Lost in the New West

Reading Williams, McCarthy, Proulx and McGuane

Mark Asquith

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781501372230
• eBook ISBN: 9781501349546
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Lost in the New West investigates a group of writers – John Williams, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx and Thomas McGuane – who have sought to explore the tensions inherent to the Western, where the distinctions between old and new, myth and reality, authenticity and sentimentality are frequently blurred. Collectively these authors demonstrate a deep-seated attachment to the landscape, people and values of the West and offer a critical appraisal of the dialogue between the contemporary West and its legacy. Mark Asquith draws attention to the idealistic young men at the center of such works as Williams's Butcher's Crossing (1960), McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985) and Border Trilogy, Proulx's Wyoming stories and McGuane's Deadrock novels. For each writer, these characters struggle to come to terms with the difference between the suspect mythology of the West that shapes their identity and the reality that surrounds them. They are, in short, lost in the new West.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: ‘Where’s the All-American Cowboy At?’
• 1 Butcher’s Crossing’s Lost Vision: Williams’s Cowboy Outsider
• 2 Lost between Borders: McCarthy’s Vanishing Cowboys
• 3 Lost in the Hyperreal: Proulx’s Broken Cowboys
• 4 Lost in the Shadow of the Crazies: McGuane’s Dislocated Cowboys
• Conclusion: Where’s the All-American Cowboy Going?
• Bibliography
• Index