Words on a Page

Literature of the American West encompasses many things. Fiction, poetry, memoir, biography, travelogue and historical texts can all be found beneath its broad banner. Coming up with just ten titles, then, is a ridiculous exercise. There are so many other books I could have included. Books such as... Travels With Charley   was probably the first book to put 'the West' on my radar when I was just 11 or 12 years old was .  We'd probably been reading  Of  Mice and Men  or  The Red Pony  at school, and rather than turning me off of Steinbeck - as so often happens when books are studied at that age - it sparked a love which continues to this day. The book recounts the journey Steinbeck made around the perimeter of the United States in 1960, in the company of his standard poodle, Charley. It was probably the dog that first attracted me to the book, but it's the movement of the narrative which really sticks with me.  Travels  is not about the West a...

In ‘Dangerous Ground,’ Annie Proulx contends that early writers considered western landscapes to be ‘hostile’ and that ‘[a]lmost never did the protagonist display any sense of belonging to or understanding of the country through which he journeyed, nor did he try to learn much about it’ (Proulx 2008:15).  While this may be true of the adversarial adventure stories featured in the later dime novels, Proulx’s statement is far too generalised and she offers no specific examples to support this claim.  In her own work, Proulx uses landscape to explore the psychology of her characters.  External landscape reflects the internal contours and depth of vision her characters possess and, as a driving force within the plot, landscape controls their movements and influences what they can and cannot do.  Her characters are frequently outsiders, alienated in some way from the society around them, and rootless either by choice or coercion.  It is clear, however, that landscap...