Have the Coastal Elite Colonized America’s Last Frontier?

Hello and welcome to The Close Read, the official Claremont Review of Books podcast. I'm your host, Spencer Clavin, Associate Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and it has been my privilege for some time now to sit down with various authors from the CRB and talk further about the pieces that they write for us. This is a particularly exciting episode because we've got a new issue that i'm holding up if you're watching on video in physical in its physical presence this is our fall 2026 issue with its cover story by Mike Anton on Stanford got a whole bunch of great stuff and even very excitingly a live episode of the close read coming up down the road because we'll be gathering together as an editorial team in New York take that opportunity to record a live episode But we're going to kick this issue off, actually, with a returning guest who's got a new fabulous essay in CRB named Lane Scott. She's the author of Matriarch Goals, Substack. You can find her over there. And she's got a piece now in CRB on Yellowstone and Lonesome Dove. It's called Cowboys and Carpetbaggers. This is a really terrific essay, Lane. First of all, welcome to the show. Nice to have you. Thank you. second of all your your subject here well it's it's a wide-ranging piece your subject here i think is broadly speaking the american western somewhat uh more specifically it's Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove from 1985 but also then and kind of in conjunction um the uh the the show Yellowstone which is a sort of what would you call it a property a a cinematic universe almost now with a number of different yes yeah Paramount vehicle it's written by Taylor Sheridan and it it um it sort of spawned just a zillion uh sequels and just that the Yellowstone universe in general has grown and grown and it gets kind of an outrageous uh audience capture a lot of people watch it a lot of people are influenced by it so i was amazed and kind of excited when they when i saw the 40th anniversary edition of McMurtry's book uh Taylor Sheridan had written the foreword and the stuff that he writes about um about how the novel influenced him and his art and also i think he named his first son Augustus like you do you know if you've read the novel many people since since i've been starting on this project it's been kind of amazing the number of men that that are involved in you know men of letters who have named their son after this character Augustus McCrae so um in Lonesome Dove so just the just approaching his work from the that that viewpoint of McMurtry and how much that influenced him sort of inspired the piece okay yeah i did not realize i'll have to ask my parents if Augustus was one of the names floated before before they landed on Spencer um it's not impossible because i know that Lonesome Dove has a high place of honor in my family but actually i've never read it and your piece inspired me to start so i was i was surprised by that i'm so happy for you though that you've that you've never read it and you and you get to see it now you get to encounter the whole thing that's exciting no it's it's a huge gap in my kind of american literature knowledge and right i owe you a i dm'd you to say i owe you a huge debt of gratitude because i'm having the best time i'm working through it rather slowly but maybe for those who haven't read it or need a reminder we can start with this phenomenal novel and without any major spoilers can you tell us kind of what are McMurtry's themes what's it about well Lonesome Dove is a town on the border of Mexico and uh the the novel starts with these two retired Texas Rangers and i think almost immediately they're fighting these two men and one of them uh Gus McCrae is is uh a kind of an odysseus-like character uh very wily very um talkative very philosophical and then the other one captain call is very stoic very workmanlike and a natural leader of men and so um one of the interesting things i would say the reason that most people are so drawn to it is the friendship between these two men their loyalty to each other and also what they draw out of each other um how they help each other to become a more complete version and of course the story um is something of a tragedy the interesting thing i think which i included in the piece is that mcmurtry later said that he intended to write sort of a sad tragedy something that was something that would show the roughness or the the difficult nature of the time and the the readers took it just as he says like a a gone with the wind set in the west the readers were having none of that they just loved it and didn't and almost didn't see the sadness of it which is kind of interesting The main journey or epic quest of the novel is that these two rangers decide to make one last cattle drive. They go and rustle up some cattle in Mexico, and their main opponent dies. Their main bandit, Mexican bandit opponent dies. That's been keeping them kind of at the border there, sort of policing. but mostly i think the the sense is they're mostly not needed anymore because this is the this novel is set sort of at the end of the west at the closing of the west so they're they're um increasingly not needed in the civilized world and so they decide that montana is still uh a wilderness and still unconquered and and still has indians and still has all the challenges and i think that's the background of why they go they decide to go see this this place uh that that no one has seen yet and and catch a little bit of it for themselves capture it so that they can they can have this this american wilderness before society ruins it or or or domesticates it yeah the elegiac tone of that the dwindling frontier is a major theme already the novel as i'm reading it