Winner: Spur Award, Best Western Nonfiction "Yeeeeehaaah!" Nightly
that raucous cry breezes out from beneath the broad-brimmed
Stetsons of boot-scootin line dancers at boisterous bars called
Cadillac Ranch, Cactus Moon, or Stallions & Stars. And that,
Michael Johnson tells us, is just one of the many signs that
Americans have rekindled--and refashioned--their love affair with
the American West. These "New Westers," Johnson reveals, line-dance
and two-step, listen to Garth Brooks and George Strait, drink beer
from long-neck bottles, wear clothes ordered from Sheplers, watch
rodeo on ESPN, play Wild West arcade games, eat fajitas and tacos
in stucco-style Mexican cafes, collect Western art and Native
American crafts, and vacation in and move to the West. "New
Westers" rewrite the history and biography of the West. They
re-imagine the West in cowboy sagas and poetry, Native American
novels, Mexican-American drama, nature writing, revisionist films,
eclectic visual artwork, and neo-traditional music. They flock to
movies like Thelma and Louise, Unforgiven, and Dances with Wolves
or mini-series like Lonesome Dove and read bestsellers like The
Crossing and All the Pretty Horses. "New Westers" are men and women
who may or may not have ever hitched up a horse but who want a
"personal" West. At the end of an urbanized century adrift in
confusing change, they seek a more natural home, a fuller and wider
sense of place, and a deeper and more colorful personal identity.
They also want, Johnson shows, to revive the dream of the mythic
West--but on new and different terms. They overrun the Old West and
yet strive to preserve it, raising troubling new concerns about the
differences between the mythic and the real, between traditional
and contemporary cultural influences. Infused with true grit and
true affection, Johnson's immensely entertaining book takes us on a
lively jaunt through a colorful and amazing landscape. His
celebration of things Western will be treasured by all armchair
cowpokes or anyone who's ever dreamed of riding the high country.
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