SOURCE: "Larry McMurtry's Leaving Cheyenne and the Novels of John Rechy: Four Trips Along 'The Mythical Pecos'," in Forum, Vol. 10, No. 2, Summer-Fall, 1972, pp. 34-40.

In the following essay, Giles, a professor of American Literature at Northern Illinois University, considers the transformation of Texas literature and compares the work of McMurtry and John Rechy.

In the fall, 1969, issue of Western American Literature, the editor praises Larry McMurtry's collection of essays, In a Narrow Grave, for doing "two things very well. It assesses Texas culture and describes the quality of the life it has fostered. It explores the problems of a native Texas novelist in using creatively such traditions out of the past as the vanished god, the horseman, as well as life to the present moment that has been affected by that past."¹ This evaluation is undeniably correct. However the book represents more: first, it is a literary Declaration...