Waters, Frank - William T. Pilkington (essay date August 1967)
William T. Pilkington (essay date August 1967)
SOURCE: "Character and Landscape: Frank Waters' Colorado Trilogy," in Western American Literature, Vol. II, No. 2, August, 1967, pp. 183-93.
[Pilkington, an American professor of English, is the author of several books on the literature of the West and Southwest. In the essay that follows, he examines the interrelationship between place and character in The Wild Earth's Nobility, Below Grass Roots, and The Dust within the Rock, a trilogy he considers "a work of great lyrical and emotional power."]
The drama of people's "conflicting relationships to their earth," Frank Waters once wrote, "has provided something of a thematic continuity in all my books" ["The Western Novel: A Symposium—Frank Waters," South Dakota Review (Autumn 1964)]. Like most Western writers, Waters strives to capture, in D. H. Lawrence's phrase, "the spirit of place." But as anyone who has submitted...
[The entire page is 4141 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
