User:CipherSleuth/sandbox
Premise
forthcoming
Conception
McMutry wrote the novel after finishing college at Northwestern State, writing at least 5-pages each morning. Shortly thereafter, the novel was sold to the movies for $10,000 in proceeds. In reflecting on the memoir, he wrote: "The publication so long awaited for, was anti-climatic".[1]
Analysis
In the book Southern Writers at Century's end, Folks and Perkins write that Horseman, Pass by “tells a story characteristic of much contemporary Western fiction: a young man's initiation into manhood.”[2] Hud represents the modern cowboy who is fenced out of his old range, whose mythological roots are dying, and who responds with range and violence."[3]
However, Horseman, Pass By eschews the typical formula of the Western novel up until that time, opting for a more realistic portrait of the modern cowboy after the settling of the Old West.[4] Bloodworth writes that "the landscape of the Old West exists primarily in the dreams and fantasies of the main characters".
Characters
Homer Bannon- old cowman who represented the old, ranching way of life. He has no interest in the oil fields springing up in the surrounding property.[5]
Hud - the stepson of Homer Bannon, who represents modern life and wants to turn the ranch into oil rig place
References
- ^ McMurtry, Larry (2008). Books: A Memoir. United States: Simon & Schuster. p. 59. ISBN 9781416583349.
- ^ Folks, Jeffrey J.; Perkins, James A. (1997). Southern Writers at Century's End. University Press of Kentucky.
- ^ Erickson, John R. (2004). The Modern Cowboy. University of North Texas Press. p. 94. ISBN 9781574411775.
- ^ Bloodworth, William (1980). Literary Extensions of the Formula Western. United States: University of Nebraska Press. p. 291.
Some Literary Westerns which are set after the years of settling the West seem to be conscious efforts at avoiding the classic landscape of the formula. In McMurtry's Horseman, Pass By... the landscape of the Old West exists primarily in the dreams and fantasies of the main characters.
- ^ Rebein, Robert (2014). Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction After Postmodernism. United States: University Press of Kentucky. p. 120-121. ISBN 9780813149974.