Literary Precedents for Comanche Moon

Comanche Moon Literary Precedents

While McMurtry may seem to have created a late-twentieth-century "reality Western" genre with his four Western novels in this series (to which one might add Buffalo Girls, 1990 and Anything for Billy, 1988), he draws on many older elements of American Western fiction as well. Perhaps his oldest literary ancestor is James Fenimore Cooper, whose Leatherstocking tales contained requisite violent Indians, stern and dutiful heroes (Natty Bumppo), and women needing protection. McMurtry also draws on the long tradition of Western novels by writers such as Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. For further discussion of literary precedents of McMurtry's Westerns, see the Literary Precedents section in the analysis of Lonesome Dove.