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?
15 responses to “What Makes a Western – Two Cacti and a Gunfight?”
To me, gunplay and a man (or woman) with a code. Plus a rural or small town setting in the relevant geographic area, after the American Civil War and before easy access to airplanes. The singing cowboy movies and the Roy Rogers tv show are kind of too youth-oriented to hold my middle aged self now, but they have this idea of a place out in the sticks where you might see a truck with a gun rack now and then on a dirt road but most of the relevant locations are best accessed by horse or mule. That counts as a western to me. Similarly, something like the Audie Murphy Whispering Smith doesn’t count to me. It is not a terrible show by my low standards, but it strikes me as being a cop show that happens to take place in 19th c. Denver instead of someplace more modern.
I have a couple trunk novels (one very pretentious weird western, one very goofy space western with Stargate like tech) that riff on the genre, but those are twentyish years old by now. The Star Master duology and the first three Hunter Healer King books are sort of indirectly influenced by westerns, in that they’re influenced by media properties that do show a cowboy influence, and I have just enough knowledge of westerns to kind of riff on that influence from slightly different angles. (Exercise for the reader: spot the story elements inspired by Lee Van Cleef’s Beyond the Law in Shadow Captain, and the one scene in Undead Flight inspired by No Name on the Bullet).
Competent men (and women), who are possibly loners, and a horse and a code are definitely part of the requirements, but this leaves Dick Francis in the running and he’s obviously not! So, the environment is also crucial and ‘frontier’ is a good word. Also, though there’s a lot of violence in Dick Francis books, it isn’t quite the same. But I’m having trouble finding words to explain why. Francis even has a book with horses being stolen in Kentucky and Wyoming, and it is absolutely not a western. Hmmm.
Setting is important in Dick Francis novels, but it’s not a character, not a plot-driver the way it tends to be in Westerns. At least, not in the dozen or so Francis novels that I’ve read. I’m sure I missed a few. 🙂
(Satisfactory) competence in a Western lead depends upon age and context. L’Amour is great at having a wide variety of setups (new town settlers, ambushed children, Russian politicians, released prisoners, complete newbies, etc., etc.)
I think the primary requirements are a hero who is tough (age-variations, children can be tough), observant, confident about what he observes (little angsty self-doubt), not too proud to learn or experiment. He may have a full-story motive (revenge, protection, career), or just an operational “drift” that acquires a motive.
The most important characteristics, I believe, are:
Moral Code. If he turns criminal (in the inhuman sense, not just thief) he ceases to qualify — anti-heroes are not welcome, though honorable enemies can be.
Toughness. Doesn’t easily back down, even when defeated.
Confidence. Learns from setbacks as well as observation. Willing to experiment. Maintains/grows his competence.
Independent in principle, if not necessarily in practice. In other words, farmer settlers who turn cowboy to seek revenge start out with families, but loner cowboys who acquire families are different. It’s that original independent separateness that makes the distinction in the story. The wounded tough guy who struggles to right a wrong with his own hands is more interesting than the overpowered civilized man who lacked protection and seeks more civilization.
You may have knocked most of Clint Eastwood’s movies out of the running. He seems to operate under the “he needed killin’ ” clause a lot.
I dunno about most, though certainly Unforgiven gets iffy, and the Man with No Name movies are arguably about a man *finding* a code to live by.
I was mostly thinking of High Plains Drifter, although I guess you could say that one was more a lesson in what happens when there isn’t a code.
Yeah, that was the other one, but I couldn’t think of the title.
What makes a Western? Tumble weeds. And a ranch. ~:D
There are a good number of romances set in the Wild West. And one notes that Westerns often have a love interest and a love subplot, which has a lot of symbolic advantages — but romances, which put that in the center, are not Westerns.
Do western fans like space westerns? I’ve never really been a western fan so I wonder if fans come at it from liking westerns or liking science fiction.
I’m not sure. I grew up with the Little House Books, L’Amour, and histories of the mountain men and others, as well as the classics of sci-fi (but not Heinlein, oddly enough), so moving to “western, but in space” wasn’t much of a leap.
I first saw Star Wars around age four or five, some westerns or other (probably Roy Rogers) slightly later, and chunks of Phantom Empire (one of the grand-daddies of the sci-fi western crossovers) by age 7-8. I couldn’t disentangle them if I tried. Generally, a lot of people who like historicals are not enchanted with matters technological, so I assume there’s a strain of that among western fans as well.
Some people really don’t like it when two genres are fused together so I just wondered.
A few year ago I was struck by a realization that the 1980s TV show The A-Team is basically structured like a Western of the wandering cowboys type. Even the main characters can be pretty much mapped to Western movie archetypes. I might be able to write something resembling a 1940s 1950s or 1960s movie or TV Western, but I don’t think I could get enough historical accuracy to satisfy the actual genre readers.