Book Review: The Word Rides Again: Rereading the Frontier in American Fiction

Authors

Eric Heyne, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Date of this Version

2004

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 24:1 (Winter 2004). Copyright © 2004 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

The method of The Word Rides Again is straightforward. J. David Stevens first constructs a model of the popular Western novel or "frontier narrative," complete with standard genealogy and a concise review of fifty years of critical response, and then uses that template to demonstrate that some "mainstream" novels (Hobomok, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Death Comes for the Archbishop) are actually frontier fiction in disguise, while some frontier fiction (by Bret Harte, Owen Wister, and Frank Waters) is actually more complex or problematic than the stereotype would suggest.