Product Description

The Real Western Canon

Larry McMurtry, the preeminent chronicler of the American West, celebrates the best of contemporary Western short fiction, introducing a stellar collection of twenty stories that represent, in various ways, the coming-of-age of the legendary American frontier.

Featuring a veritable Who's Who of the century's most distinctive writers, this collection effectively departs from the standard superstars of the Western genre. McMurtry has chosen a refreshing range of work that, when taken as a whole, depicts the evolution and maturation of Western writing over several decades. The featured tales are not so concerned with the American West of history and geography as they are with the American West of the imagination -- one that is alternately comic, gritty, individual, searing, and complex.

Contributors
Wallace Stegner * Dave Hickey * Dao Strom * Dagoberto Gilb * William Hauptman * Jack Kerouac * Ron Hansen * Diana Ossana * Robert Boswell * Tom McGuane Louise Erdrich * Max Apple * Mark Jude Poirier * Rick Bass * Jon Billman * Richard Ford * Raymond Carver * Annie Proulx * Leslie Marmon Silko * William H. GassAmazon.com Review
In Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West, 1950 to thePresent, Larry McMurtry gives us a depleted West. The West ofMcMurtry's own writing is wildly various, filled with dead ends and brightideas, lonesome cowboys and garrulous socialites. In the 20 stories he'schosen for this anthology, it is instead an undifferentiated territoryof losers: you've got your sad sacks, your screwups, your lost souls. Thelucky have all gone to live somewhere else.

In any anthology, there is usually one story that rolls up its sleeves andclobbers all the others. Here it is Annie Proulx's haunting"Brokeback Mountain," the secret history of two male ranch workers who fallin love and carry on a life-long affair. Her opener also happens to give aperfect view of the landscape found in this collection:"They were raisedon small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack Twist inLightning Flat, up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around Sage,near the Utah line, both high-school drop-out country boys with noprospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered,rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life."

Sometimes the poverty is slicked up with romance, as in Jack Kerouac's "TheMexican Girl," a lightning-hot excerpt from On the Road: "Terry andRaymond sat in the grass; we had grapes. In California you chew the juiceout of the grapes and spit the skin and pits away, the gist of the grapeis always wine. Nightfall came. Terry went home for supper and came to thebarn at nine o'clock with my secret supper of delicious tortillas and mashedbeans. I lit a wood fire on the cement floor of the barn to make light. Wemade love on the crates." We read of Wallace Stegner's Saskatchewan,Richard Ford's Wyoming, Mark Jude Poirier's suburban Tucson. Each storythoughtfully renders disappointment. Proulx's Jack Twist says it best:"Nothin never come to my hand the right way." The writing is above reproach, the stories are compelling, but by the end of the book they seem to be all the same story. Surely the West is bigger than this. --Claire Dederer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

The best of modern Western short stories!
"Still Wild" is perhaps the best compilation of modern Western short stories, and it's frequently used by universities as it best captures the wide diversity of today's Western United States and Canada's Prairie Provinces.The stories themselves speak of the West today, not the hoary old myths of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, but as seen from contemporary Western writers from the latter half of the 20th Century such as Dagoberto Gilb, Annie Proulx, Leslie Marmon Silko, Richard Ford, Wallace Stegner, and others.The common theme or thread amongst these stories is that these are all people who have come from somewhere else, looking for opportunities, a new start, or maybe a chance to leave and go somewhere else.Many of these stories focus around misfits, lost souls, and people facing the challenges of adapting and changing.Probably the best known short story in here is Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" which served as the basis for the movie of the same name.
The stories are varied and interesting, holding up better as isolated short stories rather than a comprehensive cohesive whole. I'd had this as an undergraduate in an Honors program and then again as a graduate student, so for me these stories are like old friends.Standout stories include Gilb's character study "Romero's Shirt", Stegner's "Buglesong", Mark Jude Poirier's "Cul-de-sacs", Rick Bass's "Mahatma Joe", and Richard Ford's "Rock Springs".All capture the insular and isolated nature of the West and the people who live there along with the mysterious and strange sway the West can have over people.Some of these stories provided laugh out loud funny moments and others made me ponder things quite deeply.It's a pretty rare book that can make you do both!

Nice variety of styles, but overall dark tales
This collection of short stories, compiled and edited by author Larry McMurtry, is filled with a nice variety of writing styles and approaches to writing. An excellent balance of 1st person and 3rd person with an appropriate presentation of human emotion versus the challenges of life and nature make this volume a welcome inclusion to modern western libraries.

Yet, in many ways, although selecting stories for an edition such as this must be an arduous, difficult, but also rewarding task, it appears as though emphases were placed on the dark qualities of the west, the tragedies and the sadness. True that tragedy tends to be a more expressive emotion than joy, and despair makes for more depth of thought than happiness, yet the prevailing tone of the stories is one of inevitable human suffering with occasional light moments.

Aside from that quality, the stories were well-written, though-provoking tales by outstanding writers of today. Especially notable are the stories of Wallace Stegner, William Hauptman, and Annie Proulx of Brokeback Mountain fame. Each story has a unique, rugged individualistic element, representative of the west with its demands on the human spirit. One overriding theme of the book is the West's tendency to separate the strong from the weak, in a kind of unforgiving Darwinesque philosophy. Yet hidden within the pages, sometimes more overtly than at other times, is the human desire to protect the weak and find the good.

This book is a welcome addition to short story collections and worth reading by Western enthusiasts as well as those preferring shorter fiction than the novels generally found in the genre.

McMurtry's favorites . . .
Larry McMurtry's collection of short fiction represents the American West from a perspective that is often wonky and off-kilter. It suggests that the people in these stories could be found just about anywhere in the U.S. but their location in the vast, "still wild" region beyond the 100th meridian infuses their lives with a kind of remoteness, isolation, and melancholy. A Nebraska farm couple in Ron Hansen's "True Romance" finds their livestock the prey of something far more sinister than coyotes. A Texas truck driver has a career as an Elvis impersonator in William Hauptman's"Good Rockin' Tonight."

A Californian with a family of Vietnamese in-laws is accused by a neighbor of shooting his pit bull in Dao Strom's "Chickens." In New Mexico, a father and his soon-to-be-disillusioned teenage son hit the road to keep at least one step ahead of trouble in Robert Boswell's "Glissando." Meanwhile, an Indian baseball team with a one-armed pitcher goes on the road in the Dakotas during the worst years of the Dust Bowl in Jon Billman's "Indians." And there's Annie Proulx's story of those two Wyoming cowboys who find love on "Brokeback Mountain."

It's a fine, entertaining collection, though one might question the inclusion of excerpts from novels (Jack Kerouac and Louise Erdrich) and William Gass's novella "The Pedersen Kid," when there are so many other fine writers of short stories, Maile Meloy, David Long, William Kittredge, Sherman Alexie, and Adrian Louis to name a few. But this is a minor quibble in a volume that belongs on any shelf of literature of the American West.

