Playing cowboys : low culture and high art in the western /

Davis (University of Oklahoma) rephrases the traditional approach to literature by emphasizing a mythic cultural interpretation specifically bred not from realistic contexts but from popular culture, the western novel and, to a lesser extent, the western movie. In doing so, in this era in which controversy exists over the classical canon of accepted works, the study, which frequently announces it has lost its academic objectivity, occupies a position that continues to grow. Davis separates the western genre from the older forms. A western, he says, allows the reader to "embody concretely the values of the hero." Works using the West but neglecting the centrality of this fictional cowboy, are eyed suspiciously. Tracing the western hero, the work has occasion to acknowledge Robert Bly's Iron John with respect. This study is selective rather than comprehensive and is at its best in a chapter on Oakley Hall, the underrated author of Warlock. Davis distinguishes Oakley's work and its cultural subtext from the post-Vietnam western, which emphasized the revision of history away from the popularized romance of the West. A final chapter separates the author's position from previous critical mandates. A. Hirsh; Central Connecticut State University

This is both another attempt to understand the role played by the myth of the American West in shaping our culture and an essay on the western novel and, to some extent, on western films--with emphasis on the mythic image of the cowboy, an image that has continued to flourish despite numerous attempts to bury it. The author contends that the reader of a western novel is asked not only to understand abstractly but to embody concretely the values of the hero. These values are not about power, which you impose on others, but about strength, which you find within yourself. This myth has offered several generations a pattern for manhood that has been approached in various ways. The study begins with a discussion of Owen Wister's The Virginian, the origin of the classic details and elements of the genre. This is followed by an examination of attempts at reinventing the western by Oakley Hall, a comparson of the western with the gothic novel, plus a look at the more recent cross-breeding of the western with science fiction. The entire work reflects the author's personal observations on the West and its relation to the American masculine mystique and our popular-culture values. ~--Fred Egloff