But his moral struggle is at the heart of the novel, even as his temper and his methodical nature make it clear that he may be the more dangerous of the two men, all appearances to the contrary. It's not something he's ever balked at, and his loyalty to his brother knows no bounds. Eli, who narrates the novel, is struggling to make sense of his life and his role as a killer. Charlie is the "first man", the older brother, always in charge though, given his taste for brandy and prostitutes, and his quickness to shoot, he's not always in control. The Sisters brothers are infamous outlaws whose names strike horror in those who hear it.
They've been commissioned by the mysterious Commodore to kill Hermann Warm, a prospector who has wronged him in some undetermined way. The Sisters Brothers follows the titular siblings – Eli and Charlie – as they wend their way toward San Francisco through the boomtowns and detritus of the gold rush. The Sisters Brothers, from Vancouver Island- born, Portland, Oregon-based writer Patrick DeWitt at least serves as a poignant, powerful reminder of what has been lost. While it might be too much to ask a single novel to recover an entire mythos, The recent re-examination and deconstruction of the form illustrates not just a questioning of or a playing within a genre, but a loss of that guiding, mythological impetus. The western, at its peak, wasn't merely entertainment: it was the construction of a cultural identity. Stories like the gunfight at the OK Corral and the murder of Jesse James took on the value of scripture, and were presented and represented in pulpy periodicals, books, plays, variety/Wild West shows and, most effectively, films.Ĭontrary to popular belief, the heroes and anti-heroes of westerns were not simplistically drawn or overly romanticized in fact the moral complexity of someone like Billy the Kid, and of his popular reception, are practically unrivalled, and served as a paradigm for a growing national and personal self-reliance and independence. In fact, the western was an American mythology, a re-creation myth out of the ashes of the Civil War, rooted in the potential and peril of the westward expansion, peopled with heroes and gods. All this talk, however, seems to overlook a single, crucial point: the western was never just a genre. Much has been made, over the last few decades, about the death of the western as a genre.
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