UCLA

Destabilizing the authentic notions of nationhood and manhood disseminated in dominant narratives about the American West, "Frontiers of Modern Ethnic American Fiction: Exploring the Popular West in the Writings of Mike Gold, Nathanael West, John Fante, and Américo Paredes" contemplates representations of the popular West in early-twentieth-century ethnic- American fiction. The project surveys novels, short stories, and articles composed by modern ethnic-American-male writers. I argue that the ethnic writers of this study broadened the predominant definition of American culture by adopting and adapting cowboy masculinity and motifs of the popular West to the ends of their literary narratives of ethnic masculinity. Writing during a period of immigration restriction and rampant xenophobia, the authors examined here--Mike Gold, Nathanael West, Américo Paredes, and John Fante--deploy figures of cowboy masculinity, celebrated by the popular West, to interrogate and resist the dominant Americanist conception of what constituted the authentic national body. The popular West consists of texts about the American West popularly consumed and circulating in mass culture. Consistent among the popular West's many iterations is a national narrative crafted from a peculiarly Anglo-American historiography that articulated the settlement of the frontier as evidence of American racial superiority. Often motivated by a nativism and pride in Anglo origins, the architects of such dominant narratives fashioned histories and stories of the frontier, where national success was contingent upon the triumph of Anglo-Saxon manhood. These stories experienced tremendous popularity from the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century, appearing in a variety of forms including the dime novel, pulp fiction, stage show, and film. Modern ethnic authors respond to the popular West in different ways, yet all are preoccupied with how popular cultural narratives of the West under the pretext of historical truth convey what it means to be an authentic American and to what extent ethnic groups can stake a real claim to belong in the United States. Examining the responses of modern ethnic American writers to the popular West, my project merges critical subjects--ethnic American literature, popular culture, and the American West--yet to be examined by literary scholarship.