| When postmodernism was first introduced into a post-World War II society, the movement was an attempt to systematize a new wave of literature. The definition described a new, self-reflexive, self-aware, dismembered narrative that signaled a break with the traditional canon, inverting characterizations, plot and conventions in storytelling. As that definition stood, it applied to only a few American writers. The work of American author Larry McMurtry is neither self-reflexive nor self-aware, but several new interpretations of postmodernism do describe his work, which has been problematic for critics since he began to write.; I will examine four McMurtry novels and explain how those novels fit within a postmodern arena, using the definition of a “second generation” of postmodernism, one in which “knowing” is privileged over knowledge. The novels I will took at include Lonesome Dove (1985), Streets of Laredo (1993), Dead Man's Walk (1995), and Comanche Moon (1998). McMurtry argues implicitly in those novels that frontier survival skills are more important to the westerner than academic pursuits. This paean to the adventuring cowboy has been recognized in his western novels, but he further argues, more openly, that this way of life is passing and that a new character is needed to function in the modern world. Once he becomes physically fragmented, Augustus McCrae, like the Old West he represents, can no longer survive.; Several critics in recent years have begun to see the new western as postmodern in design. The characters in modern westerns find a world far more complicated than the one portrayed in traditional western American myth. For purposes of this work, I will emphasize the postmodern definitions of these new critics: Brian McHale, Douwe Fokkema, Theo D'haen, Deborah Madsen, and Frederic Jameson. Most of the definitions I will use come from the “second generation” of theorists, those who took their ideas from earlier works. The two dominants or focusing components of the definitions will be the ontological aspects of McMurtry's work and the metonymic fragmentation that characterizes his novels. McMurtry's postmodern attitudes lie in his pragmatic view of life and his eulogy for a passing era. |
