¹ Etulain, Richard W., “The American Literary West and Its Interpreters: The Rise of a New Historiography,” Pacific Historical Review, 45 (1976), 311–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This was the lead article in a special issue of PHR on Western Literary History. Etulain is well known as an editor, literary historian, and bibliographer of Western letters; see especially his extensive checklist of secondary materials: Western American Literature: A Bibliography of Interpretive Books and Articles (Vermillion, S.D.: Dakota Press, 1972)Google Scholar, the second edition of which is ready for press.

² In addition to his literary biographies of Frank Norris and Jack London, Franklin Walker's literary histories of California have received much praise: San Francisco's Literary Frontier (New York: Knopf, 1939)Google Scholar and A Literary History of Southern California (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1950)Google Scholar.

³ Vardis Fisher's complaints are especially bitter, shrill, and at times quite coarse; see, for examples, his published address to the Western Literature Association (Univ. of Utah, 14 October 1966), “The Western Writer and the Eastern Establishment,” WAL, 1 (1966), 244–59Google Scholar, and his share of the interview in Three West: Conversations with Vardis Fisher, Max Evans, Michael Straight, ed. Milton, John R. (Vermillion, S.D.: Dakota Press, 1970), pp. 32–40Google Scholar; hereafter references to this volume will appear as Three West.

⁴ Dobie, J. Frank, “The Writer and His Religion,” in Western Writing, ed. Haslam, Gerald W. (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1974), p. 16Google Scholar; hereafter references to this edition will appear as Haslam.

⁵ W. H. Hutchinson, “The ‘Western Story’ as Literature,” in Haslam, p. 110.

⁶ Fussell, Edwin, Frontier: American Literature and the American West (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 3–4, 24Google Scholar; Fiedler, Leslie A., The Return of the Vanishing American (New York: Stein and Day, 1968), p. 168Google Scholar.

⁷ Howells, William Dean, Criticism and Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: Walker-de Berry, Inc., 1962), p. 73 (Chapter 15)Google Scholar.

⁸ Howells, p. 99 (Chapter 18) and p. 83 (Chapter 17).

⁹ Ibid., p. 115 (Chapter 20).

¹⁰ Howells, rev. of Hawthorne, by James, Henry Jr, in Atlantic Monthly, 45 (1880), 283–84Google Scholar.

¹¹ Garland, Hamlin, Crumbling Idols: Twelve Essays on Art…, ed. Johnson, Jane (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), p. 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Johnson, Jane, Intro, to Crumbling Idols, pp. xix–xxGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Quoted by Johnson, pp. xxi, xxiii.

¹⁴ Norris, Frank, The Responsibilities of the Novelist (Cambridge, Mass.: Walker-de Berry, Inc., 1962), pp. 280, 282Google Scholar (“A Plea for Romantic Fiction”). This text and Howells' Criticism and Fiction were published together in the Walker-de Berry volume; therefore, I have given chapter titles for both authors as well as page numbers for the convenience of readers using different editions.

¹⁵ Norris, p. 285.

¹⁶ See Note 71 for Westbrook's distinction between “facsimile” and “denotative” authenticity.

¹⁷ Gurian, Jay, Western American Writing: Tradition and Promise (Deland, Fla.: Everett/Edwards, Inc., 1975), p. 81 (Gurian's emphasis)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 81–82.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 9.

²⁰ Ibid., pp. 20–21. In The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1860 (Urbana, III.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1979)Google Scholar, John Unruh, Jr., has shown that much of the history written about this period is false. By reading many records of the trips themselves, he learned that the emigrants often brought Indian trouble upon themselves, that the journeys differed considerably from one to the next as a result of greatly varying conditions, and that propriety and property values rather than self-defense were the principal causes of violence along the trail. In reviewing Unruh, Howard R. Lamar says that by exposing the chasm between historical fact and history shaped by rumor, bias, and purblindness, Unruh reveals how strong a “hold the legendary West still has on our imaginations” (Lamar, Howard R., “Westward Expansion: the Way It Really Was,” Chronicle Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 05 1979, pp. R6–R7)Google Scholar.

²¹ Ibid., p. 46.

²² Ibid., p. 17.

²³ See Billington, Ray A., “The Wild, Wild West through European Eyes,” American History Illustrated, 14 (08 1979), 16–23Google Scholar.

²⁴ Gurian, p. 26.

²⁵ Bercovitch, Sacvan, The American Jeremiad (Madison, Wise: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1978)Google Scholar. This study evolved from ideas presented in his earlier volume The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

²⁶ Gurian, p. 29.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 46.

²⁸ Warshow, Robert, “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner,” in Focus on the Western, ed. Nachbar, Jack (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 50Google Scholar.

²⁹ Quissel, Barbara's impressive essay, “Andy Adams and the Real West,” WAL, 7 (1972), 211–19Google Scholar, offers a striking contrast to most other readings of The Log of a Cowboy in that whereas historical and geographical accuracy are usually emphasized, she proposes that “The ‘real West’ that Adams recorded in The Log of a Cowboy is an ideal life, a golden age” (p. 219). She acknowledges Adams' desire to be completely accurate in his details, but her emphasis is on the theme of The Log rather than on the episodes, and her essay is a convincing one.

