Ceremony finds its thematic material in a past much deeper than that of the pioneer West and traditions much older than those of the local color novel. It fuses three major elements that can be traced back to the very first American fiction and that loom large in the work of both serious and popular novelists of the early nineteenth century. The title of the novel and its general setting would suggest that it belongs with the literature of the American frontier…. But a closer look at the town of Lone Tree in all its decay strongly suggests also the Gothic tradition…. Decidedly Gothic is the picture of the Lone Tree Hotel, with its sole aged inhabitant sleeping beside the stove, while beyond the rattling window panes a lone dead tree is visible against the moon. A third major tradition in early American fiction, by way of the...