Brett Hart created the image of the heroic cowboy
in pulp stories
                                                 published at the turn of the 19-20th centuries;
he was despised                   by Mark Twain who maligned                   Hart's reputation in
the press, driving Hart to move to Europe It        was Hart              who created the character                     that became the basis for       "Shane" which is horribly parodied by John Wayne            
                                               ­         where he continued to publish
but in America's                                     gilded age the rough, dusty cowhand
was not                                               respected, instead cavalier suitors were
the accepted courtier to a court that
burned to the       Americans claim to be individuals but we're the first to j
                 ump on the moving sidewalk                                                         ­   ground w/ the Southern States
Westerns became lost, unevolved stereotypes; why, driven by                frontier spirit
did westerns per se                   stay stuck in time; most westerns are set in
                           the mid-late 19th century                         but the characters are as dumb as cave men
                     Hart had a                                     conspicuous influence on Damon Runyon in his                    use urbane dialect      Twain was a glorified hick who wrote lovingly of                            the racist                 Old South. I never liked Twain                             when u had what appears to                        me at least to be semi-intellectual                        at least "Doc" Holiday was a doctor, or dentist,
                              Billy the Kid was from Manhattan, my old neighborhood, Wild Bill wasn't all that wild & Frank James                      wrote his highly embellished memoirs about he &
                    his famous brother & their
     collective criminal ensemble Hart wrote about              everyone including the Chinese                          not as caricatures but as thinking flesh                     & blood individuals w/ a soul no less
                                                  that's more than Twain ever did