This collection has the best variety of styles I've seen!
I thought this collection had such a wonderful range of writing styles.Most collections are too much in the style of one person's taste, but this book is able to rise above that.McMurtry really knows how to cover all of the artistic styles out there.My favorite in here was the story by Mark Jude Poirier.He has a novel called Goats that just came out, which is definitely worth checking out.I also liked Diana Ossana's story in here.

Never been west, but now I want to go....
I bought this book mainly because I'm curious about what's west of where Igrew up:Wisconsin.What amazing writers are in this collection!!!Alldifferent points of view, but compelling and interesting.I especiallyliked Jon Billman and Diana Ossana's stories, two writers I'd not heard of. I hope to see more of their work.Who knows the west better than Mr.Lonesome Dove?!Buy it, read it, you won't be sorry. ... Read more

Product Description

Ranging from Texas to California on a young writer's journey in a car he calls El Chevy, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is one of Larry McMurtry's most vital and entertaining novels.

Danny Deck is on the verge of success as an author when he flees Houston and hurtles unexpectedly into the hearts of three women: a girlfriend who makes him happy but who won't stay, a neighbor as generous as she is lusty, and his pal Emma Horton. It's a wild ride toward literary fame and an uncharted country...beyond everyone he deeply loves. All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a wonderful display of Larry McMurtry's unique gift: his ability to re-create the subtle textures of feelings, the claims of passing time and familiar place, and the rich interlocking swirl of people's lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (29)

Waste of precious reading time
This book is being deleted from my Kindle as a waste of time and space...not funny, not good writing...shame on Larry McMurtry...shame on me for buying it...

the journey of a depressed young writer
I picked this book up at my church (of all places) and started reading it while volunteering on a slow day. I won't go into the details of the book, but rather give an overall impression. The book starts out with some fairly racy scenes but is well written so the reader doesn't feel too self indulgent. The book would be a major hit with any 18-26 year old male. The book is written from the viewpoint of a writer in his 20's. Sex, drugs, aimless wandering all included. The women portrayed are stereotypical and one dimensional but entertaining just the same. The reader must keep in mind that these women are being written from the viewpoint of a 20 year old depressed man. The writing is clear and concise- very well written. However the ending leaves you hanging.

All the beautiful rivers running south.
I loved this novel, and I'm overjoyed, on reading the other related novels about Danny's bunch of friends, that Danny did not actually drown himself as I was afraid he had done at the end.None of his relationships with women work, mainly because his gentle heart has no boundaries, and he is pretty much chronically depressed like many other great artists--and poets.If Mr. McMurtry ever got tired of writing novels, he could always become a poet.The last chapter somehow reminds me of the best music of Counting Crows and Steely Dan, and the poetry of Antonio Machado. The prose is breathtaking.

Also in this new edition, the afterword by Raymond Neinstein alone is worth buying the book for. He himself has written a book of criticism of Larry McMurtry's novels. Not to be missed!

A moving story with hidden depth and meaning
This fine book, written in first person, chronicles a few months in the life of a young writer, including his joys, success, and ultimately his decline. The main character is at first a charming individual, with an innocence and confusion often found in intelligent free thinkers, and eager to make a difference in the world through his writing and his friends. Yet as the book progress, we find his innocence eroding as his confusion deepens. Unable to handle the success of his career coupled with the lack of success in his personal life, Danny Deck goes on a journey, searching for meaning through his former friends. In the end, he recognizes that he cannot return to his former life and finds himself in a psychological vacuum with no answer other than to blame his own success for his problems.

Amidst the process and the search, we find many funny characters such as Uncle Laredo known as Uncle L, his wife Martha, a cantankerous lady who loves goats, and old man Lorenzo. Danny takes all these people in stride without much emotional response and continues his journey which ultimately is his own mental and social decline. While the book has an eerie sadness that seems to accompany each page, we still find ourselves rooting for Danny to get himself together and write another book.

McMurtry's style of using events and characters to define the essence of the story and outline its purpose makes for a smooth and powerful approach to writing. In this case, the sorrow of Danny's life blends with poor judgment to create a memorable character with no future. A rather depressing book, with few redeeming human qualities demonstrated, All My Friends reminds us of the bleak emotions that often bubble beneath the surface of our human facade. While some of McMurtry's later books are a little cavalier in their presentation, this one is a gripping read difficult to put down. Short in plot development, but long in human experience, this book combines the naturalism of Dreiser with the confusion of Salinger, resulting in a captivating but often sad story. Definitely worth reading by all McMurtry fans.

Portrait Of A Writer As A Young Man
As is usually the case when I get excited about an author's work I tend to delve into all the work in order to see which way he or she is heading. That is the case here with Larry McMurtry. I have just finished reading his The Last Picture Show trilogy (The Last Picture Show; Texasville; and, Duane's Depressed) about coming of age in small town Texas, having one's mid-life crisis there and, in the end, struggling against the strains of mortality there, as well. The cumulative effect of this work was a five-star review. Here we step back to early McMurtry and while the promise is certainly there as well as his quirky look at modern life this is the work of a rising author star not of a master writer.

Why? Well, for one thing the subject matter. All fictional writingin the final analysis may be autobiographical, consciously or unconsciously, but here the trials and tribulations of a young Texas writer who heads to California to find himself after the first budding of prominence with the publication of his first book and a movie offer is, well, just a little too precious. Moreover, the inevitable romantic problems of twenty-something males (and, by now in 2008, females) has been done to death. Nothing really jumps out here other than some cogent observations about the foibles of human nature as strained through the California blender. My advice to Danny, the protagonist writer here is -Go east, young man, go east back to Texas.That's where your pot of gold is, Larry, oops Danny. Do you need to read this book? If you have time. Do you need to read The Last Picture Show trilogy. Damn right. That's the different in a nutshell.

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Product Description

Writing with characteristic grace and wit, Larry McMurtry tackles the full spectrum of his favorite themes -- from sex, literature, and cowboys to rodeos, small-town folk, and big-city slickers.

First published in 1968, In a Narrow Grave is the classic statement of what it means to come from Texas. In these essays, McMurtry opens a window into the past and present of America's largest state. In his own words:

"Before I was out of high school, I realized I was witnessing the dying of a way of life -- the rural, pastoral way of life. In the Southwest the best energies were no longer to be found on the homeplace, or in the small towns; the cities required these energies and the cities bought them...."

"I recognized, too, that the no-longer-open but still spacious range on which my ranching family had made its livelihood...would not produce a livelihood for me or for my siblings and their kind....The myth of the cowboy grew purer every year because there were so few actual cowboys left to contradict it...."

