More than 50 percent of the books now published are romances. Mystery, horror, detective novel or western, through all the years of scholarship, Cawelti says his respect for popular literature has increased. They are not only important as entertainment and relaxation but because they are modern myths. They are reflective of the way in which we see the world and the way in which people want to see the world. The years have also changed the status of these works in the academic world.
Popular culture is now firmly established as a mainstream discipline.
In fact, Cawelti was honored as a founding scholar by the Popular Culture Association in 1993 and received an outstanding service award for his contributions to popular culture in 1996. Young scholars around the world have also taken up the cause, pursuing their particular interests in the cultural implications of modern works. My main reason for writing is to tell you how brilliant I found The Six-Gun Mystique Sequel . I just got my university degree by writing my thesis about gender roles in westerns and the relevance of the image of the man as it is created by the frontier myth in 20th-century American politics and society. In May, Cawelti will retire from the University of Kentucky, but he will not leave his life's work entirely to young scholars such as Weidinger.