Bengt,
You will definitely want to check out John Cawelti's Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. He traces the PI genre back to Cooper's Leatherstocking tales: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=92944
You might also want to check out his earlier Six-Gun Mystique. I haven't read the revised "sequel," but the original was one of the first things I read on genre and quite impressed my thinking: http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/1095.htm
And I seem remember William Ruehlman's Saint with a Gun: The Unlawful Private Eye touching on his western roots: http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Gun-Unlawful-American-Private/dp/0814773931
Mark
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
> From: bengt@mediaimorronidag.se
> Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 18:47:32 +0200
> Subject: RARA-AVIS: westner vs noir, cowboy vs private eye
>
> I´m reading all of James Crumley to write a piece - presentation, essay,
> whatever - om him for a Swedish book about noir and hard boiled crime
> authors. The american private eye is/was always a relative to the american
> cowboy but it seems to me that Crumley´s fiction is/was the closest to
> western/cowboy novels that american noir crime novels will ever get.
>
> So I´m thinking about the connection between the two - or the one -
> genre(s), between american crime novels and the myth of the american western
> and cowboy myth. Has there been anything written about this? Am I right? You
> have any thoughts that can send me in the right direction when I start
> writing? Any suggestion of other american crime writers who come close to
> western cowboy novels - or writers of cowboy fiction who come close to crime
> novels? Or anything!
>
> Bengt Eriksson
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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