The Bookshelf, Young Texas Reader, Blog Notes, & Texana Youtube Channel


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The Texas Bookshelf is for single, specific books' reviews and author interviews . The Texas Parlor ranges more broadly than my other websites. The Young Texas Reader focuses on the youngest through teenagers. Texas Blog Notes surveys blogs of historical and literary interest. I've started a Will's Texana Youtube collecting channel where 1,000 videos are collected in 100 playlists . Find Will in Houston or at willstexana {at} yahoodotcom

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Texas as heroic geography ? - Bottum

Within his longer commentary on "Local Color" Joseph Bottum in his "First Things / First Thoughts" blog remarked on "heroic geography."
 
He writes, "In other words, we don't have many heroic types in American literature. What we have instead is heroic geography. The Virginian, the Down Easterner, the Texas Ranger, the cowboy, the Hooiser, the hillbilly, the Okie. These are tropes that serve the moral function filled in other cultures and other literatures primarily by heroes. And these geographical tropes survive well into our own era of indistinguishable shopping malls from Maine to California."

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