Read West, Young Person

Writing at Signature, Lorraine Berry finds that even though the moral landscape of the mythic American west differs greatly from the landscapes we cross today, the written works of the genre can still have some interesting things to say to us, if we want to pay attention.

This space is on record many times that the Western, in both written and cinematic form, has a lot of philosophical and artistic life in it yet. It's always pleasing when someone else discovers that as well. Myths, including those of the Western, may be mostly legends wrapped around a kernel of truth of varying size. But even myths get told for a reason, and studying them can perhaps clue us in to some interesting things once we stop looking down our nose and tutting about how things "weren't really that way at all."