THE SIX-GUN MYSTIQUE by John G. Cawelti
Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, (1972). First edition. Paperback. John Cawelti was one of the pioneers in establishing an academic respectability to the study of popular culture. As an example, he published "The Six Gun Mystique" which was based on an analysis of the messages contained in the western novels which were very popular for many decades with the public. This copy is warmly inscribed to Ross Macdonald by the author on the title page. With a full-page note in pencil by Ross Macdonald on the front endpaper expanding on a sentence on page 33 regarding "collective dreams." "There are certain dreams from which we wake refreshed," writes Macdonald. ("Perhaps I am having one now--I hope this isn't a dream). The kind of dreams that refuel us giving the sense of having communed with ourselves, I believe, as if we had overheard ourselves talking in our sleep. This is one of my ideas of popular art, where a nation stirs in its sleep and dreams aloud, becoming more of a nation as it speaks and listens to itself to itself tall stories of its dreams, and finally stories just as large as life, or a little larger, like Huckleberry Finn, which children love and adults reread." With many other penciled markings in the text. Laid in is a #10 business envelope with three lines written in pencil by Ross Macdonald. Perfect bound in the original printed wrappers, as issued. A very good clean copy with wear to extremities. Item #14679
Price: $375.00