Welcome to Hard Times

E.L. Doctorow's first novel, published in 1960, might be called an anti-Western. It is unblinking in its depiction of the hardships of the frontier, in this case the Dakota Territory, including a chilling account (pun intended) of a brutal winter. Narrated by a character named "Blue," informally the mayor of Hard Times, the story has the usual Western cast of characters – prostitutes, storekeepers, drunkards – and a madman, the Man from Bodie, who literally destroys the town single-handedly in the first few pages. The town's effort to reconstitute itself forms the bulk of the novel, a project that Sisyphus would surely recognize.