How is the genre of a Western novel signaled? What does a book have to have to be a western? Is Louis Lamour’s Haunted Mesa really a western? Lonesome Dove is, but what about Last Picture Show? Is a ghost story set in modern Colorado Springs, in a German cattle baron’s mansion, a Western?

Setting and the idea of frontier seem to be critical. Space western is a subgenre, and all those include the idea of frontier, borderlands, and meeting of cultures, as well as people vs. environment. Often in westerns, the landscape is a character, either as an antagonist who afflicts both hero and villain alike, or it reflects in some way the story. Both The Time it Never Rained (Elmer Kelton) and The Sea of Grass (Conrad Richter), otherwise very different books, use rain and the lack thereof as an external sign of social problems within the characters. Those are also more literary westerns, but are both still read and recognized by people in the cow business. Louis L’Amour used land as a character in most of his western stories, and in others. It is the land, climate, critters, and plants that in many ways make a western recognizable. They are edge places, where cultures and ideas and people bounce, borrow, and rub up against each other.

The cowboy is also important, the competent man on horseback, or a miner, or rancher, or other figure with business to tend to one way or another. The classic western protagonist is a man on his own, one way or another. Once you get past the “classic,” it still tends to distill to a man (or woman) who stands alone in some way against the antagonist. The protagonist has to be skilled in some way, survival skills, or technical knowledge, or something that keeps him alive in a harsh environment. He can get along well with others when he needs to, but often there’s something that sets him apart. Perhaps he just has an itchy foot and needs to move on, explore, wander until the inner urge to settle down arises.

The classic western conflict is over land and water. It can be between cowboys and Indians, ranchers and ranchers, farmers and ranchers, or people against Nature (the environment). One has and the other wants, or neither have and both want. Today oil comes in (No Country for Old Men, Cimarron by E. Ferber) as well. Tony Hillerman also used uranium mining in one of his books.

Western fell out of favor with the big publishers, although L’Amour’s work is still in print and makes money for his estate and the publisher. Westerns were “too regional,” “not nuanced,” “too jingoistic,” “too anti-Indian,” and so on. Twisting the trope until it bore more resemblance to a pretzel than a story was popular in the 1960s-70s, in both film and print. However, Tony Hillerman’s success, L’Amour’s continuing popularity, and so on suggest that the readership remains there, despite what the Big Five publishers claim.

I’m been told I should write a western. Since going back into the Ivory Tower seems less and less likely, I might, but it would demand as much research as the Merchant books, probably more. Western readers know their places and things, and you’d better get at least close to right with the big things.

What, in your opinion or experience, are the critical elements of a western? What separates a Western from a novel that happens to be set between San Francisco and St. Louis?