"I had actually been living in cities for fourteen years when I pulled together these essays; intellectually I had been a city boy, but imaginatively, I was still trudging up the dusty path that led out of the country...." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Great essays.
This book is a great read.It was the first time I had read anything "short" for pleasure.I was thirteen years old and was into novels. I had already read "The Last Picture Show", "Horseman Pass By", "Texasville", all numerous times.The only essays and short stories I had consumed were the ones forced upon you (either to read or to write) in school.This book changed that for me.It showed how powerful a well written essay or short story can be.
My favorite of the essays was "A Look at the Lost Frontier" -the one about the south to north car ride across Texas on Hwy 281.This seemed so personal, because I had visited some of the places that he mentioned on that trip. I have remained fascinated about this road ever since, regularly having to travel on it because of business. I can feel the same kind of ironic peacefullness that he mentions when he gets to the New Mexico border and turns back around and heads home.If I have been out of state for a while, to get re-acclimated , I will get into the truck and drive either up or down 281 aimlessly for however long it takes and the next thing you know, I am the Texas state of mind once again.When I am doing this I will stop somewhere and read this story (my favorite place to do this for some reason is around Hico, Texas) and the next thing you know whatever state I was in and getting used to is very distant and I am home.It has such a calming effect.That is a powerful essay.
The other reason I like this and all of McMurtry's non-fiction is that you are continually discovering other authors.This was the first time I had ever heard of John Graves.In the part of the book where he was talking about Texas literature, he mentioned "Farewell to a River",about Graves' canoe trip down the Brazos before it was dammed up to make a series of lakes in north central Texas.Living on the Brazos, on one of these lakes, my interest was piqued. I found that book and read it at least ten times.Now when I cross the Brazos on Hwy 281, I too look down to see if I can see John Graves in his canoe, "for the Brazos is his river and one expects him there."
The other essays in the book are great as well, mostly dealing with the dissappearing of the West and the cowboy de-mystified, which is a theme never far from hand with McMurtry and always interesting.He also deals with the (at the time explosive) subject of Dobie, Bedichick, and Webb--old Southwestern lit. luminaries which at the time were considers the Gods of Texas letters.While most at the time thought him a smug upstart (he was thirty or so) and basically a traitor for suggesting that these three were rather pedestrian writers who had occasional flashes of quality, he did it with grace and most would have to if not agree with his point of view, at least give him credit for wanting to tackle the subject.It was brave. He didn't just take potshots.It was more about breaking out of regionalism than trashing the ones that had laid the foundation.
Also because of this collection of essays, I began tracking down and reading the books of J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichick, W.P. Webb., Terry Southern, and I can't remember who all. At first I disagreed totally about the big three, but then I was a young teenager and these books were very adventuresome.Later when I re-read them (and still do) what McMurtry was saying is evident and seems to be in the main correct.To me this book was Harry Potter. It made a teenager very interested in reading.That is a powerful essay collection.

In A Narrow Grave-Essays On Texas--Larry McMurtry
The opinions by Mr. McMurtry on Texas are based on his travel and personal insights. One may feel the author is at times being too judgmental and harsh regarding the geography, cities, and urban behavior of the people who inhabit them. I chose not to come to these conclusions until I have visited these places and made my own observations. McMurtry is a native Texan and writes as such about his home state.

The stories of cowboys past, Teddy Blue and Charles Goodnight and others, signal the end of an era by frontiersmen whose bold, pionerring spirits set the early trend for how cowboys behaved and existed. There is a sadness when the genuine passes to pseudo-imitation. Gone are the cattle drives and rugged life on horseback on the Plains. Trucks have taken the place of the drive in getting the cattle to market, and cadillacs taken over for the horse.

In the movie,"HUD," written by McMurtry,he describes this transformation. Paul Newman, playing HUD, would rather be in town drinking and entertaining other men's wives, than on his ranch with his cattle. When his stock come down with a disease, Hud complains to his Father, played by Melvyn Douglas, detesting having to get on a horse and go down and stay with the cattle, while waiting for the government vet. HUD has become an urban cowboy.

The reader gleans insights into the McMurtry clan; how they came to Texas and settled, raising a large family along the way. Conflicts are later expressed between members at their annual Barbeque reunions that sometimes grew heated because of issues regarding ranching vs. farming and the place on the spread of Mexicans and Negros.

The author gives insight into Western Literature and Texas writers, relating a myriad of books about this in his bibliographies about the subject. When he mentions the starkly inept musical abilities by the fiddlers at the Fiddlers Reunion in Athens, Texas, no quarter is given. If a city is socially cold or distant, ugly in appearance, or the bars exceptionally dangerous, the reader finds out without reserve.

This is a non-fiction book that enlightens, amuses, and expresses the author's passion for a way of life put to death by modern technology and practice. If you have an interest in things western, you should read it.

Charles Hamilton Sr, Former Executive Director Northwest Teen Challenge and author of From Darkness To Light and A Step Of Faith.

From Darkness To Light

Entertaining, intelligent perceptions with occasional tributes
This book, dating back to 1968, following the immense success of three early novels, is the author's first attempt at writing non-fiction. In some ways, McMurtry seems more comfortable in the novel where his imagination and characterizations flourish. It could be that in fiction, all people are held equal at least in original creation of the characters, and an author is then free to treat them in the way he sees fit. Whereas in non-fiction, it becomes more difficult to offer opinions apart from naming people directly. At the same time, it is in non-fiction where an author has an opportunity to be forthright and authentic. These qualities remain true in this volume.

Keeping this in mind, McMurtry instead chooses to deal with regional subjects including Cowboys, cities, growing up, and family issues. Each essay with the possible exception of one is filled with classic McMurtry prose that spins smoothly, academically, and honestly. What begins with a humorous look at the making of Hud, ends with a deep, heartfelt tribute to members of the McMurtry clan. In the middle we find honest appraisals of various cities, sexuality, literature, and a diatribe against the astrodome.

The writing is intelligent and erudite with an appropriate blend of training and folkish earthiness, resulting in essays that set the stage for a lifetime of great writing in both fiction and non-fiction genres. The final essay in this book covers the McMurtry family and in particular Uncle Johnny, a man worthy of distinction and treated with the honor he so richly deserves. Aside from the sweeping generalizations and rather banal explanations of various cities in Texas, this book is an energetic read that could be enjoyed by everyone, particularly residents of Texas.

In A Narrow Grave
Larry McMurtry's only great works was Lonesome Dove.He is very narrow minded.In my opinion, he abused his readership just because he had a successful novel in Lonesome Dove.He is a very negative person and offers nothing of positive influence in A Narrow Grave or any of his other publishings except Lonesome Dove.Larry McMurtry is prejudiced to all people from the south just because one southerner "offended" him.I reget wasting my money on any of his other "works".He reminds me of Steinbeck.Steinbeck's only greatness was Grapes of Wrath, yet he was considered a literary giant because he published so many other books.

Messing with Texas. . .
McMurtry, in this collection of essays about Texas, says he prefers fiction to nonfiction, for various reasons, but I for one find these ambivalent ruminations on his home state more enjoyable than some of his fiction. The insights come fast and furious in this short book, by comparison with a slow-moving novel like "Moving On," written about this same time, where a few ideas are stretched thin across several hundred pages.

