West of Everything: The Inner Life of WesternsOxford University Press, 1993 M04 29 - 264 pages A leading figure in the debate over the literary canon, Jane Tompkins was one of the first to point to the ongoing relevance of popular women's fiction in the 19th century, long overlooked or scorned by literary critics. Now, in West of Everything, Tompkins shows how popular novels and films of the American west have shaped the emotional lives of people in our time. Into this world full of violence and manly courage, the world of John Wayne and Louis L'Amour, Tompkins takes her readers, letting them feel what the hero feels, endure what he endures. Writing with sympathy, insight, and respect, she probes the main elements of the Western--its preoccupation with death, its barren landscapes, galloping horses, hard-bitten men and marginalized women--revealing the view of reality and code of behavior these features contain. She considers the Western hero's attraction to pain, his fear of women and language, his desire to dominate the environment--and to merge with it. In fact, Tompkins argues, for better or worse Westerns have taught us all--men especially--how to behave. It was as a reaction against popular women's novels and women's invasion of the public sphere that Westerns originated, Tompkins maintains. With Westerns, men were reclaiming cultural territory, countering the inwardness, spirituality, and domesticity of the sentimental writers, with a rough and tumble, secular, man-centered world. Tompkins brings these insights to bear in considering film classics such as Red River and Lonely Are the Brave, and novels such as Louis L'Amour's Last of the Breed and Owen Wister's The Virginian. In one of the most moving chapters (chosen for Best American Essays of 1991), Ttompkins shows how the life of Buffalo Bill Cody, killer of Native Americans and charismatic star of the Wild West show, evokes the contradictory feelings which the Western typically elicits--horror and fascination with violence, but also love and respect for the romantic ideal of the cowboy. Whether interpreting a photograph of John Wayne of meditating on the slaughter of cattle, Jane Tompkins writes with humor, compassion, and a provocative intellect. Her book will appeak to many Americans who read or watch Westerns, and to all those interested in a serious approach to popular culture. |
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Common terms and phrases
American animals Art/Film Stills Archive audience become body Buffalo Bill cattle century characters Christian Cody cowboy culture death desert desire Doc Holliday dominate Dunson emotional everything experience expression eyes face feel fiction genre Glenn Ford Grey's Gunfight guns hero's heroine High Plains Drifter horse human Jane Withersteen Joe Mack John Wayne kill kind Kirk Douglas land landscape language Lassiter live Lone Ranger look Louis L'Amour male Modern Art/Film Stills Molly narrative nature never Owen Owen Wister pain physical played Purple Sage ranch Red River Remington represents rider riding says scene sense sexual Shane silence social speak Starface Steve story struggles talk there's things Tonto town Trampas turn Venters violence Virginian wagon West Western hero Western movies Western novels wild Winchester Arms Wister woman women words writing wrote Wyatt Earp York Zane Grey
Popular passages
Page 67 - Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Page 72 - Lounging there at ease against the wall was a slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures. His broad, soft hat was pushed back ; a looseknotted, dull-scarlet handkerchief sagged from his throat ; and one casual thumb was hooked in the cartridge-belt that slanted across his hips. He had plainly come many miles from somewhere across the vast horizon, as the dust upon him showed.
Page 71 - It was hot. A few lost, cotton-ball bunches of cloud drifted in a brassy sky, leaving rare islands of shadow upon the desert's face. Nothing moved. It was a far, lost land, a land of beige-gray silences and distance where the eye reached out farther and farther to lose itself finally against the sky, and where the only movement was the lazy swing of a remote buzzard.
Page 70 - There they stood, rearing their pitiful masquerade amid a fringe of old tin cans, while at their very doors began a world of crystal light, a land without end, a space across which Noah and Adam might come straight from Genesis.
Page 42 - A woman's place is at home' That is true but what and where is home? Not the walls of a house. Not furniture, food or clothes. Home is where the heart is, where our loved ones are. If my son is in a drinking place, my place is there. If my daughter, or the daughter of anyone else, my family or any other family, is in trouble, my place is there. [A woman would be either selfish or cowardly if she] would refuse to leave her home to relieve suffering or trouble. Jesus said, 'Go out into the highways...
Page 44 - Western owes its essential character to the dominance of a women's culture in the nineteenth century and to women's invasion of the public sphere between 1880 and 1920.
Page 4 - Often when I have camped here, it has made me want to become the ground, become the water, become the trees, mix with the whole thing. Not know myself from it. Never unmix again.
Page 44 - Given the pervasiveness and the power of women's discourse in the nineteenth century, I think it is no accident that men gravitated in imagination toward a womanless milieu, a set of rituals featuring physical combat and physical endurance, and a social setting that branded most features of civilized existence as feminine and corrupt, banishing them in favor of the three main targets of women's reform: whiskey, gambling, and prostitution.