问答题
{{U}}The literature of the American West ranges from
lowbrow entertainment to great works of fiction. The extremes are obvious
enough, but the middle tends to blur. The dime-store Western never aspired to be
anything but entertainment{{/U}}. James Fenimore Cooper and Willa Cather, however,
used the themes of westward expansion in works clearly intended as highbrow
literature. {{U}}The novels of modern writer Larry McMurtry broke new ground: He
took the Western and created a great piece of fiction, without changing its
fundamental genre appeal or its accessibility to the general reader{{/U}}. As an
example of his retooling of the Western genre, consider McMurtry's themes.
{{U}}While the Western myth is fundamentally about resettlement to new lands,
McMurtry's novels combine elements of the Western myth with less traditional
motifs: profound reluctance to face change, conflict between urbanization and
the Western ideal, the importance of place, and the role of the land itself{{/U}}.
While the traditional Western is rooted in the past, McMurtry's themes combine
nostalgia for that past with a sense of emptiness in the present and
hopelessness for the future. Or consider McMurtry's treatment
of character. The traditional Western formula depicts mainly masculine
characters and portrays them as both heroic and human. In his novels, McMurtry
creates strong female characters, transmuting the conventional plot of the
trials and dangers of the frontier by folding in deeper ideological
insights.