³⁰ Henry Nash Smith indicates that Garland's farmer, by virtue of his conflict with nature, achieves a portentous and tragic quality as “a representative of suffering humanity.” Garland enables readers to see the farmer as a human being instead of a figure distorted by “literary convention, class prejudice, or social theory” (Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950], p. 249)Google Scholar.

³¹ According to Jay Martin, Garland “was a realist for only three years. First and last he was a maker of myth and romance… although his style remained uniformly realistic in fidelity to fact and detail” (Harvests of Change: American Literature, 1865–1914 [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967], p. 129Google Scholar).

³² Milton, , ed., Intro, to Three West, pp. iii–ivGoogle Scholar.

³³ John R. Milton, “The Novel in the American West,” in Haslam, pp. 70–73; the author concludes this excellent essay with a compact but useful contrast between Eastern and Western American fiction in terms of qualities and characteristics, pp. 87–88. The essay, with a more formally structured comparison, constitutes the basis for Chapter 2 of Milton's new The Novel of the American West.

³⁴ Brenner, Jack, “Imagining the West,” in Lewis, Merrill and Lee, L. L., eds., The Westering Experience in American Literature: Bicentennial Essays (Bellingham, Wash.: Bureau for Faculty Research, Western Washington Univ., 1977), p. 32Google Scholar.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 34.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 44.

³⁷ Also on this point, see David Lavender, “The Petrified West and the Writer,” in Haslam, pp. 143–56; and Gurian, pp. 20–23 et passim.

³⁸ Brenner, pp. 37, 38. Also see Peterson, Levi, “The Primitive and the Civilized in Western Fiction,” WAL, 1 (1966), 197–207Google Scholar; Peterson indicates that although the conflict between primitive and civilized was settled long ago on a physical level in the Far West, it is still prevalent “on the level of myth, in the minds and feelings of Americans” (p. 207).

³⁹ Warshow, p. 52.

⁴⁰ Jones, Daryl, The Dime Novel Western (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1978), p. 4Google Scholar. The best general account is still that of Pearson, Edmund, Dime Novels; or, Following an Old Trail in Popular Literature (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929)Google Scholar. Jones lists several more specialized studies and bibliographies in his checklist, including Smith's chapters IX and X in Virgin Land.

⁴¹ A recent manifestation of virtually the same phenomenon has occurred with The Lone Ranger, played for decades on radio and television, in films and circuses, by Clayton Moore. Never was The Lone Ranger unmasked in public, but a court decision has now forced Moore to remove his mask permanently to avert confusion over the identity of the “real” Lone Ranger, a younger replacement having been selected. Wearing a mask-like pair of plastic sunglasses, Moore has now carried his appeal to the people. Before crowds, he tells the story of his “life” with such an aura of verisimilitude that a bystander reportedly said, “This guy really thinks he's the Lone Ranger.” Moore claims that “he fell in love with the character after getting the [original] part. ‘I'm sure the character I've been portraying has helped make a better person of me. More tolerant. More considerate…. I tell the truth [according to] the Lone Ranger creed.’” A hundred years after Buffalo Bill, another Western hero has taken his role to be the real thing. “LA Court Unmasks Lone Ranger,” Akron [Ohio] Beacon Journal, 31 08 1979, p. A4Google Scholar; quotation is taken from “Former ‘Lone Ranger’ still plays the Part,” Daily Kent Stater (Kent State Univ.), 17 10 1979, p. 7Google Scholar.

⁴² Billington, pp. 16 and 23.

⁴³ Cawelti, John G., The Six-Gun Mystique (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Univ. Popular Press, [1971]), p. 85Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Discriminations among several of the most widely read formula writers are effectively presented in the essays collected in The Popular Western: Essays Toward a Definition, ed. Etulain, Richard W. and Marsden, Michael T. (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Univ. Popular Press, 1974)Google Scholar. Also see Michael Marsden, T.. “The Modern Western,” in Etulain, Richard W., ed., American Literary West (Manhattan, Kansas: Sunflower Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 54–61Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Straight, Michael, in Three West, p. 121Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 124–25.

⁴⁷ A. B. Guthrie Jr, “The Historical Novel,” in Haslam, pp. 52–53.

⁴⁸ Folsom, James K., The American Western Novel (New Haven: College and University Press, 1966), p. 66Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Guthrie, p. 51.

⁵⁰ Conversations with Frederick Manfred, moderated by John R. Milton (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press, 1974), pp. 68–70Google Scholar. This volume comprises a series of conversations between Milton and Manfred, edited by Manfred for publication, originally presented as videotapes at the University of South Dakota in 1964. Hereafter references to this edition will appear as Manfred.

⁵¹ Manfred, p. 140.

⁵² Ibid., p. 131.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 125.

