Death of the western - random thoughts

The reasons why the western was popular (and is enduring) is many fold (birth of the American Myth for example) and the reasons why the genre died are many. Not the least of which is that it resisted an accurate view of the west, ignored the diversity of the west, and catered to a white, American, male audience (and was filtered through that view point). By the time the revisionist history books of the 1970's came out that showed a more accurate representation of the west and, more perhaps more importantly, the effect of those books were felt in fiction in the 1980's, it was too late for a course correction.

Also, in the 50's and 60's the ideal representative of the explorer moved away from the settler (ie: cowboys) and moved towards the astronaut. The western started to decline, science fiction started to climb. Maybe its a coincidence, maybe not.

Damn near every time a new, good looking western comes out someone writes a piece about whether the western is making a comeback.  It's not the old days of tons of movie westerns and won't ever be again (do we really want it to be?). A list of the top ten westerns from the last decade is easy to compile because there were only 10 westerns made, you just have to decide how to order them (sarcasm). Jokey bullshitting aside this Christmas looks to be a one good for western fans with two high profile western films coming out. Take a look at the trailers and let me know what you think.

If Laird Barron wrote a western

"Have you ever thought about writing a Western novel, with no horror or science fiction elements? I’ve considered writing in many genres. My grandfather was a failed novelist. Westerns were his favorite. If I do it, and I just might, it would be a sprawling epic in the spirit of Leone and Peckinpah, full of bloody revenge, heaving bosoms, and men who love gold and horses and guns and come to bad ends. And there’d be something fucking weird going on in the periphery. Sorry."

"When I run up against that 'How can you, a mere woman, write Westerns?' attitude, I mention that in my youth I owned a number of horses, did some trail riding in Colorado and Wyoming, and once worked as a shill to a horse trader in Kansas. I don't go into details about the trail riding being connected with a stay at a dude ranch, or the job with the horse trader only lasting a couple of weeks (he got arrested)." -- Lee Hoffman

"Long before Louis L'Amour, Max Brand, or Zane Grey thought about swinging up into a saddle, women were blazing a trail for the Western story. Even prior to 1902 with Owen Wister’s The Virginian which is widely respected as the novel that put the genre on the map, female authors were far ahead on the drive."

Some interesting items learned from reading non-fiction western material recently.

-Ernest Haycox rented a writing office in downtown Portland so that he would go to work everyday as if writing were a regular job.

-The slicks had an editorial policy to not portray Native Americans "sensitively or compassionately".

-When Jack Schaefer submitted Shane to Argosy Magazine it was his first fiction that he had written. He was such a novice that he sent them the original and didn't keep a copy for himself.

westerns as crime fiction in a historical setting

I'm familiar with the idea that westerns are just "crime fiction in a historical setting" (a comment left on my DSD post and one I've heard before). It's true, but only partially and to an extent. A lot of the westerns in the 50s and 60s for example were hardboiled westerns that fits the above idea but there is much more to the genre, and other modes and story types are available. My current opinion is that picaresque westerns serve the genre best for example.