and certainly of your essay it's funny you mentioned Odysseus because I'm reading it right now with a bunch of freshmen and we're coming to the end so we've naturally been talking about all of the subsequent authors after Homer who just couldn't believe that Odysseus would ever really settle down it doesn't it didn't seem like something this guy could ever do of course In the poem, the prophecy is that he will die among his people, but in Tennyson's version and Dante's version and all of these other spinoffs, if you like, he has to press on and there's got to be somewhere else for him to go. and this is also true as you say of these two heroes you you write mcmurtry and sheridan both chew on the bitterness of this reality as civilization grows men of weaker constitution with more money and power secure the nation's choicest fruits for themselves spoiling and ruining and this phenomenon challenges the comforting link which has always existed in the american soul between the virtuous and detached cowboy and nature's greatest reward can you maybe talk a little bit about the difference both in time period but also in approach to this central fact that between mcmurtry and sheridan um so yes so mcmurtry's writing in the 80s about the closing of the frontier and then sheridan's uh most of his work not the prequels but the main uh lodestar Yellowstone takes place in present day which was i think it started the show started in 2018 and he actually anticipated a lot of that domestic migration that would come probably was happening then but really uh caught speed with COVID you have a lot of people from the blue coast from wealthy areas with the rise of remote working moving to places in the mountain west and places in montana that um are pristine uh initially cheaper but of course now not and and grabbing these these uh large ranches and and really this way of life that i think has always existed in the american sort of psyche about about the stories we tell about ourselves i think the part of the the interesting thing about this piece was to explore how much we really tend to think that the best men will have the the nature's best is sort of preserved for these people because it because the cowboys and what happens in um mcmurtry's novels is that it's so difficult to get there it's so it requires so much grit and so much toughness and you have to wean yourself from all other pleasures and and the cowboy and the ranger uh is is a man almost he's uncivilized in that he's happiest and best and most useful outside of society but in some ways he's he's more refined in that he has trained himself to not need anything but the but the most beautiful the most rare and so this is a uh mcmurtry's is a story of um of two men who really sacrifice a lot of things that maybe they shouldn't family friends women uh innocent lives in order to secure this thing that they both love more than anything else that they've that they've identified as the as the purest good and um i think that was mcmurtry's uh tragedy is that they shouldn't have but the interesting thing about the reader of this novel is that is that some part of us thinks that that's a fair trade that they were right to do that or that at least they're admirable to do that so then what is interesting about Sheridan's modern day uh western first of all that he revived the western in general because we were kind of done with it we we were sort of we had uh critiqued it to death and so he revives this makes it very popular again and explores it with this new theme of the of the new closing of the west which is Which is essentially these places that used to be inexpensive but required grit or required toughness or required restraint or being weaned from the pleasures and ease of society. That's sort of the entry fee. Now, with all the billionaires coming in and buying it up, it is out of reach and it no longer can be purchased or attained with those virtues. you have to be a major player you have to be you have to be a banker or a private equity guy and so both of these um both of these stories and both of these men sort of sort of explore that tragedy and i say in the piece i think that it's Sheridan especially sort of weaves in a little bit of horror john it's horror it's horrifying to the american that that such um lesser men would take these spoils and and then the cowboys who had been there for five or six generations because their forefathers had settled it and had done all this difficult thing you know to keep it alive which is a lot of what Sheridan's prequel work looks at the horror is that such lesser men would be able to take it from them because they they have wealth or they have you know the engine of of uh capitalism or whatever so it's just this look at this you know there's a lot more going on it's kind of a modern day soap opera but the but but what Sheridan is trying to do i think is explore this this theme again but in our time as we see everybody kind of flocking to these to these areas that are not as built up and not as problematic as as the over-civilized coasts it's so intriguing what you say about the unintentional kind of romanticization of MacMurtry's story not that doesn't have many capital R romantic elements in it but that he has in mind this but at least at least an unresolvable tension and maybe a kind of heartbreaking tragedy about these guys who are are fundamentally missing something or have not really rounded themselves out to the point that they can settle down but those of us who read the novel sometimes feel like they're our guys like we kind of love them for that or there's something beautiful in it and i i hate to come back one more time to Odysseus but it really does strike me that in Dante the fact that Odysseus can't stop wandering and he's so restless is one of his