The Puzzle of Popularity

I've been mystified for years by the popularity of western gunman fiction, especially the sort that involves the violent death of dozens of males before the end of the story. These books are storytelling at its worst. They are fantasy, and have nothing at all to do with reality. They don't even pretend to depict death as it really is, or danger, or law enforcement as it existed in that period.

That they are the worst-written books in American fiction is a given. There are no characters developed enough to interest a reader, nor can a reader fathom who the characters are or what they want. No plot is evolved that amounts to anything because all the nascent issues are resolved by killing another platoon of cowboys. Bullets trump story, eliminating courage and character and complexity and surprise.

Yet in spite of their obvious weaknesses, they sell enough to keep publishers pumping out new versions. They appeal to male readers who want to fantasize themselves in gun battles, engaging in a sort of personal war. There aren't many women who read junk like this.

These stories are dark fantasies that invite the reader to engage in multiple murders, although the gunfights aren't called murders and the fights are treated as knightly jousts. But that figleaf doesn't cover the reality, in that the author leads the reader through multiple, ritualized killings, where scores of anonymous gunmen die, none of them a developed character so their death evokes no sympathy or grief.

I wish the whole western gunman market would vanish, and its authors would start to write something worthy of being called literature. These high-body-count western novels are the worst junk being commercially published.