Afterword

This comment considers the essays by David Wrobel, Krista Comer, and Blake Allmendinger in relationship to each other. Far from being merely regional, late twentiethcentury Western literature has produced “conversations” about the American experience and is valuable in its own right. Wrobel emphasizes the overlapping, rather than segmented, versions of the frontier of the Western literary tradition, while Comer focuses on the distinctive perspective of Generation X through genre Žction about modern Los Angeles; similar insights can be gained through close readings of the myster y genre. Finally, Allmendinger provides hints of what historians and literar y critics can offer to, and learn from, each other in studying twentiethcentury Western literature.