Published in 1968, the content of "Narrow Grave" will seem dated to some readers. Written in the shadow of the assassination in Dallas and while another Texan was in the White House, the essays capture Texas in a period of rough transition from its rural past to its globalized present (the rise and fall of Enron would certainly have been featured in a current version of this book).

Much of it is timeless, however. It includes one of my favorite McMurtry essays, "Take My Saddle From the Wall: A Valediction," in which he provides a history of the McMurtry family, who settled in the 1880s on 320 acres west of Wichita Falls and in the following generation relocated to the Panhandle to live mostly as cowboys and ranchers. In this essay, McMurtry separates the mythic cowboy from the actual one and describes how cowboys are probably the biggest believers in the myths about them. It's full of ironies, colorful personalities, and wonderful details.

Altogether, the book attempts to present an unsentimental portrait of a state that also tends to get carried away by its own myths. The result is often a jaundiced view and gets to sounding like the worst Paul Theroux travel writing, where it seems like the writer has a personal grudge against the place he's describing. A car trip from Brownsville to the Panhandle is great fun for the wealth of local color captured along the way, but McMurtry focuses on every unhappy and unfortunate detail as if to warn the reader away from ever doing the same. The description of a fiddlers contest in East Texas is downright unkind.

It's easy to see, however, that it's a lover's quarrel McMurtry has with Texas. I gladly recommend this entertaining book to readers curious about the Lone Star State and the man who wrote "The Last Picture Show" and "Lonesome Dove"
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Product Description

Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous-- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else.

Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T., Neva, and baby Marcy; Shay's uncle, Seth; his Granpa Crackenthorpe; and Mary Margaret's beautiful half-sister, Rose. During their journey they pick up a barefooted priest named Father Villy, and a Snake Indian named Charlie Seven Days, and persuade them to join in their travels.

At the heart of the novel, and the adventure, is Mary Margaret, whom we first meet shooting a sheriff's horse out from underneath him in order to feed her family.Forceful, interesting, and determined, she is written with McMurtry's trademark deftness and sympathy for women, and is in every way a match for the worst the west can muster.

Boone's Lick abounds with the incidents, the excitements, and the dangers of life on the plains.Its huge cast of characters includes such historical figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the unfortunate Colonel Fetterman (whose arrogance and ineptitude led to one of the U.S. Army's worst and bloodiest defeats at the hands of the Cheyenne and Sioux) as well as the Cecil family (itself based on a real family of nineteenth-century traders and haulers).

The story of their trek in pursuit of Dick, and the discovery of his second and third families, is told with brilliance, humor, and overwhelming joie de vivre in a novel that is at once high adventure, a perfect western tale, and a moving love story -- it is, in short, vintage McMurtry, combining his brilliant character portraits, his unerring sense of the west, and his unrivaled eye for the telling detail.

Boone's Lick is one of McMurtry's richest works of fiction to date.Amazon.com Review
Master storyteller Larry McMurtry unfurls a short, bright banner of a book following the fortunes of the Cecil family as they travel from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to the Western frontier. Though the story is narrated by her oldest son, 15-year-old Shay, the real hero of the book is Mary Margaret, the mother. Her husband, Dick, has left her and their four children in Boone's Lick while he seeks his fortunes in the West. Mary Margaret lives contentedly with the children and Dick's brother, Seth, until one day she decides she's had enough of playing the estranged wife and packs up the entire household. And so the Cecil family leaves their little town (where Wild Bill Hickok makes a cameo appearance) and travels by wagon to Wyoming, accompanied along the way by a fat Québecois priest and a Shoshone. They do find Dick, and they also arrive in Wyoming just in time for the 1866 Fetterman Massacre.

McMurtry writes with an ease that younger writers would do well to emulate. Here Seth fights off an ambush of white trash dastards:

Uncle Seth fired again and a third horse went down--though just saying it went down would be to put it too mildly. The third horse turned a complete somersault. Its rider flew off about thirty feet, after which he didn't move.

Customer Reviews (58)

Nice, enjoyable book to read
This is the first book I've read by this author.Except for his having real people interacting with the characters, I really enjoyed this book.It was very well written.I have never cared forthe of placing a real person in a fictional setting and putting words in their mouths and giving them action.I like my fact to be fact and my fiction to be fiction.That said, it was a very good book.

I loved the strong female characters of Mary Margaret, Rosie, and Geneva.I had to laugh at the wussy and somewhat silly character of G.T. I also liked Uncle Seth. I kind of wondered why he wasn't in the north more with his business.Dick, well, Dick was a womanizing adulterer.What more can I say about that?I adored Charlie and Father Villy.And, I must agree, the real Col. Fetterman was an inept, lame-brained fool, as were many of the leading officers during the Indian wars.

A Good One from An Old Western Hand
This is a relatively short (for McMurtry) Western tale about a backwoods Missouri family (it was probably pretty much all "backwoods" in those early days!) which, driven by the family matriarch, Mary Margaret Cecil, heads west to Wyoming in search of her absentee husband -- a man who returns to her once every year or so to leave her with another child before hightailing it back to the western territories. Mary Margaret suspects (as we gradually come to learn in the book's first half), that her wayward spouse has tucked a second family away somewhere in the territories and she means to get to the bottom of it.

The Cecils are a tightly knit group consisting of two teen age boys and a daughter just hitting puberty along with Mary Margaret's most recent addition, the infant Marcy. Mary Margaret has already buried four other children as well as her ma, though ornery (and apparently senile) Old Granpa Crackenthorpe, her pa, is still hanging in there. Fortunately for all, wayward husband Dick's big brother, Uncle Seth, a Civil War veteran on the Union side and a crack rifle shot from his years as an army sniper, lives with them. The relationships among the Cecils themselves and between the family and some of the locals form the first part of the tale which, while nicely rendered, with McMurtry's characteristic tightness and insight into character, is a little slack in the narrative department.

The decision Mary Margaret abruptly announces surprises Uncle Seth and old Granpa Crackenthorpe and even the young 'uns but, after a little bickering, they all fall into line because there's no stopping Mary Margaret once she's made her mind up. From Missouri, upriver to the wild plains of Kansas, and thence to Iowa, Nebraska and into Wyoming the family treks, picking up the usual assortment of McMurtry oddballs along the way including Charlie Seven Trees, a lone Indian from upriver on a mission from "the Old Woman" (Sacajawea of Lewis & Clark expedition fame, it turns out) and an itinerant priest as big as a house from French Canada, Father Villy, who has taken a vow to "walk the earth" and is doing so -- barefoot. Rosie McGee, the town whore from back in Boone's Lick, Missouri, comes along, too, following a family surprise of her own.

