Hey! I was at Barnes and noble looking for a good western book yesterday for a teen I know who recently fell in love with Red Dead Redemption. When I was looking at the western section it really struck me how much the cover art looks exactly like a romance novel cover. Like the Fabio 1980s Era romance covers. Usually two attractive cowboys…but here they’re doing manly cowboy stuff instead of embracing with long flowing hair. I could swear it was like a Saturday Night Live parody of “westerns:Romance novels for your dad!” It just got me thinking why? The titles were also hilarious…like if you sat down to write the most basic cowboy sentence that what the title was like…something like “two guns in dead man’s gulch” or something like that. I’m not doing the titles justice but they’re so funny. Is it that the target audience is an older audience and so they want the clear symbolism that you get on romance novels? What’s going on? Anyway my quest continues for a good western for my teenage friend that doesn’t have a super cheesy cover.
by Pushkin9
6 Comments
Western covers have been the same for 50 or more years.
I’ve never been disappointed by a book by Louis L’Amour, my favourite western author.
There’s always Cormac MacCarthy, like *All the Pretty Horses*.
There aren’t many Western cowboy themed books. I was looking back when RDR1 came out. I did find a general book in life in the plains, cowboy rules. Totally forgot about it, poorly written.
Most westerns do cater to a certain type of man, the same way romances attract certain women. They do pretty much what you expect. Obviously, there’s novels that are subvert the norm or just better written. Cormac McCarthy, Charles Portis, Elmer Kelton, Elmore Leonard (I actually prefer his westerns to his crime), Oakley Hall, and John Williams wrote Butcher’s Crossing which is *chefs kiss
Lonesome Dove!!! And the cover isn’t cheesy.