One of the most interesting young novelists in the Southwest—and certainly the most embattled in terms of the frontier heritage—is Larry McMurtry. He should be examined in some detail for a review of his literary inquiry serves to summarize both the uses and dangers of the frontier inheritance as it affects the newest generation of southwestern writers to toil under its shadow.
McMurtry's first two novels, Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Cheyenne, were promising efforts to put the materials of frontier culture to serious literary use…. [Both books] are in-the-grain novels of people striving to live by the cultural values of the legend. An authentic mood is further heightened by the voice of the narrator. McMurtry speaks through a narrator who is frontiersman enough to move with ease through the tall-in-the-saddle milieu, but sensitive enough to note the ritualized energy and directionless fury surrounding him. In these two novels, one sees a writer laboring, desperately laboring, to transcend his heritage by finding something in it beyond the limits of the unexamined legend. There are values to be admired: a code of generosity in personal conduct, an intact ability to act. But (McMurtry gives us occasional reason to believe), there is something disturbing at the center of the world. The generosity is applied only to certain kinds of people, and the ability to act—untempered by reflection and introspection—can easily degenerate into mindless tyranny. McMurtry does not consciously underline this critical response, but it is clearly present within his material. (pp. 200-01)
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