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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Mark Medoff, Rudolf Erben
Mark Medoff, Rudolf Erben
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
Mark Medoff grew up in the East, lives in the New West, but dreams of the Old West. In his essay “Adios, Old West,” he nostalgically calls himself a “child of the Old West” (1). Medoffs protagonists likewise romanticize the Western American past because they associate it with their own youthful innocence. But they learn to live with the far less romantic realities of an increasingly eastemized West. Like Medoff, they know that cowboys can no longer be role models. While they regret the decline of the heroic tradition, they realize that they cannot emulate outdated stereotypes. In his drama, …
Jane Gilmore Rushing, Lou H. Rodenberger
Jane Gilmore Rushing, Lou H. Rodenberger
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
Jane Gilmore Rushing begins an article entitled “People and Place,” commissioned by The Writer (September 1969) after publication of her second novel, with this self-assessment: “I think I am what you call a regional writer.” Such candid acknowledgement by a writer of what she perceives her role to be in the literary world is rare. Most writers steer clear of the designation of “regionalist,” even those whose works convey a powerful sense of place. Nevertheless, Jane Rushing’s explanation of her authorial selfimage dispels any doubt that she does indeed see herself as a regionalist, whose mission is to share with …
Thomas And Elizabeth Savage, Sue Hart
Thomas And Elizabeth Savage, Sue Hart
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
Although Elizabeth Fitzgerald and Thomas Savage were born on opposite sides of the country, from early on it seemed as if they were as destined for each other as they were for careers in writing.
Tess Gallagher, Ron Mcfarland
Tess Gallagher, Ron Mcfarland
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
The voice of the poet may be one or polyvocal: bardic, prophetic, political, satiric, meditative, bucolic, sentimental, nostalgic. The voice of the poet may be deep or shallow, profound or silly, complex or easy, loud or soft. Nothing guarantees that we will like the work of any given poet except our own direct engagement with the poems. If some of our friends tell us we will like, or dislike, Tess Gallagher’s poems, it is probably because of something they know about us or about the poems themselves, and that something is most likely the voice they hear, whether consciously or …
Theodore Strong Van Dyke, Peter Wild
Theodore Strong Van Dyke, Peter Wild
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
Few writers, no matter how popular in their day, can point to “firsts” in their literary careers. As to Theodore Strong Van Dyke, in the midst of the booming land sales of the 1880s, when trainloads of Midwesterners crowded into southern California to be fleeced by ready hucksters, Van Dyke sowed doubts about the direction which was applauded as progress. Particularly through his lightly sardonic novel Millionaires of a Day (1890), this friend of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt initiated an American uneasiness that the hoopla over the region, and over the American West generally, was false, “. . . …