Owem Wister -
The Virginian 
It took me a week to wade through the 500 pages of this brick and I gathered that most (I won't say ALL) of the people who mention didn't take the disturb to read it. Yeah, there are some elements which might have been picked here and developed in later works, both in literature and movies. But Wister is more interested to show the differences between the western modes as opposite to the "civilized" ones though the protagonist is ready to imbibe himself with the books given to him by his eastern sweetheart. But what is lacking is confrontations, action (yeah, there are even Indians but they are not shown if not in the result of their attack on the Virginian). The villain is superficially sketched and is there just to give the Virginian a chance to kill him. So, it reads more like an essay on West than an actual novel. 6/10
