Ernest Haycox once said that Westerns are an honorable entertainment. I believe that.
Westerns are also the literature that America has ever given the world.
They are the embodiment of our hopes, our faith, our ideals. They are worth the reader's time because they work on many levels beyond plot and re-create our hope. Our Westerns have shown us as a new and splendid people. Westerns are loved around the world although they are denigrated here. Perhaps that is because the externals of the Western, from clothing to scenery, are too easy to imitate.