American frontier

I just finished reading The Blood Meridian. What an amazing book. It makes me wanna start a third RDR2-playthrough and watch old western movies. But what are YOUR favorite movies/series of the genre? I would like somthings that´s still solid in 2023. I prefer gritty stories over hero stories.

I would also like tips about historic books about the whole American frontier era. Something like the Wiki-article with maps and illustrations.

"Unforgiven" (clint eastwood, morgan freeman, gene hackman) is classic dark western full of scoundrels and not a 'clean' hero in the whole thing. i think the screenplay won an oscar.. something from it did. it's a classic.. the ending delivers. 

and not american.. but australian w/same vibe but even darker. "The Proposition" - guy pearce, daniel huston, ray winstone, emily watson.

and as for books.. 

A Majority of Scoundrels by Don Berry - is something i really enjoyed. it's about fur traders. i haven't read his other books but they get high praise from some people. it's pretty bonkers and at times super violent and just surreal.

https://www.powells.com/book/a-majority-of-scoundrels-9780870710896

  Quote

With the skill of a historian, Don Berry set his celebrated trilogy of novels  Trask, Moontrap, and To Build a Ship  in pioneer-era Oregon. In A Majority of Scoundrels, he brings the craft of a novelist to his captivating history of the American fur trade.

that's all that comes to mind off the top of my head. 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly <- if you ever get a chance to see this on the big screen. do it! the payoff is in the end, everything builds to it. Sergio Leone

The Wild Bunch <- some crazy ultraviolence you wouldnt expect from a western made in 1969. Sam Peckinpah

The Revenant <- jumping to a more modern movie, but still great.

I recently read 'Empire of the Summer Moon' about the Comanches, which is pretty great if you're looking for some real life Blood Meridian stuff.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7648269

And Bury my Heart and Wounded Knee is a classic for a reason.

But nothing will top BM. I suggest reading it again. Samuel Chamberlain's 'My Confession' is a decent substitute, or ofc, the other southern McCarthy books. The Border Trilogy is a good bet. The Crossing is one of his best books, absolutely heartbreaking that one.

For another good frontier narrative, you might enjoy Nathanial Hawthorne's short story Roger Malvin's Burial, about two European settlers in Massachusetts on their way home after massacring some natives. If you really loved Blood Meridian, then you probably would enjoy Melville's Moby-Dick (if you have not already read it), which I believe was McCarthy's favorite book and is referenced indirectly throughout BM.

As for movies, my favorite western is the Coen Brother's version of True Grit. Used to love the John Ford movie The Searchers when I was younger too, haven't seen it in a while, though. That one has frontier violence and confrontations between settlers and natives.

Actually, speaking of the Coens, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is great.

oh, "Dead Man" by Jim Jarmusch. classic gritty dark.. kafkaesque. the score makes some people (me) a little mental though.

and another clint eastwood classic that many of us probably saw many times as kids.. "The Outlaw Josey Wales"

Blood Meridian, nothing really comes close. Re-read it too every so often, new details continually emerge.

Cinema has stacks of variety, from El Topo to McCabe & Mrs Miller, from Little Big Man to High Plains Drifter (classic pulp) to a documentary like American Interior. Anything with Chief Dan George:

Italian contributions can’t be understated. You could play a single gunshot sample from their vast catalogue & immediately source the origin.

Add

Killers of the Flower Moon - new Marty Scorsese film is about the osage murders. haven't seen it but there's a book about it all... 1920s though so not as old as frontier days. 

 the collected works of billy the kid , by michael ondaatje