cardinal sins his main problem is he's a liar that he's there for fraud but the big thing But then after that, the big thing is that he can't ever find rest. And this is sort of an ugly thing about him or a problem. In tension, it's this beautiful, moving, surging longing, right, to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bounds of human thought. And this difficulty that you're describing is still, I think, really live. And that's the point maybe of bringing in Sheridan in American culture that we love, I think, to picture the good life settling down, even the kind of commerce that you're describing, right? Getting to a point where you don't have to kill and even maybe steal and perform, you know, dangerous acts to conquer the wilderness. like isn't it kind of all about that the american dream like getting getting your uh your quiet domestic scene and yet once we attain it maybe there's a certain disdain or we don't fully value that um i'm wondering do you think that we are still i mean the american character has changed a lot in in the last 50 or so years but do you think that this complexity is still live for us like we're still wrestling with it yes i mean it's it's most obvious in in the gender wars or the the battle of the sexes because of course i don't go into this in the piece but but women in general represent domestication society this the west is a wonderful place for competent men and a horrible place for women children and incompetent men so the you're looking at a at a sort of an elite class of capable people and of course what happens when you um when you refine these abilities you know gunslinging but also just uh strategy thinking ahead just the way that they read like the book is so wonderful because they they they track things they read the soul the the layout they have all this sophisticated understanding a sixth sense of where people are um one of my favorite parts of what McMurtry does is that he gives Gus this um incredible vision like his vision is better than so he can see just incredibly far off so he's he's naturally gifted he's he's unusually brave he doesn't feel fear but he but he doesn't um he's not rash he doesn't hate life he he loves it he loves being alive but he he does not have any fear in battle and then he has this unbelievable gift of sight and also uh accuracy aim and then of course call is this unusual leader that men are just drawn to and will follow and he has this he sort of lives in their minds is this this presence they have to live up to and so you have to ask yourself in in civilized society what do these men do you know and i think that that's true in some ways for all men and and America, it's true of all Western civilization but America represents sort of the last bit of adventuring, and even under John F. Kennedy we have like the space program the final frontier that sort of beckons uh with this same idea after the cowboys um are no more than we have like the space programs that keeps coming to my mind as you're talking Musk of course yeah so so this the idea that there's there's a new challenge that will call upon this group of of men that are uniquely capable because of course if you are able to do something you're you're unhappy unless you're doing it you're on so so the challenge is for society to have a use for these men and then also what i get into is i think the um the element of horror that Sheridan because he's a little bit more nihilistic than than McMurtry what he gets into is is the the awful reality that an elite man like that would feel having to live among lesser men so it's this um it's this disgust and just kind of and and more than anything just a desire to get away from men who are not who are attached to softness who are not gritty who are not tough so um i think that that we still are we still have that we're still telling this story about ourselves one way or another this is the story that that Americans i think even George Washington saying nothing at the Constitutional Convention but a few words you know our greatest leader says nothing he was just a just a completely least silent that that's that's the cowboy even that is kind of an American understanding whereas Cicero and the and the European uh leader would be a would be an orator would be would be talking a lot our our understanding of our men is different it's it's competence and practical capability as opposed to this this person who would be a gentleman at the height of society who would be able to to find a place um in the flourishing version of civilization so we have so the difficult and of course women want to have safety and and law and all these things and so i mean i my husband i talk about this all the time because i'm i married a cowboy his his family had a horse ranch in Arizona and my natural inclination is to try to be like a socialite or like the height you know let's get all the friends and get all this that's what i write about in my Substack too is like how to build this whole community and and my husband sees that obviously he's a father he sees the the virtue in that but some part of him is always wanting to get out of society and go and test him you know go out to the wilderness where you have to where where it will tell you whether you measure up or not two themes that you've brought to mind from your piece that we haven't touched on yet one is you mentioned nihilism or the moral code that governs each of these universes and the other related one is the Indians uh the people that are in this untamed wilderness in the novel they've been mostly i think the word often used is broken right or chased out they've been essentially domesticated in Yellowstone and you can tell me I've misread you here, but I take you to be saying that the Indians represent, they're given a kind of native