You have to turn a blind eye to politics in nearly all Westerns.
In the 1880s, a weedy Easterner named Owen Wister had something like a nervous breakdown. Wyoming, with its wide-open spaces and healthy pursuits, was prescribed as a cure. Wister was immediately smitten by the taciturn cowboys and the rules imposed upon them by the cattle barons.
The summer of 1976 was so hot that bars of chocolate melted on the shelves before confectioners could sell them.
Deadwood lies at the northern tip of the Black Hills, where the land is ancient and rubbed smooth by time. The Black Hills are more rugged at their southern extremity, where bare granite forms pinnacles and spires.
It would be a big mistake to think that Chekhov was a natural, that he did not have to work for his effects and singular style.
If someone like my father chooses to criticise Israeli policies, it's not because he is a self-hating Jew, but because he is not prepared to live in a state of self-denial.
One-eyed Reuben 'Rooster' Cogburn is the role that finally delivered John Wayne his Oscar.
I'll tell you now that I hate myself for many reasons, but being Jewish is not one of them.
I had a Latin master who, for no rational reason whatsoever - I was a very quiet kid at school - just hated me.
Tel Aviv is buzzing with so much life, you could bottle it and sell it as honey, and even Jerusalem has a certain fizz. But if you want to see anger, go to Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon.
Of course the 19th century remained in blissful ignorance of post-modern irony, and the dime novels were made without end.
I do not mean for one second to suggest that 'White Doves at Morning' was written with a movie deal in mind. Certainly not.
My own zigzag path through life led me back to Santa Cruz in the early Eighties, and I have revisited regularly since. The place hasn't changed: head in the clouds, backside on the hills and feet in the ocean - one of the most decent and beautiful places on earth.
Copywriting cuts the communication cord between word and feeling. By offering instant gratification, it atrophies more subtle emotions.
McCarthy's prose in 'Blood Meridian' comes blazing from the Book of Revelation.
As Annie Proulx is to Wyoming, so is Jane Candia Coleman to Arizona.
In 1966, I bought my parents a carriage clock for their silver wedding anniversary. It was last wound 30 years later, in December 1996, the month my father died.
I'm completely lacking any sense of religious belief, but I am superstitious.
I believe that there may well be a personal God out there - not a monotheistic God - that has got it in for me.
I still see the world as a place of bitter irony and black humour, failed hopes, dashed plans. I hope to make my work sparer, to outgrow my desire to show off.
