Western Writing: Famous Western Authors Explain Their Craft

From the back of the book:

"Only twenty years ago, the late Bernard DeVoto, himself a westerner, lamented that the West was 'still looking for a serious novelist' and that it would 'never find one.' Today readers all over the country are discovering that the West has long been producing serious novels, history, short stories, and poetry. This book seeks to give some notion of what western writers have done, and why, offering some clearer notions of what West really means.

     "The conrtibutors, some of the most distinguished western novelists, historians, and critics, explain what western literature is, what it has been, and its place in our national fantasies. They discuss regionalism and historical writing, and they evaluate specific novels, stories, ans poems by western writers of all kinds, from Owen Wister to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

     "These essays, collected here for the first time, will be valuable to students of western literature, to writers who have tried to define regionalism in their own work, and to all those who have read and enjoyed the literature of this region."

With an introduction written by Gerald Haslam, contributors to the volume include Bernard DeVoto, J. Frank Dobie, Wallace Stegner, George R. Stewart, A. B. Guthrie Jr., Vardis Fisher, John R. Milton, J. Golden Taylor, W. H. Hutchinson, John G. Cawelti, Max Westbrook, and David Lavender.