earthy wisdom that is in contrast to the kind of nihilism of the men, of the capital W Western American men are kind of like without any sense of an overarching moral code. but if there is one it exists in this ancient um native native faith and this leads me to ask you a question about Christianity and all of this because when you start saying okay women desire they represent the hearth they tend they do in in practice tend the hearth and desire this homestead um and like the whole act of uh the whole the whole drama of home life is is this negotiation between the cowboy your cowboy husband who wants to go out quest and your socialite impulses and how do we kind of it's like well i can think of one institution that's done a pretty good job like brokering a sort of peace between these two things and it's Christianity it has this like sacrificial dimension to it that i think shapes or guides in and has at least the idea that the most extraordinary greatest man goes even beyond his restless questing to to an act of self-sacrifice and that's what kind of consummates man's christian ethos obviously or i i get the impression that for Sheridan like that's not an option and do you think that the removal of that possibility has um made this problem worse i guess yes um so without in the non-christian world sheridan has a couple of his characters interestingly i think they're the female characters he has a couple of his characters say that the land is god there's the sense that the ranch so that this family this mafia-like family owns the last giant pristine part of wilderness of montana it's it's the main character who is played by kevin costner says that this is what you would buy if you had all the money in the world this is what you would buy so the the his daughter Beth says that the land is God and i think that Sheridan gives his natives his Indian tribe um goodness and decency just because they've the idea is that they've been with that land they've been they've been close enough to the land to where it's really the land that's giving them that sanctity basically that that sort of otherworldly goodness um which is of course historically inaccurate and also just weird you know it's a little bit of a sleight of hand but that's that's why it's this it's it's Rousseauian it's this idea that that society or civilization hasn't corrupted the noble savage but um but for for men and women in society now it is true that Christianity does ask men to die I mean that society is predicated on men dying sometimes actually dying like martyrdom but but all the time in in Christian marriage dying to self i mean that's what that's what that's the whole line after you know the one that's that the manosphere quotes a lot about women being submissive to their husbands that the man is supposed to be Christ-like and die for his wife the way that Christ does for the church that's what he did so there is the challenge is written in there the question is whether um whether men so i think Sheridan thinks too little of men in that they that he doesn't he doesn't give them in every in all their like he has this this elite class that can reach this level of kind of amazing uh self-sacrifice and also grit and also telling yourself no that the number of virtues they have that are just born of necessity because they have to say like no i don't need to drink water for two days no i don't need to eat for a week and i can survive that kind of thing that real asceticism um he doesn't extend that into men living in society and make it something that all men can do and Christianity of course does and actually not only offers it but demands it as a as a matter of as a matter of just being a Christian man the chastity that is demanded the the self-sacrifice so that that is and and McMurtry has more of that it's it's definitely a theme of the novel that that Gus loved this woman and she told him no she refused him it probably one of the few to ever refuse him and what that's what women do ideally they they tell the man that they're not going to put up with his crap as far as his wandering you know that they this is this is my line and this is what i'm willing to and so the whole idea the whole tragedy for Gus that he spends the majority of the novel the only reason he goes to Montana he doesn't want to go he goes because he might see Clara on the way um because he wants to get one last look at her and see if and see if they can you know but but it also says in that same that same chapter when that when he's at her ranch and her husband has died and she's available again it that McMurtry says that that that Gus asked her to marry him and then but she sees that he's just hoping he's scared to death and he's hoping that she says no he hope he hopes it doesn't you know he's relieved when she won't so so there's this tension and i think one of the more interesting conversations i've ever had about this sort of thing was with a group of people who are asking why we don't have movies and stories about women being heroes you know it's obviously Avengers and and and modern um modern Marvel movies have tried but it's not it doesn't take right and and my husband and some other men said well we really don't have movies about dads either so the happily ever after part um is always and they lived and that happens and the story is the tension that usually that men go through of of what am i going to choose and the difficulty of of laying themselves down for something outside of themselves for something greater that is the great epic that's what we tell stories about because it requires a choice um and women we don't we don't tend to have because i think their biology determines a lot of their sacrifice women it's not as it's not as um i think the feminists say well it's just the patriarchy this is why