Check out Pam Houston's books at barnesandnboble.com A L S O+.T O D A Y Mara and Dann Reviewed by Norah Vincent A dystopian vision of our planet undergoing another ice age thousands of years in the future, as seen through the eyes of two young children T A B L E+T A L K Love the smell of dusty old books? Talk about what used book stores have that the big guys don't in Table Talk's Books area B O O K C A S E A new service for book lovers R E C E N T L Y Andrea Barrett By Peter Kurth (12/02/98) Jim Harrison By Jonathan Miles (12/02/98) Ken Follett By David Bowman (12/02/98) Andrew Sullivan By Carol Lloyd (11/30/98) Lorrie Moore By Dwight Garner (10/27/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INTERVIEW ARCHIVE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -----------------------------[  T H E  S A L O N  I N T E R V I E W  ] ------Kissing the cowboys goodbye WRITER PAM HOUSTON TALKS ABOUT DANGEROUS LOVE AND THE UNNAVIGABLE GAP BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN. BY RANDALL OSBORNE Pam Houston is changing, even as she stays the same. The wry, lusty young woman at the center of Houston's first short-story collection, "Cowboys Are My Weakness" (1993), charmed readers with her taste for outdoor adventure in the West and her penchant for heartbreak over all the wrong men. Houston is older now, well into her 30s, like the autobiographical main character in her new book, "Waltzing the Cat" (Norton). Her divorce, miscarriage and a year of therapy have added a distinctive, rueful flavor to this new set of interwoven stories. Still in evidence are her droll wit and good cheer -- shadowed by premonitions of doom -- as photographer Lucy O'Rourke plunges into each romance and fresh adventure by water, air and land. But now the stories are more reflective. In them is the voice of a dawning wisdom, the kind you find and lose repeatedly, and then begin to find more often. Houston spoke with Salon recently while on a publicity tour for "Waltzing the Cat." The epilogue to "Waltzing the Cat" is a wistful, almost eerie piece, in which Lucy O'Rourke meets her mistreated, abandoned younger self on a hilltop and lets herself think about the man who didn't work out. This is a far different mood from "Cowboys Are My Weakness." Is it true that the shift in tone led to a skirmish with your publisher? It wasn't so much that I was diametrically opposed to writing a "jaunty" book, in theory. But this book was the only book that was going to be written. A lot of times, publishers don't understand we're not belligerent children. We write what we can write at a given time, and we don't have a lot of leeway. One of the new elements in "Waltzing" is the narrator's stronger feeling for other women. In "Cataract," Lucy has an exchange with a female friend about whether she has ever been in love with a woman, and in another story she says she is "thinking more and more about trying it with a woman." Yet there's a frank, powerful admiration for men that runs through all the stories in both books. Well, all I can do is be honest about my own feelings. I believe that I'm a heterosexual. I've always dated men and I never have had sex with a woman. But I read an awful lot of Lawrence when I was studying literature as an undergraduate. Lawrence seemed to make a lot of sense to me, especially "Women in Love" -- the way he was always dealing with the unnavigable gap between men and women, and asking if that was a place of frustration, or a place of potential and possibility. If it is unnavigable, would we be better off in same-sex unions? The women I know are able to connect in a way that seems very difficult for men and women to connect. I don't know. It's a question that is always active in my mind, even though I'm not physically attracted to women the same way I am to men. N E X T+P A G E+| Feeling better in general about men - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.