As in other McMurtry tales, this one tracks yet another long trek by a bunch of unusual characters, undertaken and pursued to the end for entirely personal (and often mysterious) reasons. If Lonesome Dove: A Novel was the tale of an epic cattle drive by a bunch of old Texas Rangers and their hangers-on, who no longer fit into the south Texas countryside they have helped pacify (with an equally seemingly quixotic return quest by one of their number), and Dead Man's Walk was the tale of a feckless attack by a bunch of wild Texas "patriots" upon a much more formidable Mexican army and the long road back from the hell their recklessness had thrust them into, this one partakes of a similar motif. We've seen it before in the Fort Smith wife's mad quest for her lover, Dee Boot, in Lonesome Dove, as well. Indeed, McMurtry seems to have a number of such motifs to which he returns again and again (see Sin Killer: A Novel (The Berrybender Narratives)). But the lack of originality does not detract from the freshness of events in this one, even so.

Despite the relatively tame episodes that occur along the Cecils' trail west, this story got richer for me the farther it went. Although I was rather neutral throughout the first half, despite appreciating the finely wrought dialogue and the sense of backwoods life McMurtry conveys, I found less and less reason to willingly put the book down as the second half progressed and we began to get closer to the missing Dick Cecil and whatever it was he was hiding from poor Mary Margaret (which Uncle Seth already knew but refused to tell out of loyalty to his brother and maybe some other fine sensibility which does not become entirely obvious until the second half). Indeed, I began to resent the inevitable intrusions one will endure during the course of the day, intrusions which kept obliging me to put the book aside.

It's a relatively short book and, in fact, it only took me a day to read it (interruptions and all) but by the end I had discovered a keen interest in the complex factors which drove Mary Margaret to uproot herfamily and take them west to confront the man she had married -- along with those that kept Uncle Seth with them to the end despite his dissent on the matter of making the trip in the first place. It was clear, of course, that Mary Margaret knew him as well, if not better, than he knew himself.

A young Wild Bill Hickock plays a part in the first half of the book, by the way, where we learn that Seth Cecil and Hickock are former army colleagues and somewhat wary competitors in the game of reputation though poor Uncle Seth, because of his attachment to his brother's family, has apparently ceded success in the fame department to Wild Bill. Still the two find time to join up with a local Missouri sheriff right off in order to bring in some miscreants, a situation which results in some gunplay albeit with little of the famous drama old Wild Bill would come to be famous for. The tale ends on a nice note, too -- prompting me to wonder if McMurtry made the whole thing up or actual built his tale out of the records of some real folk who actually lived in those times. Of course, even if he didn't, the wrap-up rather nicely puts it all into a broader perspective so that we feel a sense of genuineness in the narrative at its end.

A good and satisfying novel of the old West though certainly nothing like the cowboys and gunfighters shoot-em-ups we so often end up with in western fare! It's a small book about some ordinary folks but one which resonates deeply by its close. Glad I took a chance on it.

Stuart W. Mirsky
author of The King of Vinland's Saga

angry and confused
I never received the product or an explanation even after inquiries with Amazon and seller.

Dad loved it!
I purchased this audio book for my 82 year old father who is legally blind.He is from near where this story took place, so it was especially interesting to him, and he really enjoyed the writing style and the narration.Wants more by this author!

Boones Lick
Boone's Lick : A Novel by Larry McMurtry is true to Larry's style of writing-great novel ... Read more

Product Description

Larry McMurtry's Terms of Endearment touched readers in a way no other story has in recent years. The earthy humor and the powerful emotional impact that set this novel apart rise to brilliant new heights with The Evening Star.

McMurtry takes us deep into the heart of Texas, and deep into the heart of one of the most memorable characters of our time, Aurora Greenway -- along with her family, friends, and lovers -- in a tale of affectionate wit, bittersweet tenderness, and the unexpected turns that life can take. This is Larry McMurtry at his very best: warm, compassionate, full of comic invention, an author so attuned to the feelings, needs, and desires of his characters that they possess a reality unique in American fiction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A bit contrived and confusing without much direction
The continuing saga of Aurora Greenway, her friends, and her family is a random, lengthy read without much purpose and very little direction. Most of the 637 pages vacillate between Aurora's selfish, laughable, and audacious behavior, and that of her strange, absurd family members. Because there is so little emotional development, it is difficult to sympathize with any of the characters being presented. They fall in love quickly but somehow do not seem to really care about anyone but themselves. This makes the reader less inclined to be concerned about how any events will affect anyone else due to the cavalier attitude toward others or their plights.

Unlike other McMurtry books, I was not drawn into the world being portrayed and did not enjoy the quirky behavior or the stories being presented. McMurtry's normally masterful story-telling did not find fruition in this book. Aside from the last 80 pages or so, most of the book seemed random and non goal-oriented, without any sense of mystery or tension or even curiosity as to what will happen, making the story and the people sort of lifeless. I was happy to be done and generally disappointed with the book.

But not all was vapid, for some of the characters did grow through their experiences and improve their own lot in life. Aurora was a complex person and it was fun seeing her adjust through the challenges of life's battles and deal with the aging process. I still laugh when I try to figure out why she won't sing while stopped at stoplights! Many of the minor characters were introduced through their odd past and their current reactions to the situations in which they found themselves, and many were quite enjoyable people and very funny at times. The pervading sadness of the book, the deaths and the tragedies, was balanced with personal victories and positive circumstances, making Evening Star a fascinating study in people's motives as well as the bittersweet realities of life.

Not my favorite McMurtry book for sure, but enough redeeming qualities and interesting people to make it worth reading.

Out of his many, one of his best.
No writer in the last half of the 20th century was better at character development than McMurtry. In "Terms" he introduced us to Aurora Greenway; here he he expands and burnishes her character while he folds in a supporting cast of almost equally fascinating lesser characters. This was one of those rare tomes I wished would never end. You don't have to like her, but if you finish this book unaffected by la Greenway, you'd best read it again. Aurora's successful plan to ensure her young Grandson would never forget her is one of the most moving sequences I have ever read. Two years after first reading this novel and I still well up just thinking about it.

not perfect, but very good
In typical McMurtry style, there is a good deal of humor and whimsy in this novel.For the first 400 pages or so I felt it was a bit overdone, but once I saw where the novel was headed, it made perfect sense.About the ultimate destination of the novel: it packs quite an emotional punch.Rare indeed is the novel that can make me cry, but this one did it.

As good as the first one!!
McMurtry's characters become so real to me that I can barely stand to let them go at the end of his books.I am so glad that I got to see what happened to the people from Terms of Endearment.

a must-read for a who fell in love with Terms of Endearment
Larry McMurty gives us another masterpiece of humor and tears in the continued saga of Aurora Greenway ... Read more

Product Description

Funny, sad, full of wonderful characters and the word-perfect dialogue of which he is the master, McMurtry brings the Thalia saga to an end with Duane confronting depression in the midst of plenty. Surrounded by his children, who all seem to be going through life crises involving sex, drugs, and violence; his wife, Karla, who is wrestling with her own demons; and friends like Sonny, who seem to be dying, Duane can't seem to make sense of his life anymore. He gradually makes his way through a protracted end-of-life crisis of which he is finally cured by reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, a combination of penance and prescription from Dr. Carmichael that somehow works.

