THE VIRGINIAN BY OWEN WISTER (1902)

The Virginian includes these stock features of our Western mythology:
*a tall, slim, soft-spoken, brave hero who is kind to animals, women, and children but who has steel in his eye when confronted with injustice;
*a schoolmarm from Back East who struggles to understand the hero and the Code of the West:
*mostly good-natured cowboys who pull pranks and sing to cattle when they are not drinking whisky and playing poker;
*a villain (dressed in black, with a pencil mustache) who hates the hero and turns out to be a killer and thief;
*cattle rustling;
*a lynching;
*marauding Indians;
*a gun duel in the street.

All of these would seem to be cliches EXCEPT for the fact that Owen Wister was not copying anybody. He came up with it all first and put it all in this book, which is accounted to be the first Western novel ever. All the thousands of books, movies, and television shows that repeated these elements to the extent that they became cliches were following his pattern.

Since the book has all the ingredients for an action adventure, it is surprising to discover that it is primarily a love story in the style of a Jane Austin novel, with a heroine who is slow to recognize the true worth of the man who loves her. The violent events are handled briefly and serve more to highlight admirable aspects of the hero's character than to provide drama. Wister seems to be trying to convince his (mostly Eastern) readers of the innate dignity of the Western cowboy. He says, "In their flesh our natural passions ran tumultuous; but often in their spirit sat hidden a true nobility, and often beneath its unexpected shining their figures took a heroic stature."

In my mind right now I'm seeing Gary Cooper walking all alone down a dusty street at high noon. How about you?

Owen Wister was a member of the Eastern elite who was educated abroad and at Harvard. After traveling to the West for visits as a young man, he was fascinated by the customs, lore, and landscapes of the region, a passion shared by his friend, Teddy Roosevelt. This novel reflects his attraction, particularly in his lyrical descriptions of the Wyoming landscape. The Virginian is a strange mixture of a novel of manners, a morality legend, and a travelogue. Its style is sometimes stilted and Wister disconcertingly switches without pause from first person narration to third person omniscience, but it captures the spirit that formed the legend of the West.