⁵⁴ Wallace Stegner, “Foreword,” in Manfred, pp. x–xi.

⁵⁵ Thomson, Peggy, “Ruth Hill became Indian to write epic of the Sioux,” Smithsonian, 9 (12 1978), 114Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ “A Book Ignites an Indian Uprising,” Time, 5 05 1980, p. 98Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Wendy Rose, rev. of Hanta Yo: An America Saga, by Hill, Ruth Beebe, in The American Book Review, 2 (Summer 1979), 2Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Erisman, Fred, “Western Regional Writers and the Uses of Place,” in American Literary West, pp. 36–44Google Scholar. Another first-rate essay on Western regionalism is by Sellars, Richard West, “The Interrelationship of Literature, History, and Geography in Western Writing,” Western Historical Quarterly, 4 (1973), 171–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Stewart, George R.'s essay, “The Regional Approach to Literature,” was first published in College English, 9 (1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; it has been reissued in Haslam, pp. 40–48.

⁶⁰ Erisman, pp. 38–40.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 40.

⁶² E.g., see the essays by Vardis Fisher and J. Frank Dobie, in Haslam, pp. 16–24, 59–68.

⁶³ Erisman, p. 42.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 43.

⁶⁵ Folsom believes that “the essential nature of Western story [sic] has been misunderstood.… [T]his nature is finally unrealistic… [and] the Western is usually a ‘myth,’ or a ‘fable’ ” (p. 29).

⁶⁶ Among the most important of Max Westbrook's publications on Western literature are: “Conservative, Liberal, and Western: Three Modes of American Realism,” SDR, 4 (1966), 3–19Google Scholar [reissued in The Literature of the American West, ed. Taylor, J. Golden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), pp. 9–22]Google Scholar, (hereafter cited as “Three Modes”); “The Practical Spirit: Sacrality and the American West,” WAL, 3 (1968), 193–205Google Scholar; Walter Van Tilburg Clark (New York: Twayne, 1969)Google Scholar; “The Ontological Critic,” Rendezvous, 7 (1972), 49–66Google Scholar; “Mountain Home: The Hero in the American West,” in Lewis and Lee, pp. 9–17; and “The Authentic Western,” WAL, 13 (1978), 213–25Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ “Three Modes,” p. II.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 21.

⁶⁹ Ibid., pp. 17–18.

⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 22.

⁷¹ Van Tilburg Clark, Walter, The City of Trembling Leaves (New York: Random House, 1945), p. 14Google Scholar. In “The Authentic Western,” Westbrook distinguishes between “facsimile authenticity,” which is simply a superficial and restrictive imitation or attempted verbal reproduction of life, and “denotative authenticity,” a deeper representation of life that accurately conveys a sense of reality without meticulous adherence to literal truth. As one might expect, he believes that “the best of Western writers… are devoted to authenticity as denotation” (p. 215). It would seem that connotative rather than denotative would more accurately convey his meaning, but his point in making the distinction is clear nevertheless.

⁷² Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14, penultimate paragraph.

⁷³ Westbrook, Max, “Afterword” to The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains, by Owen Wister (New York: The New American Library, 1979), pp. 318–31Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ For a discussion of mythic symbolism in The Virginian, see Marovitz, Sanford E., “Testament of a Patriot: The Virginian, the Tenderfoot, and Owen Wister,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 15 (1973), 551–75 (especially pp. 571–73)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Universality of the archetype is acknowledged in “The Ontological Critic,” “Mountain Home: The Hero in the American West,” and “Riders of Judgment: An Exercise in Ontological Criticism,” WAL, 12 (1977), 42–44Google Scholar. Uniqueness of the archetype to Western literature is expressed or implied in “Three Modes,” “The Practical Spirit,” and “The Authentic Western.”

⁷⁶ Milton, John R., The Novel of the American West (Lincoln and London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1980 $17.95£10.50) pp. xxvi, 341Google Scholar. Hereafter page references to this volume will appear in the text.

⁷⁷ Milton, “The Novel in the American West,” in Haslam, p. 78.

⁷⁸ Milton points out that the fiction of important twentieth-century Western novelists is more akin to that of the nineteenth-century American romancers – Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville – than to the novels of their own Eastern contemporaries.

⁷⁹ Sonnichsen, C. L., From Hopalong to Hud: Thoughts on Western Fiction (College Station, Tex.: Texas A & M Univ. Press, 1978), p. 113Google Scholar. This book comprises revised essays originally published in various journals devoted to Western history and literature; it should be noted that the emphasis is on popular contemporary fiction.

⁸⁰ Nachbar, Jack, “Riding Shotgun: The Scattered Formula in Contemporary Western Movies,” in Nachbar, , ed., Focus on the Western, p. 110Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Billington, op. cit; Gurian, p. 93.

⁸² Kramer, Jane, The Last Cowboy (New York: Harper & Row, 1978)Google Scholar.

⁸³ See their prefaces to The House of the Seven Gables and The American respectively.