Ein Zitat von Stephen Tanner aus seinem Artikel, der demnächst in unserem Jahrbuch erscheinen wird:
To feel an obsessive need to debunk the Western is to misunderstand the genre. Attempts in recent decades to portray the “true West” through exaggerated violence, overly ingenious psychology, dreary contemporary philosophy, and fashionable ideology misguidedly discredit a genre that is essentially harmless in its romantic assertions and capable of promoting a useful mythic heritage for a world increasingly divided and confused by the lack of unifying cultural ideals. Moreover, these attempts have had ironic consequences. While trying to undermine one of the ur-myths of the American psyche, while trying to deconstruct the Western and counter it with the anti-Western, these attempts have produced novels and films that have simply been absorbed into this powerfully appealing genre. Larry McMurtry is an amusing example in this regard. Lonesome Dove was heralded as a new pinnacle in the anti-Western mode, but it was instead transformed into a mini-industry with sequels and prequels, mini-series, and weekly series. McMurtry became a prisoner of the very mythology he set out to destroy. As the genre itself should have taught us, you must think twice before messing with the Western hero, or, as in the case of Doctorow, messing with the natural environment that hero inhabits.
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