I came to Richard Wheeler's blog, The Curmudgeon's Diary, through Ed Gorman's blog. Mr. Wheeler had proclaimed the Western dead and there were a great many upset writers. It seemed like everyone writing or reading Westerns chimed in to tell him how wrong he was. I've seen some interest in the Western genre through the short story market, so I wondered why he thought the genre was dead. Which lead me to his blog. http://www.richardswheeler.blogspot.com
After reading his Friday post, I finally understood why he considered the genre dead. The Westerns are going through a change that is similar to the Mystery genre. The books Mr. Wheeler read as a young man, he chose "Shane" as an example, were about justice and doing the right thing, something he finds lacking in the new work. (I know, not all of it is changing, but enough to see a shift in the publishing end.)
Mysteries and crime novels are going through this same change. We find more anti-heroes in our books, men and women who will go to any lengths to get what they want and justice and morals be damned.
When I consider how old Mr. Wheeler is, I remember my father, and how he couldn't watch movies where everyone was killed willy-nilly for no good reason. Death was very real to him and this disregard for human life bothered him. I suspect this is the same for Mr. Wheeler as he finds the changes in his beloved genre moving beyond what he considers decent and moral. For him, the Western is dying. It no longer reflects his life or the genre as he remembers it. And I understand where he's coming from because many of the younger writers in the mystery genre write some very gruesome stories that make me wonder if the new generation of writers have lost all sense of decency.
This isn't a slap against the writers. I understand that the world they've grown up in is very different than the one I lived in. Sex and body counts sell and if they want to get published, they have to write to the publishing market. A very sad commentary of our world.
8 comments:
I've become a bit of a curmudgeon as I've aged too. I don't buy a lot of new books because I like the writing and imagination of the books from the 70s and 80s and earlier. tastes change in society, but not always in the individual.
Yes, that's the way I saw it, too, Charles. I often think how shocked my parent's generation was when Peyton Place debuted and now people wonder what all the fuss was about.
I completely get what you're saying, Sandra, and pretty much agree with you. Violence and a certain "devil may care" attitude towards death often seems to be a replacement for good storytelling. I find it more effective when such elements are hinted at, but don't necessarily happen "on camera." It's something I struggle with in my own writing, for sure, finding the proper balance. But this is an excellent and thoughtful essay.
It is a fine line, Chris. I always have to stop and ask myself if I've stepped over the line. It's easy enough to keep the violence off the page and let the reader's mind fill in the blanks. And there are many editors who will publish stories that aren't filled with curse words and gory over the top scenes.
I, too, got what Mr. Wheeler was saying and felt no need, as some did, to dump on his books. I haven't read all his novels, but there's some fine writing in those that I did read.
Everything is changing. One of my favorites from the old days is Ellery Queen. I daresay the cousins might have a hard time getting published in today's markets.
Welcome to the Corner, Randy! I suspect that a great many of the books we read and enjoyed in our younger days would never make it out of today's slush piles.
This is so true, Sandra. My mother found it so hard to read a book or watch a movie where good did not prevail, where the hero wasn't heroic. She often said she wished Megan and I would write something uplifting. What we find interesting in a character, she found reprehensible.
Every generation seems to have a point where they throw their hands up in disgust, Patti. I think our generation became more open to the flaws in our heros because of Viet Nam, the Kennedy and King assassinations, and Watergate.
History threw the anti-hero at us because the "normal" people couldn't fix what was broken anymore. There just didn't seem to be any heroes left to save us, so we flawed human beings had to fend for ourselves.
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