The only novelist with whom Conrad Richter can well be compared is Willa Cather…. But Richter belongs to a later generation, which both sees the pioneers from a longer perspective and (paradoxically) enters into their lives with a greater emotional immediacy. Between the generations of Willa Cather and of Conrad Richter a myth has begun to form, and this myth has worked to deepen and (in some ways) to distort the tales of the contemporary writer. (pp. 77-8)
Richter has usually been called a simple realist, and all his tales have genuinely been characterized by a careful artistry, a classical condensation, and an emotional restraint. The Sea of Grass was a perfect short novel, with hardly a word wasted, and The Trees ran but little longer. All these pioneer novels have been packed with homely, realistic detail … of an earlier age. Not only external details but the very language and style of his writing have been authentically and consciously early American. By contrast, his symbols have never been explicit and his myth may perhaps be subconscious. But in his last book this myth has become increasingly dominant, and it distinguishes all his best novels from the more purely realistic pioneer tales of Willa Cather and (more recently) of A. B. Guthrie, Jr. It is this myth of the making of America which I shall emphasize, illustrating it chiefly from his recent trilogy describing the settlement of the imaginary town of "Americus," Ohio. (p. 78)
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