Duane's Depressed is the work of a powerful, mature artist, with a deep understanding of the human condition, a profound ability to write about small-town life, and perhaps the surest touch of any American novelist for the tangled feelings that bind and separate men and women.Amazon.com Review
At 62, ever-dependable oil man Duane Moore ditches his pickup and startswalking everywhere--deeply deviant behavior in one-stoplight Thalia, Texas."It occurred to him one day--not in a flash, but through a process ofseepage, a kind of gas leak into his consciousness--that most of hismemories, from his first courtship to the lip of old age, involved the cabsof pickups," Larry McMurtry writes. Yet oddly enough, Duane's marriage,four children and nine grandchildren, his career highs and lows, alloccurred when he was nowhere near his vehicle. Within days he has movedinto his cabin on a hill, reacquired his dog, Shorty the Sixth ("an air ofslight guilt was typical of all the Shortys"), and begun to think on thesethings. Of course, this brings on an additional problem: "He realized thatfor the first time in his life he had too much time to think; of course hehad wanted more time to think, but that was probably because hehadn't realized how tricky thinking could be."

Luckily for readers, Duane's attempts to go off the grid are far fromsuccessful. Thus do we have the deep pleasures of his comical and complexencounters with his wife, Karla, and family, not to mention some ofThalia's singular citizens. As ever, McMurtry's dialogue and narrationsnaps and surprises. He makes his hero's solitude, and his increasingdepression, infinitely intriguing. Will Duane's attempts to literallyand figuratively cultivate his garden succeed? Will he forge his waythrough the three volumes of Proust that his attractive new psychiatrist hasprescribed in lieu of Prozac? Will the catfish that has found its way intohis waterbed survive? Answers to these and many other questions await youin Duane's Depressed, the final book of the marvelous trilogyMcMurtry began with The LastPicture Show and Texasville. Let us praythat it turns into a quartet: we need far more of Duane and his family. Fora start, his granddaughter Barbi--"a dark midge of a child"--merits avolume of her own. --Kerry Fried ... Read more

Customer Reviews (67)

Duane has nothing more to hide
Duane leaves his pick-up keys to one side, confounds Karla who calms down only when she realizes Duane doesn't want a divorce, he's just going crazy (yet sees a 'little bitch' hiding in the dark by the cabin); picks up his fellow-citizens' litter, gardens like in Eden, and even lovingly parts with Shorty. In contrast to many authors, McMurtry doesn't use a death to rescue the plot, but to develop the survivors' character. Bobby Lee, Ruth, Dickie, Rag, Sonny, they all live on. Could be you have to have passed 55 or so to love this novel, but for me it's 6-star. And Duane is not depressed.

Funny! Duane's Crazy cause he doesn't drive!
This book was great! Most Texans drive everywhere. I knew a woman who would get in her car and drive fifty yards to her mailbox. Duane takes to the bicycle and everyone thinks he's flipped. It paints a hilarious picture of a dysfuntional family.
L.W. A Benwarian Fix: The Intercolonization of Earth

Existentialism, Texas Style
This is one of the finer works by McMurtry. It is a touching tale about a man on the wrong side of 60 finally thinking about who he is. You see Duane break things down to the essentials with who he is and what he needs. He gives up his truck. He gives up his fancy house. He gives all that up for something greater: Actually getting to know himself.

It's one of the finer pieces of American existentialism out there. I highly recommend it.

duanes depressed

GReat book.I think a lot of men fell the way Duane does but never

show it.

In Search Of Lost Time
In the blink of an eye it seems we can go in this The Last Picture Show trilogy from a coming of age story in the Last Picture Show to a mid-life crisis story in Texasville to the struggle against mortality during old age story here. Or maybe it is just changing from one book to another. Ya, right? There may be a space of thirty years between the action in The Last Picture Show and Texasville and another fourteen between Texasville and Duane's Depressed but it hardly a blink of the eye. It takes effort to build up to the mid-life crisis (or better crises) and then apply those lessons to the struggle against mortality that form the central idea of this novel as those of the generation of '68 and older are painfully aware. But so be it.

By one of life's little quirks this reviewer is the same age as Duane in this phase of his life's story, 62. Therefore the reviewer can sympathize, understand and relate to the struggle against the vicissitudes of morality that, in the final analysis, Duane is struggling against. Duane's whole life has been consumed by the notion of duty, doing the right thing and keeping his own counsel to the exclusion of having any close personal relationships, including with his wife Karla. One day he decides, rightly by this reviewer's lights, to chuck his old life, at least the symbols of it. The tale told here revolves around that break out, the separate lost of his dear wife Karla in fatal automobile accident and his struggle to find a new place in his world without her. Along the way Jacy and Sonny the companions of his youth also pass from the scene. In an odd sense he is the last one standing.

Needless to say all of this introspection is going to take a lot out of a very stoic man like Duane. Moreover, a review of his whole life means a look at lots of things that are not obvious. Probably the best little literary trick that McMurtry uses here is to link Duane up with a sexually unattainable woman psychiatrist who recommends reading Marcel Proust's Remembrances of Things Past as a form of discovery. This is a monumental work that has baffled more than one intellectual as to its meaning. Hell, on reflection, it probably baffled Proust. The trick is that Duane actually struggled to read it overt the course of a year. I suggest that the alternate translation of Proust's book is more appropriate to what Duane was looking for-In Search Of Lost Time. That, my friends, is what we all face as we face mortality. If you are going to read Larry McMurtry read this trilogy. That's the ticket.
... Read more

Product Description

The Last Picture Show is one of Larry McMurtry's most powerful, memorable novels -- the basis for the enormously popular movie of the same name. Set in a small, dusty, Texas town, The Last Picture Show introduced the characters of Jacy, Duane, and Sonny: teenagers stumbling toward adulthood, discovering the beguiling mysteries of sex and the even more baffling mysteries of love. Populated by a wonderful cast of eccentrics and animated by McMurtry's wry and raucous humor, The Last Picture Show is wild, heartbreaking, and poignant -- a coming-of-age novel that resonates with the magical passion of youth.Amazon.com Review
In The Last Picture Show Larry McMurtry introduced characters whowould show up again in later novels, Texasville and Duane's Depressed. Thisfirst volume of the trilogy drops the reader into the one-stoplight town ofThalia, Texas, where Duane Moore, his buddy Sonny, and his girlfriend Jacyare all stumbling along the rocky road to adulthood. Duane wants nothingmore than to marry Jacy; Sonny wants what Duane has; and Jacy wants to getthe hell out of Thalia any way she can. This is not a novel of big ideas ordefining moments; over the course of a year Duane and Jacy make up andbreak up, Sonny begins an affair with his high-school football coach'swife, and the only movie house in town closes its doors forever.Yet it isout of these small-town experiences--a nude swimming party in Wichita, afailed sexual encounter during a senior trip, a botched elopement, anenlistment--that McMurtry builds his tale and reveals his characters'hearts. No epiphanies here, just a lot of hard-won experience that leavesnone of his protagonists particularly wiser, though they're all a littlesadder by the end. --Alix Wilber ... Read more

