerable, and fallible, though never exiting from her basic admiration. May we do likewise.