Whither the Western?: The New Face of Regional Literature

By Contributing Writer, 9-03-06

By Heather Sharfeddin

Is the Western dead? Hollywood believes it is, and so do most New York publishers. A. B. Guthrie would have a devil of a time getting The Big Sky published in today’s climate. And maybe we’ve seen the last of classics like The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, though I hope not. Communities across the West face changes that threaten our identity and compel us to adopt new ideas and technology, but deep down we hold a fierce grip on what it means to be western. Hollywood and New York may not recognize it, but our literature has changed with us, reflecting the challenges of a modern West.

The new West has sparked the imagination of contemporary authors from Ivan Doig to Annie Proulx. Larry Watson’s masterpiece, Montana 1948, explores issues of race and sexuality in a way that no traditional Western novel has. But just what defines a Western? Some would say its timeline, claiming the Western embodies the nineteenth century. That long-ago era of pioneers and mountain men certainly built a rich tradition of storytelling, but what made those stories wonderful did not die with the turn of the last century.

A few key elements define Westerns, traditional or contemporary. Setting is one. The environment in any Western is a romantic player -- beautiful and alluring. It captivates us, but it is also treacherous and difficult. The West is a dangerous place, filled with risk and hardship -- rattlesnakes, grizzly bears, blizzards, and gun-toting neighbors. Not much has changed on that front. Consider Judy Blunt’s memoir, Breaking Clean, and the struggle to get her young daughter to the hospital from a ranch in remote eastern Montana through its infamous gumbo mud. Her odds were scarcely better in the 1960s than they might have been in the 1860s.

The Western story offers redemption through the hope of new frontiers and boundless opportunity. The West is where we define ourselves rather than be defined by our circumstances. In Ivan Doig’s new novel The Whistling Season Rose and Morrie step off a train in Marias Coulee to remake their lives, build new identities and escape a sketchy past. Forty years later, as Paul Milliron contemplates the fate of prairie schools, it’s not Rose and Morrie’s pasts that were important to his childhood, but the gift of opportunity they provided for his future.

Also critical to a good Western are rugged individualists. These characters stand up to adversity, remain unmoved by public opinion, and often thumb their noses at the establishment. But even when they take the law into their own hands, it’s for a just cause. In Leif Enger’s Peace Like A River, we know Davy has broken the law when he lures the two boys who tried to rape his girlfriend to his home and guns them down in cold blood. Yet we’re right behind him as he flees into the Dakotas, looking over his shoulder, praying that he makes it. It doesn’t matter that the authorities are chasing him in cars, or that his family follows, towing an Airstream trailer. That he disappears on horseback is classically western.

The stories we tell reflect the world around us, the everyday challenges of preserving and protecting the great West, our struggle to make a living here, and our vision for the future. Holding onto the near-past is as important as holding onto the distant past. In books like A River Runs Through It, we remember Missoula in its youth -- mildly gentrified, but still raw around the edges. In The Horse Whisperer, we revel in a yet undisturbed pocket of traditional ranch life. And in Reservation Blues, we glimpse the hardship brought on by discrimination, and we must revise our perspectives of white expansion and a glorified era.

How can the Western be dead when the West is still so alive? Contemporary Westerns like these are echoing the new face of the West while preserving the very essence of its soul. New York publishers can call them what they like, but they will always be Westerns to me.

Writer Heather Sharfeddin is the author of Contemporary Westerns, Blackbelly and Mineral Spirits

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