Customer Reviews (56)

a very exciting book!
it's aboutteenagers who live in the 50s,in texas.it's usually hot in texas,but it's cold there. Sonny Crawford is a football player for Thia High school and his best friend Duane share the pickup. Duane goes out with Jacy Farrow,Sam the Lion is Sonny's friend and mentor.He owns the Poolhall,all-night diner and picture show.Sonny goes with Charlene Duggs,he soon breaks up with her.At a Christmas Party where the teachers make the refreshments,Ruth Popper and Sonny fall in love after she has breast cancer.

Depressed souls in the Texas sun...
Anyone who knows me knows that I consider `The Last Picture Show' to be one of the best FILMS ever made.I was anxious to read the novel which inspired the film, but I hadn't had the time until recently (and by recently I mean this past weekend).While I hold to the belief that the film trumps the novel in some respects, I must say that the novel is a great work of contemporary American literature.

The novel tells a very primitive story (and by that I mean that it lacks climactic progression) about a town filled to the brim with lost souls.The main character is that of Sonny, a school-age boy aching for something the small town of Thalia can't provide him.His best friend is Duane, who happens to be dating the prettiest girl in town, Jacy.Jacy's parents are unhappy, but very wealthy, and Duane is poor yet free-spirited, and so obviously their love affair is doomed by societal prejudice.Sonny soon starts an affair of his own, with his football coach's lonely wife, Ruth.The novel really consists of fragments of life, strung about like photographs so that the reader gets a complete picture.There are no revelations and the story doesn't `boil down' to anything profound, but what we are presented with is truly moving and swelling.

What `The Last Picture Show' manages to do is present a slew of finely detailed human beings.

What moved me so much about the film (which, by the way, is near perfection and should be seen by pretty much everyone) was the fact that every person seemed so real and so complex.The novel presents that same character development; even if the development seems slightly different than that presented in the film (the film presents a little more sympathy towards Jacy's character that I feel is lost in the novel).That is one gigantic heap of praise that I can thrust upon this novel.There are few novels that can really create characters this real and relatable and understandable, especially in barely over 200 pages.

While yes, there are segments of this novel that seem to be a tad off-color (the raping of the blind cow for starters) and the sex obsessed youth presented can feel slightly one-note at times (one thing that I think sets the film apart from the novel is that it struck a deeper balance between the internal torment and the physical satisfactions of the characters portrayed), it is no less the novel it intends to be.It is a snapshot in time, and as one it works beautifully.

The one thing that the novel has that the film doesn't is that it fleshes out the town and it's inhabitants more than the film did (the film made Sonny and everything effecting him the focal point) and so we get a fuller picture.So, it is advisable to anyone who adores the film to read the novel and get a fuller understanding of Thalia as a whole.

Either way to grasp this story, the main point is that you need to grasp it.For me, the film is still the more solid experience and the one that haunts me to my bones, but McMurtry's vision is extremely compelling no matter how you come across it.See the film, read the book and experience the story; it is well worth your time.

A small gem--Idealists, Keep Out
Other than "Lonesome Dove," this is the only McMurtry book worth reading, and it's a hard-to-find classic.You won't forget it once you've read it.A word of caution--if you're young enough to think the fifties were fabulous, you won't think so after reading this one. That's where I was when I got hold of it, and the book was a real eye-opener, even for a blind man like me.A high school teacher canned for being a homosexual with no evidence, a preacher's son jailed for rape with no good cause,a retarded boy tormented to an early grave by his peers, (at least one of whom was as retarded as the kid in question,)a discarded wifeseeking whatever satisfaction there might be--some idealistic fabulous decade that was.Gritty though it is, I'll take this over "Grease," or "American Grafiti," any day in the week.

Incredibly Powerful - Even Better Than The Film
I loved Lonesome Dove and picked up The Last Picture Show as a representation of Larry McMurtry's early work. The "flatness" of the writing matches the surrounding country and makes what goes on beneath the surface of a small Texas oil town all the more powerful. The film The Last Picture Show is a classic, garnering Oscars for Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper and Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion, but the book is even better.

The Last Picture Show traces a year in the life of a small Texas oil town. Sonny and Duane are high school football stars, soon to graduate, who live in a local rooming house and congregate in Sam the Lion's pool hall. Through them we meet Jacy, the beautiful yet incredibly selfish and manipulative cheerleader, Lois, Jacy's mother with a storied past of her own, Coach Popper, the brutal football coach with an even darker side, Ruth Popper, the coach's ignored and quietly desperate wife, and others. McMurtry shows us the underside of small town life and in the process skewers traditional concepts of morality, religion, justice, family, success, dying dreams, coming of age, and redemption.

The Last Picture Show is one of the most honest, down-to-earth, and yet shocking and racy books I have ever read. It will keep you thinking long after you finish, the legacy of a remarkable writer who is the master of his craft. This is a tremendous, incredibly powerful book you will not soon forget.

smut in a small town
I had long ago known about Larry McMurtry but had never read anything of his until I picked up his latest book, Rhino Ranch,which just happened to be the 5th in a series that began with The Last Picture Show.I really liked Rhino Ranch so much that I ordered three of the series, knowing that I could get a 4th at the local library. It was a good story, and altho I'm not offended by the lauguage, I had no idea how filthy writing was by more famous writers. John Updike being of the same sort.The story line about mostly what appeared to be dead end kids in a small town was well thought out and potrayed. ... Read more

Product Description

In a lucid, brilliant work of nonfiction -- as close to an autobiography as his readers are likely to get -- Larry McMurtry has written a family portrait that also serves as a larger portrait of Texas itself, as it was and as it has become.

Using as a springboard an essay by the German literary critic Walter Benjamin that he first read in Archer City's Dairy Queen, McMurtry examines the small-town way of life that big oil and big ranching have nearly destroyed. He praises the virtues of everything from a lime Dr. Pepper to the lost art of oral storytelling, and describes the brutal effect of the sheer vastness and emptiness of the Texas landscape on Texans, the decline of the cowboy, and the reality and the myth of the frontier.

