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The Myth of the Cowboy by Ulrich Eigner
Sissy: Are you a real cowboy? Bud: Depends on what you think a real cowboy is! (Urban Cowboy, 1980)
“Cowboys have interested me since I was a child, not the real ones, of course, but the ones I invented for myself. The real thing might disappoint me terribly.” (Hustvedt, 2003, p. 67)
Already before, but even more so after Frederick Jackson Turner (1966) first talked about his frontier thesis in 1893 in a speech to the American Historical Association during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, historians have been in controversy over the history of the West. Ray Allen Billington (1973) attributes the success of Turner’s thesis in the academic as well as the public realms to its optimism: “The frontier was disappearing, but the pioneer experience had bred into Americans not only value judgments and beliefs that elevated them above lesser peoples, but a hardihood and an aggressive spirit that would allow them to protect their way of life and thought against hostile forces.…
