ATDTDA (7): Out as far as Reef could see, 209-210

[Monte Davis]

> I don't think Madsen is suggesting the Western "sprang
> full-blown from Wister's brow"...

I have no objection to -- I endorse -- Madsen's "suggestion" that as the
20th century began, *some* Westerns began to strike a new note: they became
historically minded and self-conscious enough to show 

(1) awareness that the "classic Wild West" had ended, and had been a very
brief, fast-moving window from the Civil War to the 1890s... and 

(2) awareness that stories about that far-from-typical fed some deep
American self-image needs even as we urbanized and industrialized faster
than ever.

Obviously, those Westerns are the ones that provide the best fodder for
socioculturohistorical analysis, which is what Madsen's up to. But they were
also a small subset of, and not very typical of, the Westerns that were
regular fare for tens of millions of people for four generations -- in the
pulps from dime novels through the Kenosha Kid, in a thousand forgotten
movies and Gunsmoke and Bonanza episodes, and in writers like Louis l'Amour
(whose sales figures are probably 100x those of Owen Wister).

I know what Madsen *means.* Unfortunately, what she *writes* -- "[t]he
Western is a product of the twentieth century -- the first Western was Owen
Wister's The Virginian (1902)" -- is... uh... factually challenged unless
given the benefit of your kindly reinterpretation. And while I admired some
things about the book as a whole, I thought that chapter exemplified an
all-too-common intellectual failing: "I have no personal engagement with
phenomenon X, but one aspect of it supports my larger thesis, so I'll treat
that aspect as the essential and characteristic X." 
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