One of the most interesting young novelists in the Southwest—and certainly the most embattled in terms of the frontier heritage—is Larry McMurtry. He should be examined in some detail for a review of his literary inquiry serves to summarize both the uses and dangers of the frontier inheritance as it affects the newest generation of southwestern writers to toil under its shadow.

McMurtry's first two novels, Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Cheyenne, were promising efforts to put the materials of frontier culture to serious literary use…. [Both books] are in-the-grain novels of people striving to live by the cultural values of the legend. An authentic mood is further heightened by the voice of the narrator. McMurtry speaks through a narrator who is frontiersman enough to move with ease through the tall-in-the-saddle milieu, but sensitive enough to note the ritualized energy and directionless fury surrounding him. In...