Talk:Western fiction

William Faulkner
Being much more familiar with Western films than the popular serial and dime novels of the first half of the 20th century, it seems like Faulkner's novels have quite a bit in common thematically with the genre, despite being set in the East. Of course, unless this connection is well established in academia or popular culture, it shouldn't be mentioned here. --Rumblegoose 00:04, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * From what I understand, the definitions of the West and the East changed over time. Gringo300 (talk) 17:26, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

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Broader definition?
I'm curious about the very specific definition of Western fiction offered in the article ("Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West between the years of 1860 and 1900."), especially when compared with this last portion: Western authors are represented by the Western Writers of America, who present the annual Spur Awards and Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement. The organization was founded in 1953 to promote the literature of the American West. While the founding members were mostly western fiction writers, the organization began getting a number of other members from other backgrounds such as historians, regional history buffs, and writers from other genres.

I ended up here because I was working on an article about an Oregon writer, Craig Lesley ( page in progress ) and he has received the Spur Award for best first novel. The novel for which he received the award, Winterkill, is contemporary and "The protagonist is a down-on-his-luck rodeo rider of native descent" (quoting |author's site). All his writing is set in the West, in small towns and reservations, and engages heavily with landscape, humans' relationship with land, et c. However, it's obvious I shouldn't put 'Western' under genre in his Infobox, given the definition here.

I'm not familiar with any academic work on the definition of the western genre, but I wondered, if the Western Writers of America have expanded their bailiwick to include Western historians, writers of contemporary Western USA regional fiction like this, et cetera, is there a possibility that the meaning of 'western writing' is shifting as well? What precisely is the difference between 'Western' (genre) writing and 'Western' (regional) writing? I've also heard Molly Gloss's novel Hearts of Horses called a Western novel, and it's about horse-gentling in Oregon during World War I.

I'll be looking to see if I can find any articles about this, but I wanted to know if anyone with greater expertise in the area than I had any comments on the topic.

--LaPrecieuse (talk) 22:03, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There's been a fair amount of ink spilled in academia regarding the Western. What you might be looking at with Lesley is what has been called a "novel of the West." It's set in the West, but doesn't deal with the Frontier period or anything prior to 1900. WWA does cover the full spectrum, however, so it's not unusual to see a writer with more recent settings win a Spur Award.Intothatdarkness (talk) 15:32, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

WorldCat Genres
Maximilianklein (talk) 00:02, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Western (genre)
Hello, I recently proposed a merge between Western fiction and Western (genre) over at Talk:Western (genre) as the two articles currently have a certain amount of overlap and the latter is also suffering from wider issues relating to its scope and notability, see the discussion linked for more details. Thank you. Orchastrattor (talk) 16:49, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Interlanguage link with "Novela del Oeste" in Spanish?
Hello. I'm currently translating (from Spanish to English) the article Historia de la prensa española and noticed that a section of it links to Novela del Oeste but this one does not to point, in turn, to this English article, "Western fiction," and I thought that was weird, especially considering that it has more or less the same information. Does everyone agree that both articles should be linked? Thanks. TheTastyWord (talk) 20:25, 22 March 2024 (UTC)