The post-Hemingway Western macho men : McGuane's stories

A friend in Buffalo spends time in summer fishing in Montana and has told me about his friendship with Tom McGuane, and from all accounts McGuane sounds like a terrific guy - and that should be no surprise, you can tell that from his stories: confident, assured, stories about mostly honorable men who may have made mistakes but are trying to get along in this world and have decent relations with women, family, and neighbors, strong and competent men who do the manly Montana things of hunting, fishing, ranching, but who are post-Hemingway in style and sensibility - a lot like Richard Ford's men, but more rooted in the Rockies and the West. His stories also give the West a modern sensibility - they're not ranch-hand stories a la Annie Proulx's recent work, but stories about the changing west, where most of the ranches are now owned by Hollywood stars (or more likely agents and producers) and there's plenty of spilloff opportunity for the ambitious and the alert. His story in the current New Yorker, The God Samaritan, is quite good and quite typical of McGuane's short fiction - a part-time rancher with a good day job in some kind of tech-sales industry, with son in prison (drugs, federal), ex-wife in San Diego, elderly mother nearby and eccentric - injures himself and hires a ranch hand to run the place temporarily. Complications ensue. There's a bit of a twist at the end which I could see coming from a mile away, but overall the story is quite effective and gives a real sense of a character in time and place, facing and facing up to the complex problems of modern life - same in Montana or anywhere.