Stegner chose to go pretty much his own direction in writing his stories of the West, and they feature much more depth of characterization, setting, and storytelling than the fiction of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour or the Hopalong Cassidy adventures. The epic grandeur of Stegner's western fiction echoes that found in The Virginian by Owen Wister (1902; see separate entry) and the Natty Bumppo novels by James Fenimore Cooper. As in Genesis, Cooper's books in particular examine how people actually lived as they moved westward and show a reverence for the natural world similar to that in Stegner's novella. Charles Portis's True Grit (1968; see separate entry) shares in common with Genesis a tone that is more realistic than romantic and characters who are self-reliant and tough. Lonesome Dove (1985; see separate entry) and other fiction by Larry McMurtry share the hard-bitten tone of Genesis and similarly idealized...