I have a section devoted to westerns. Given the centrality of the frontier myth in America’s collective memory, I’ve long been puzzled by the reluctance of the U.S. literary community to embrace this genre more wholeheartedly. I sense nervousness, evasion and self-consciousness whenever the topic comes up in polite circles. Is it just that the western seems to be owned so much by the cinema? Or is there a deeper unease about the territory it inevitably occupies? On my shelf I can see “True Grit”; “The Ox-Bow Incident”; “Blood Meridian” (masterpiece); “Lonesome Dove” (probably ditto); “Deadwood”; “Butcher’s Crossing”; “St. Agnes’ Stand”; “Riders of the Purple Sage”; and others. All really fine novels. But don’t tell me about “The Virginian.” Strong first two chapters, but then it’s really quite poor.
It is like the British uneasiness over class. I have always been surprised at how often English commentary on Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited centers on its alleged focus on the upper classes. Given English history, it is odd they do not notice that the dialectic at the core of the book is one of reverence, of a sort that both Thomases — More and Cranmer — would have understood immediately: Crown or Church, Piety or Power, God or Caesar, World or Devil.
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