On the western
Bannack, Montana (photo © m.a.h. hinton)
As a literary and film art form, the western’s time has passed. And yet… there remains a small number of dedicated western fans who remain loyal to this most American of all art forms. I count myself as a proud member of this anachronistic remnant.
One of the many peculiarities of the western is that the greatest practitioners of the western as art form came after the form’s apparent demise: Elmer Kelton, Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy. (Elmore Leonard is still alive and writing, but he has not written a western in decades.)
Even though McCarthy and McMurtry have been critically and commercially successful, any true western fan is painfully aware that good, new westerns are difficult to find. Those that are published for the most part seem to fall into one of four ultimately dissatisfying categories: reprints of old classic westerns that are in the public domain anyway, historical fiction novels that happen to take place in a “western” context, romance fiction that takes place in a “western” context, and male-adventure fiction (soft-core action stories featuring hot, beautiful women and virile, superhuman protagonists) that takes place in a “western” context.
While it is certainly nice to have reprints available of classic works by Max Brand, Zane Grey, Owen Wister and other pioneers in the western form, these writers are not the best example of the art form. Some, like Grey, are unreadable by modern standards. And since all of these writers are available for free from places like Gutenberg, what is the point of re-publishing them anyway. There are a great many writers whose works are out of print but not in the public domain that could be published. But these are not the ones generally reprinted.
What western fans really want… what the publishing and movie industry needs…. what America needs is more new western writers and new western books, and more western movies. The myths and symbols that we embrace, share, and love define and shape us. Fans of the western know that as a country, a people, and individuals, America was at its best when the dominant American myth was the western.
What fans of the western intuitively understand is that by turning our back on that most American of myths, by replacing it with smaller and smaller “post-modern” myths, we have left a large hole in the American soul and psyche. A hole as large as…well, the West itself.
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Conflict is basic to writing compelling fiction. You’ve got to give the reader a reason to keep reading, be it man against man, man against nature, or even man against himself. The western film of today has to compete with computer games and the rest of the media out there. That said, drama and conflict come in many forms and it’s doesn’t have to be a gunfight or the Gettysburg battlefield. The western is alive and well, strangely enough, in women’s romance (55% of all mass market book sales, and many of them are doing it very well (while a few still tie the hero’s stallion on behind the stage for a nice five hundred mile trip with a ten minute rest every fifteen miles). Young readers will respond to a great story (particulary with a young protagonist). The best compliment I’ve received as the author of 27 published works is when a high school history teacher said, “my students learn more California history from your Rush To Destiny than from their texts and love doing it.” It still makes me smile. The book started with Ned Beale at 6 years old, and is a true coming of age story, and one young people can relate to. I have great faith in the genre, particularly now that writers are broadening the brush to write the west as it really was. Don’t give up on the “western.” I haven’t. http://www.ljmartin.com
Ron and Richard, I had not thought of the large role television played in the process of marginalizing the western. You are so right. You are also right about the time being ripe for a re-invigoration of the western. The sooner the better.
Thanks again for taking the time to read MontanaWriter and to comment. I really appreciate it.
Mark
I agree with Ron that television diminished the genre, and with your implicaton that eternal reprints and gritty, noir (whether film or adult fiction) continues the simplification. There’s very little of the creativity or breadth that’s evident in other genres. Things are ripe for a change. Good post!
The old public domain westerns are intstructive to read for the way the western sprang to life in the first place. For me, these novels are usually about the building and asserting of character and a code of ethics. These are the values that continued to inform the western movie and made them an expression of the national character.
I think TV westerns really diminished the form. After the early Gunsmoke, the TV western became that “story set in the West” you mention in your post and diluted the moral grounding that originally drove it. Hollywood’s revision of the myths was not a bad idea. But the myths needed to be undated for a new audience, not debunked.
Richard Wheeler argues that the western novel of today is too narrowly focused on gun violence and too indifferent to the cost of that violence, both individually and socially. Recent western films follow in that same groove. The remake of 3:10 TO YUMA is an example of how a great story (Elmore’s) is submerged under a layer of ultra-violence.
I like historical western fiction because it brings to life that world while keeping one foot in western realities. In the right hands, the myth is served as well as history, and we touch again our roots. Enough films like the remake of TRUE GRIT, and I’m convinced an audience can grow for a western revival.