we have no stories about women no men are given a choice they're they choose they and they can choose to father children and refuse to lay their lives down they can choose to not whereas women it's more it's it's uh it's more unusual that they would that they would um choose to abandon a family it happens but it's more unusual yeah a thought that i've had before which this is reminding me of you're also describing i think the problem with the spinoffs or the sequels that are about what happens after happily ever after and they always involve kind of domestic problems emerging between prince charming and and cinderella or rapunzel or whoever and you want to say well that's actually not the point the point of happily ever after is that that's where all stories end and maybe this is also why it's so hard to imagine what happens at the end of the odyssey because the the questing that you're describing has this goal that we can kind of trace in our minds but we can't actually tell stories about i mean simone bay has this wonderful observation that imaginary good is boring whereas real good is exhilarating in life and imaginary evil is thrilling but real evil is is boring to actually participate in a monotonous and it does seem as if the c.s lewis answer to all of this is well that's because what we're really describing when we describe the end of the story is we're talking about a kind of bliss or resolution that none of us has ever really attained but the picture of it is there in domestic life so yeah is this a challenge do you think for anyone who wants to kind of advocate for the bliss of domestic life that like there's no way to tell a good or exciting story about it it's like the anti-story or something well what is virtue if virtue is habituated action a habituated um right action then then the resistance is gone right you don't have incontinence you have you're you're it's second nature right so so to be virtuous is to is to shed that resistance that's what virtue is so so the story would be on the way to that um and i think i think i i was thinking about jane Austen and of course she writes the female version of the epic right so so it's all the things that happen navigating society and all of her i was thinking i need this is this is something to write i was thinking about how she does a similar thing in that she strips many of her heroines of their wealth of their social status and in they almost are like these cowboys and that they're they're naked on the frontier of whatever society is and they have nothing but themselves to recommend them you know their own so so what is um what is Elizabeth Bennet if not if not kind of the girl version of this man who lives by his wits and has no aid of society and has to navigate uh a way back into that so which which is supports my understanding of like that women sort of want to be socialized she that that ethic is her achieving a higher status and a higher place in civilization than she had at the outset but she's stripped of all of the aids all of the ability and and and gets there by her own wit basically and i think that but again those stories are are over when the happily ever after starts and that's because the the the thing that you i think it's because we need to teach young people with our literature so so the idea is that we write stories about how to navigate the part of life that we need to teach young people about and also um as far as today i would say that um one of the things that i try to write about uh with my Substack and other things is that is that there is a new frontier and to me it's it's uh the landscape the the battered landscape of of american life and marriage and society post-sexual revolution so you have this completely destroyed it's as if a nuclear bomb went off you have you have this desolate wasteland that is in need of pioneers to re-establish to resettle to go in there and figure out how to um battle the demons that are there and rebuild something like society it's not the physical frontier but i think that we that the reason why the odyssey in these books are um catch our our interest is that we all you know the metaphor is that you need to be some kind of adventurer or some kind of strong um gritty person to navigate and to resettle and establish yourself in these places that are not hospitable to you that are not friendly yeah I mean, and depending on how you read her character, it's pretty, it's very enigmatic. But I think Penelope also has a hero's journey that is very akin to what you're describing in Austin, which makes me think, absolutely, I want to read this essay from you about Austin next. But I will bring us to a close here because we have to wrap up. The piece is called Cowboys and Carpetbaggers. It's in the fall 2026 Claremont Review of Books. there's lots of good juicy detail in there that we haven't gotten into yet but before we close can you just mention to people lane uh about matriarch goals and where where people can find you on substack yes so my substack is matriarch goals um i write about a lot of things uh particularly how women but also men can sort of rebuild the space between the fam you know the fam marriage and the federal government that that huge vast empty space that putnam said uh is gone is no longer there um what i explore is is how people can re-knit and re-civilize that space so that we can keep ourselves uh from federal tyranny and also so that we can be happy in that space as actual full people not as uh not as subjects of leviathan so that's that's my project great i'm a subscriber so i can confidently endorse it and tell people they must go and sign up we'll perhaps drop the link in the description of this episode. But for now, thank you all very much for listening to The Close Read, and we will talk to you next time.