Frontier Re-Imagined: the Mythic West in the Twentieth Century

University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2018 Frontier Re-Imagined: The yM thic West In The Twentieth Century Michael Craig Gibbs University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Gibbs, M.(2018). Frontier Re-Imagined: The Mythic West In The Twentieth Century. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/5009 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FRONTIER RE-IMAGINED : THE MYTHIC WEST IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Michael Craig Gibbs Bachelor of Arts University of South Carolina-Aiken, 1998 Master of Arts Winthrop University, 2003 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2018 Accepted by: David Cowart, Major Professor Brian Glavey, Committee Member Tara Powell, Committee Member Bradford Collins, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Michael Craig Gibbs All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION To my mother, Lisa Waller: thank you for believing in me. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the following people. Without their support, I would not have completed this project. Professor Emeritus David Cowart served as my dissertation director for the last four years. He graciously agreed to continue working with me even after his retirement. I am honored to call Dr. Cowart my director, mentor, and friend. Professors Brian Glavey, Tara Powell, and Bradford Collins served on my dissertation committee. Their advice and flexibility proved indispensable as I neared the end of this project. I hope they will call on me if I might ever repay their kindness. These friends and colleagues deserve mention: Alan Buck, Vicki Collins, Adam Diehl, Graham Hillard, John Miles, and David Nye. Their words of encouragement and humor kept me going. Andrew Geyer, my department chair at USC-Aiken, was very supportive. I am lucky to have such a great boss. The following family members never gave up on me during this long and difficult process: Harper and Nita Tucker, my grandparents; Tommy and Tricia Huff, my uncle and aunt; and Blake Waller, my brother. And, finally, I wish to thank Jared, Conner, Reagan, Jackson, and Cassady. I cannot wait to see the great things they will do in the future. I love them dearly. iv ABSTRACT The author begins by reviewing Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 “Frontier Thesis” and by surveying the twentieth-century consensus of the “New Western Historians.” The author then poses a question: even though the physical frontier “closed” in the late-nineteenth century, did American writers turn away from the imaginative frontier? To a great extent, the writers of literary fiction did turn to other material during the modernist period. Simultaneously, however, Westerns began to dominate popular fiction and film. More notably, writers such as Raymond Chandler began to transform the traditional Western. In Philip Marlowe, Chandler created an urban cowboy; this cowboy locates his roots in dime novels and popular cowboy tales. In novels such as The Big Sleep, Chandler rigidly abides by a personal code that looks very similar to the one practiced by the mythic cowboys. Nonetheless, the reader discerns that the rapidly- disappearing frontier has already made this urban cowboy an anachronism. Cormac McCarthy, in All the Pretty Horses , also features a protagonist who abides by the code. In this “traditional” Western, John Grady Cole embraces the cowboy way of life, but his experiences in Mexico prompt the reader to examine traditional nationalistic myths. For a more postmodernist Western, the author turns to Robert Coover’s Ghost Town . This parodic novel contains none of the nostalgia and romance of All the Pretty Horses. Coover’s hero, “the kid,” travels across a surrealist landscape that includes all of the familiar Western tropes: gunfights, train robberies, cattle rustling, poker games, et al. In a sense, the kid becomes the avatar of all cowboys; his experiences “pile up” to v demonstrate that the Western genre has become exhausted. As the twentieth century gave way to the twenty first, the prolific writer Percival Everett attempted to create a new Western paradigm. In works such as Wounded and Half an Inch of Water , Everett looks at the mythic West with suspicion while also creating something fresh. Everett’s aim thus turns the Western away from Coover’s deconstructionist project and toward something modernist. In this “new Western,” Everett’s heroes begin to form collectivist partnerships that embrace relationship, respect for the environment, and diversity. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Abstract ................................................................................................................................v Chapter I: Introduction .........................................................................................................1 Chapter II: Survey of Frontier Literature: 1492-1900 .......................................................11 Chapter III: The Urban Cowboy on the Modernist Frontier ..............................................29 Chapter IV: The Western in the Atomic Age ....................................................................85 Chapter V: The Postmodernist Western ..........................................................................139 Chapter VI: Conclusion ...................................................................................................180 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................187 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Turnerian Narrative First presented in Chicago at a special meeting of the American Historical Society during the World Fair’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” sent shockwaves through the academic community. “American development,” he argued, had exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West (Turner 4). Turner’s arguments represented a marked departure from those of other American historians such as Charles McLean Andrews and Herbert L. Osgood, who, in describing the American ethos, had attempted to connect the character of the United States to its European customs and traditions and/or to the cultural, economic, and racial divide 1 between the North and the South. Turner, however, turned away from Europe as he unequivocally declared that it was the American West that had given its citizens the ambition and dynamism to form a great nation. Moreover, Turner explicitly departed from Andrews and Osgood’s Anglo-centric interpretations of American history when he declared that Westward Expansion “decreased our dependence on England” and that American history demonstrates a clearly discernible “steady movement away from the influence of Europe” (5, 17). In addition to this vigorous debate, Turner’s thesis also caused alarm because it reinforced the notion—first introduced in the 1890 census—that the frontier was now “closed.” If the frontier was so pivotal to the spirit of America, as Turner had argued, what would now replace it? What would keep American ingenuity, ambition, democracy, and individualism alive? As it turned out, a couple of candidates emerged to attempt to fill the void in the twentieth century: upward mobility and Hollywood. The New Western Historians Turner’s hypothesis dominated scholarly and popular discussion for close to a century; however, in the 1980s scholars began to adopt a more nuanced view of frontier history. The “new western historians” attacked Turnerian history on two fronts: They argued, first, that Turner’s analysis privileged the white, male perspective, and, second, that it was reductive and too linear. Thus, they attempted to take a broader, more-inclusive look at the frontier. Patricia Nelson Limerick emerged as one of the strongest of these voices. In The Legacy of Conquest Limerick says that “Turner was, to put it mildly, ethnocentric and nationalistic. English-speaking white men were the stars of his story; Indians, 2 Hispanics, French Canadians, and Asians were at best supporting actors and at worst invisible. Nearly as invisible were women, of all ethnicities” (21). She also says that Turner was so concerned with the role of farming in the settlement of the West that he forgot to mention the key roles played by mining, towns, frontier government, etc. (21).

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