The best influential western literature (to my writing)

After my first book came out, I was interviewed by a local reporter. When he asked what influenced me to write western fiction, I told him I really didn’t know. Why had I been compelled to write a story told by an old man about his younger days spent chasing those who murdered his brother? Then, I remembered, at eleven years old, I had read True Grit. A tale of revenge; a teen-aged girl, strong-willed, saddled up with an old, one-eyed codger of a US marshal hellbent on finding her father’s killer, as told through the voice of an aging woman. Portis wrote a simple tale with elegant prose with the use of first-person narrative. His influence had stayed with me all those years, buried deep, to be released through my own words, inspiring Zebadiah Creed’s voice, and his story.

What can you say about Cormac McCarthy that has not been said before, the poetry in his prose, his fearlessness to go to the human extreme of emotional tension and violence, the elegance of creating a world so real that one does not want to leave, yet cannot stay? The writer in me wants to write just like him, but... I cannot, I will not, for there is only one Cormac McCarthy, and the world could not stand another.

This is what I wrote when, as a judge in 2020, I recommended All God’s Children win the prestigious Spur Award for Best Traditional Western:

“From the opening sentence, the opening paragraph, and page, Aaron Gwyn sweeps us into an early nineteenth-century America bursting at the seams. He tells the tale of two very different folks, a young man disowned by his family in Kentucky, and a young slave girl from Virginia who refuses to accept her lot in life. Both their paths lead them to Texas. For Duncan, to fight in the revolution and serve heroically with the Texas Rangers, yet can never have true love; for Cecelia, to know freedom and love on the frontier, only to have both brutally snatched away in an instant. Beautifully written in simple, classic prose, Gwyn offers us a fresh, yet timeless glimpse into two American lives that finally find, in themselves and in each other, solace amongst the violent growth of our nation.”

It was the first of two finalists.

I think I found out about Rudolfo Anaya on Facebook. Someone praised him, that he was the best writer to have lived in New Mexico and one of the first true voices to rise out of the bourgeoning Latino writers of the seventies. I immediately bought Bless Me, Ultima and entered a world so familiar, so American, yet so alien, where magic is not just expected, but necessary to live a full life. As I wrote book three of my own series, Anaya’s writing offered a profound influence in opening a world of dreams, a reality only a few can know and understand.

Wow, what an exciting, intense, emotional book about a sixteen-year-old girl, after killing most of the band of Comanches who killed her family and stole her sister, joins up with a cattle drive dressed a boy, to drive her cattle to market through Texas, Oklahoma, and into Kansas. Whew!! Oh, and along the way, she talks some of the cowboys into going after the rest of the Comanches with not too favorable results. And... she falls in love with her sidekick! One of the best “westerns” I’ve read in a while and was a finalist for this year’s Spur Award for Best Traditional Western. If I was one of the judges, The Comanche Kid would have been my top pick for the Spur!