Western drifters - and why the New Yorker shouldn't public novel excerpts

Tom McGuane's story "Salt" in the current New Yorker is another cool entry in his ever-lengthening list of fine stories about contemporary Montanans - like so many Western Plains (and mountain) drifters, but with often a New Age slant or, in other stories, part of the real-estate scrum and the catering to the huge appetites of Hollywood moguls living in the Northwest as part of a great weekend playland. This story is about a young woman, somewhat affectless and rootless, begins with her on a hike when she encounters a man who's just trapped a wolf - she tries to intervene and keep him from shooting the wolf, but he does so anyway, inevitably - and thus begins a long downward spiral of her emotions and sensibilities - she turns away from her boyfriend, is completely rude and insensitive to his eccentric father, goes on leave from her job, and devotes all her time to hiking the trails around Missoula. This mission pulls her farther away from society and from normal social contacts - and closer, spiritually and literally, to the wolves. There's just the slightest, deft hint at the end of the supernatural - not that she's a werewolf or anything, but there's a sense that she is a true "lone wolf." So in very short story we see a transformation of a young woman who is able to care about creatures, about nature - but not about people, not about herself. Very Western in feeling - not just the setting, though McGuane very good on topial details - but also the Western drifter mode - this young woman seems to have no history, no family, no background - another one who at some time in her life "set out for the territories." On another subject - briefly - check out Charles May's Reading the Short Story blog for a good post on the NYer fiction issue - he and I certainly agree on the New Yorker's sad shift away from the short story form, but I would add a few things: first, I do admire that they had a theme - noir detective fiction - in the current issue (though the Lahiri piece does not fit the theme); I would be a little tougher on the NYer for their novel excerpts (May did the ressearch - I just guessed the Lahiri's piece was part of a novel, but he's seen the promos) - aren't they just being shills, giving the publisher a free boost? A paid-for boost in fact? I agree with May that Lahiri is a fine short story writer and that this excerpt would not meet her standards as a well-designed short story - and I would go farther and say that the style, w/ its many fragments, fall short of her standard for elegance.