The test of western literature has invariably been Is it real? Is
it accurate? Authentic? The result is a standard anything but
literary, as Nathaniel Lewis observes in this ambitious work, a
wholesale rethinking of the critical terms and contexts-and thus of
the very nature-of western writing. Why is western writing
virtually missing from the American literary canon but a frequent
success in the marketplace? The skewed status of western
literature, Lewis contends, can be directly attributed to the
strategies of the region's writers, and these strategies depend
consistently on the claim of authenticity. A perusal of western
American authorship reveals how these writers effectively present
themselves as accurate and reliable recorders of real places,
histories, and cultures-but not as stylists or inventors. The
imaginative qualities of this literature are thus obscured in the
name of authentic reproduction. Through a study of a set of western
authors and their relationships to literary and cultural history,
Lewis offers a reconsideration of the deceptive and often
undervalued history of western American literature. With
unequivocal admiration for the literature under scrutiny, Lewis
exposes the potential for startling new readings once western
writing is freed from its insistence on a questionable
authenticity. His book sets out a broader system of inquiry that
points writers and critics of western literature in the direction
of a new and truly sustaining literary tradition.
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