The Western adventure, then, is not really epical; no national force stronger than himself pushed the American frontiersman beyond the bounds of his known experience into the chaos of a new land, into the unknown. His voyage into the wilderness was most meaningfully a voyage into the self, experimental, private and sometimes obscure.
He understands Calvinism better than Marilynne Robinson does. But it seems to me by confining himself to “the Western” he overlooks that the region has in fact been well served by Willa Cather and, more recently, Larry Watson.
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