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Angling For Repose: Wallace Stegner And The De-Mythologizing Of The American West, Jennie A. Harrop
Angling For Repose: Wallace Stegner And The De-Mythologizing Of The American West, Jennie A. Harrop
Faculty Publications - Department of Professional Studies
When Wallace Stegner published his first book in 1937, a stereotypical Western novel invariably included a gun-slinging cowboy hero, a near-mythical gunfight at dusk, and a formulaic, predictable plot that rarely left readers unsure of who would prevail in the end. Stegner recognized the limitations of such archetypal assumptions and sought to achieve something different with his work. In this paper, I argue that Wallace Stegner asked the nuanced questions necessary to further this nation’s understanding of western archetypes and, as a result, to begin to debunk the misleading mythologies of the American West.
In this study, I look first …