background -- end of an era -- Gateway of the underdog -- Romanticism and reality -- poetry -- Rhymes for rampant change -- arbiter of moral codes -- Mecca for the landless : life in the fields -- periphery of law and order -- Subculture of salvation -- prose -- Southern rim of the Western novel -- Through the looking glass of the hybrid culture -- Wading into the American dream -- Before the gringos came, and after : the romantic heritage -- quest for psychological reality -- individual as outcast in the new millennium.