True West : Authenticity and the American West

by Handley, William R.

• ISBN13: 9780803259768
• ISBN10: 080325976X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-01
• Publisher: Bison Books

Summary

What explains the longstanding but elusive assumption that out West lies an authentic origin and destination for American culture? In fifteen essays of diverse interest, from Native American cultural authority to authentic reproductions in frontier theme parks,True Westopens an illuminating new chapter in western studies.

Author Biography

William R. Handley teaches American literature at the University of Southern California and is past president of the Western Literature Association. He is the author of Marriage, Violence, and Nation in the American Literary West. Nathaniel Lewis is an associate professor of English at Saint Michael’s College and the author of Unsettling the Literary West: Authenticity and Authorship (Nebraska 2003), winner of the Thomas J. Lyon award in 2004.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Notes	p. 16
Rhetorics of Authenticity	p. 19
Projecting Authenticity in the 1830s	p. 21
Notes	p. 35
Henry Adams's Western Fantasy	p. 38
Notes	p. 53
Implications of the Demand for Authenticity in Writings from the Canadian West	p. 56
Notes	p. 67
"the West Authentic, " the West Divided	p. 72
Notes	p. 91
Authenticity and Native American Cultures	p. 95
Imagined Indians and Sacred Landscape from New Age to Nature Writing	p. 97
Notes	p. 115
Charles Eastman's Search for an Authenticating Culture Concept	p. 117
Notes	p. 136
Authenticity, Regionalism, and Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, or Sylvester Long	p. 140
Notes	p. 153
"getting Real" in Contemporary American Indian Literature	p. 155
Notes	p. 171
Picturing Histories	p. 177
Pictorialist and Ethnographic Adventurist	p. 179
Notes	p. 189
Threshold Space in Frederic Remington's Coming to the Call	p. 194
Notes	p. 218
Photographic Documentation and Distortion in Japanese American Internment Narratives	p. 222
Notes	p. 250
Reimagining Place	p. 255
Rick Bass and the Rhetoric of Protecting Place	p. 257
Notes	p. 273
Environmental and Literary Stewardship in Stegner and Kittredge	p. 275
Notes	p. 287
Terry Tempest Williams and the Redemption of "native" Mormonism	p. 290
Notes	p. 302
Ideology, Practice, and Regional History Along Buena Park's Entertainment Corridor	p. 304
Notes	p. 322
Bibliography	p. 329
Contributors	p. 353
Index	p. 357
In the Postwestern Horizons Series	p. 371
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.