Glad to see another fan, Brian!
Good Reads, Etc. - Westerns
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I've only read one western and it's considered one of the best, if not THE best of all time - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Finished it about a month ago and it truly is deserving of all the praise it gets, not to mention its Pulitzer Prize. An epic that takes you on a journey across America as well as the soul.
Western fiction is not my favorite genre. (I have read lots of non-fiction western stuff though.)
Right after I first saw the movie I read the book - both are pretty fantastic if you roll with them and view them as equal parts comedy and western.
Jun 5, 2019
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#5
CREDIT: This is copied from NattyBumppo's post in Western movies...
I enjoy movies a lot - while I have never really focused on westerns I still have seen a lot of them that I have liked.
Here (off the top of my head) are 10 of my favorites (in no particular order). (I am including movies set on the colonial frontier as a subset of western movies.)
Unconquered (1947)
Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
Northwest Passage (1940)
Winchester 73 (1950)
Little Big Man (1970)
Son of the Morningstar (1991)
The Ox-bow Incident (1942)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
The Last Command (1955)
The Last Command is on the list mostly because of a great performance by Arthur Hunnicutt as Davy Crockett. The final battle scene is pretty well done also. (Not terribly accurate but none of the Alamo movies were terribly accurate.)
Jun 5, 2019
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#6
Grandpa_patzer wrote:
I like The Shootist, The Unforgiven, The Quick and the Dead, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The Magnificent Seven, and the whole Clint Eastwood series, and True Grit.
Jun 5, 2019
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#7
Great selections guys! Most of these are on my own lists. Here are ten more (also in no particular order):
Quigley Down Under (1990)
High Noon (1952)
A Man Called Horse (1970)
The Cowboys (1972)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Will Penny (1968)
Stagecoach (1939)
How the West Was Won (1962)
Big Jake (1971)
Joe Kidd (1972)
Bed time... got to stop.
The Cheyenne (1901) by Frederic Remington
The 'Western', as a literary form and 'genre' has been popular ever since its beginning, in the form of western-themed 'dime novels' from the 19th century, until the present time. Its peak popularity was in the '60s and it has been seen in many forms including art, comics, radio, movies, and TV, etc. I grew up on the novels of Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey and others, as well as the movies and TV of the time.
Although a great many of the novels, movies, and other 'westerns', are largely formulaic and rely heavily on a few basic stereotyped characters, and plots, others provide an illuminating view of the opening, and expansion, of the American west. And what's wrong with a great story at the same time? As readers/viewers become more sophisticated, and aware of the sometimes distorted view presented to us by writers and film producers, etc., a more complete picture can take form.
Here are a few of the more enjoyable, and memorable, westerns I can heartily recommend to start off any newcomers to the genre:
The frontier novels of the fictional "Sackett" family by Louis L'Amour.
“The novels trace much of the history of the family through individual members of the family as they move across the Atlantic from England, settle in the Appalachians, and then move west to the Great Plains, the Rockies, and California. … [the] family originates in the fens of … East Anglia. The patriarch of the family, Barnabas Sackett, becomes a merchant captain and eventually settles with his wife Abigail in what will become the borderlands of North Carolina and Tennessee.”
--Wikipedia (8/13/17)
There are over 20 "Sakett" stories, many of which have been made into films. They portray a very vivid picture of the spirit of independence and rugged individualism that is associated with the founding, growth, and eventual formation of these 'United' States from the first European colonies.
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826), by James Fenimore Cooper. It is an interesting read, though the early 19th century language may be found cumbersome by some. It has been adapted for the screen many times but the most recent 1992 film, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and native American activist and actor Russell Means, is more accessable to many. Wikipedia has informative articles on both novel and film.
I remember the "Classics Illustrated" version from
my misspent youth. LOL
More will follow...