This might not qualify as an answer because westerns were just before my time, but I just got into the Louis L’Amour books. He was a winning boxer and is considered one of the few alpha authors. He once said that he wanted to write about the same time he learned to walk, which is astounding. He also served in the military in WW2. Such good writing with trash talk, tough guy talk, comebacks by real men. Real tough guys. One of the top writers of all time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_L%27Amour
The critic Jon Tuska, surveying Western literature, writes:
I have no argument that L’Amour’s total sales have probably surpassed every other author of Western fiction in the history of the genre. Indeed, at the time of his death his sales had topped 200,000,000. What I would question is the degree and extent of his effect “upon the American Imagination”. His Western fiction is strictly formulary and frequently, although not always, features the ranch romance plot where the hero and the heroine are to marry at the end once the villains have been defeated. Not only is there nothing really new in the basic structure of his stories, even L’Amour’s social Darwinism, which came to characterize his later fiction, was scarcely original and was never dramatized in other media the way it was in works based on Zane Grey’s fiction.
This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by comicsgate.
Breaking Bad and Yellowstone are both considered neo-westerns. Buck Taylor from Gunsmoke had a recurring role in Yellowstone. Also Michael Landon’s daughter starred in yellowstone too
I have yet to see those 2 shows.
Edit: Firefly and The Mandalorian both counts as neo westerns too
This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by DavidB_Rockin.