COWBOYS ARE MY WEAKNESS by Pam Houston...

COWBOYS ARE MY WEAKNESS by Pam Houston (Washington Square Press: $10; 171 pp.). A sentence in “How to Talk to a Hunter” sets the tone for these stories about women in the modern West: “A man desires the satisfaction of his desire; a woman desires the condition of desiring.” Houston’s fiction suggests that this dichotomy of passion spoils the relationships between otherwise accomplished men and women. Her female characters--in many ways descendants of Cather’s Alexandra--are bound to the Big Sky country of Montana or the arid deserts of the Southwest: They can’t survive without views, horses, space and exercise. They understand their need for adventure, but not the desires that lead to seek out unsatisfying men as partners.