The ambiguities of the Modern West: A new Tom McGuane story in The New Yorker

Tom McGuane steps in with another one of his New West stories in the current New Yorker; The House on Sand Hill Cove (?) brings us another typical McGuane character, western and independent and kind of foolishly macho - makes a ridiculous pass at the teenage babysitter, totally hopeless and pretty much wrecking his marriage (contrast with Cheever's great story about a pass at a sitter) - but blunt and open and probably a totally good guy, if you're also a good guy (relationships with women are another matter). Like many McGuane characters, though he's living among the outdoors types he's got an indoors job, in this case a lawyer with a really diminished practice - this story feels very contemporary, and you have the sense that the lawyer's business was very hot when everyone in Hollywood was buying ranches in Montana, but now it's gone dead. Interesting that in this story he takes on issues of the ruination of the Old West and the pretentious fake westerners - the character buys a house from an old cowboy, foreclosed, left it a wreck with animal carcasses and hides all over the place, that's what the beloved cowboy image has become, the cowboy disappearing somewhere into the "great Basin" (whatever that is - McGuane drops in Westernisms and local references to help make the landscape feel specific and exotic, as did Annie Proulx), and this contrasted with the lawyer's friend who tells tales of his Western cowboy past, none of which is true. McGuane, like so many others, is a literary descendant of Carver, and he's also a literary brother to Richard Ford, maybe Sam Shepard - all of whom thrive on both the openness and the ambiguities of the modern West. A good story.