McMurtry writes frankly and with deep feeling about his own experiences as a writer, a parent, and a heart patient, and he deftly lays bare the raw material that helped shape his life's work: the creation of a vast, ambitious, fictional panorama of Texas in the past and the present. Throughout, McMurtry leaves his readers with constant reminders of his all-encompassing, boundless love of literature and books.Amazon.com Review
Do you really want to listen to a cranky old man ramble on about hischildhood, his heart surgery, his hobbies, his son, and the way things, ingeneral, aren't what they used to be? It turns out you do. In WalterBenjamin at the Dairy Queen, Larry McMurtry comes the old pardner, andthe result is apowerful elegy for the lost spaces in American life. He takes as hisstarting point an afternoon he spent at the Dairy Queen in Archer City,Texas,reading the pensées of early 20th-century German philosopher WalterBenjamin. At the time Benjamin was writing, McMurtry's grandparents weresettling dusty reaches of west Texas, and McMurtry crosscuts neatlybetweenBenjamin's spent, smoky Europe and his own grandparents' America: "While mygrandparents were dealing with almost absolute emptiness, both social andcultural, Europe was approaching an absolute (and perhaps intolerable)density." McMurtry demonstrates a confidence almost bordering on naivetéin the way he appropriates the great thinking of Europe and applies it tohis own history. He apologizes neither to the highfalutin Europeans norto the down-home Americans, but makes them lie down together any way he seesfit. This brio makes Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen a thrilling read.

McMurtry's book-length essay loops outward from Archer City toencompass a polemic against computers, a foray into the world of bookcollecting, a family biography, anaccount of his soul-loss after heart surgery, and finally anelegy for the cowboy. This last lament casts a shadow back over what we'veread. Not just over this book, but over McMurtry's whole body ofwork. A man who's lived his whole life in print gives us a glimpse of whathas fed him, and, strangely, it's loss. "Because of when and where I grewup, on the Great Plains just as the herding tradition was beginning to loseits vitality, I have been interested all my life in vanishing breeds."The master of storytelling is finally revealed as a master ofmelancholy. --Claire Dederer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

A relaxed and informative read
From the beginning to the end, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, kept my interest. Unlike his fiction, where it is difficult to determine how McMurtry feels about certain events or people, he is much more transparent in this marvelous book. This compilation of essays on a wide variety of subjects demonstrates his smooth prose, his gift for story-telling, and his obvious love for his family and the region surrounding Archer City. But lest one expects a regional personal narrative, this book has implications far wider than at first appearance. He offers his views on a variety of subjects and holds back very little on the effects of technology, the future of ranching, book-selling, reading, and even a particular parade!

While he wants to be known for his fiction, it is his non-fiction that tends to come across with the most sincerity and honesty. McMurtry's perceptions of people and ability to find pleasure and humor in anecdotal situations is to be admired and embraced. Since a study of history helps us understand the mistakes of the past and progress to the future, in many ways, I felt this book to be a history book with a strong, optimistic spirit for the future.

Certainly one of my favorites, I recommend this highly to anyone. I cannot give it five stars since I am highly selective on the highest rating. You will gain from reading this fine book and will find yourself anxious to learn more about book trading as well as the reminder to love and appreciate your friends and family.

A literate and thoughtful "memoir"
Written when McMurtry was 62, WALTER BENJAMIN AT THE DAIRY QUEEN is probably best classified as a memoir, although it is not presented as such.Rather, the construct (perhaps "artifice" is the more apt word) is McMurtry sitting in the Dairy Queen in hometown Archer City, Texas reading an essay on storytelling by Walter Benjamin, which then prompts McMurtry to reflect on and then pass along some of the stories of his life.This Dairy Queen/Walter Benjamin construct comes across as a tad contrived, maybe a little too self-consciously "artsy," but on the whole the stories McMurtry tells are well worth listening to.

The two principle subjects of the book (tracking, one assumes, the two principle preoccupations of McMurtry's life) are (i) the American West -- including that pocket of the West local to Archer County, Texas where McMurtry grew up and his grandparents were pioneering settlers -- and (ii) books, reading, and writing.Throughout the book, seamlessly interwoven with reflections about larger themes such as the West, the doomed and mythical cowboy, and literature are themes or events personal to McMurtry, such as growing up on a hard-scrabble North Texas ranch, his father, going in his teens to the big city and later Rice University, returns to Archer City relating to "The Last Picture Show", and his quadruple-bypass surgery and its extended psychic aftermath.

I see that previous reviews have characterized McMurtry as "crusty" or "cranky," which in my view does him and the book a disservice.Without any obvious effort to ingratiate himself with the reader, McMurtry comes off as personable and likeable.It is not much of a stretch to envision him actually relating these stories and reflections after the meal around a dining room table or maybe even a campfire (albeit not any Dairy Queen of my experience). Yes, in such circumstances McMurtry probably would tend to monopolize the discussion, but he knows more than most of us and, as his fiction suggests, he is a better storyteller than most.

I vascillate between giving the book 4 or 5 stars.If possible, I would settle on 4.5.Because that's not possible, I am rounding up to 5.

My Nile
Larry McMurtry is, as Proust and Virginia Woolf are to him, my Nile of literature.The quality of his prolific output has been inconsistent, but I find myself constantly returning to his work.Like all writers, McMurtry has his faults.But he is the best I have encountered in warding off, to paraphrase Harold Bloom, that dark inertia to which we are all susceptible.

One of McMurtry's rare pieces of non-fiction, this is an intensely readable book - intentionally so, it seems, following the path of the oral tradition.McMurtry mourns the demise of this tradition, while at the same time seeking to find the positive in the historical developments that have killed it.McMurtry's yarns describe his childhood, his discovery of books, and his bouts with depression, including his ruminations on literature's place in his life, and his life's place in this country's physical, historical, and literary landscape.

All of the tributary themes of the book join together as the book progresses, through McMurtry's own White and Blue Nile of Proust (who I personally like) and Woolf (with whom I have never been able to connect)and into a general inspiration to literature.McMurtry says that he early identified books as the central and stable activity in his life.This book is a testament to the joys and comforts of doing the same.

As close to a personal memoir as we get with McMurtry
Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond by Larry McMurtry. Larry McMurtry was influenced by an essay he first read in a Texas Dairy Queen by Walter Benjamin. The essay he was reading was about the dissipation of memory and the loss of narrative power in fiction today.

Larry McMurtry writes about growing up on a ranch in Archer City, Texas. He shares discovering reading and books as a teen, going to college at Rice University, knowing virtually nothing about literature, transferring to North Texas State University to finish his bachelor's degree as a workaround for a troublesome Rice professor, and then doing his Master's at Rice University.

He tells some about writing, his love for books that leads to his becoming a book scout and antiquarian book dealer. Across from the Archer City court house he has a giant bookstore containing a quarter-million used books, and the dying legacy of the cowboy. He shares little about his personal life except his love for reading and his quadruple bypass surgery which was very traumatic. It may be as close to a personal memoir as we get with McMurtry. The work is well written, wide, but not deep. We do not get to know McMurty at a level most would like to experience.

Read and reviewed by Jimmie A. Kepler.

Very Enjoyable
This sat on my shelf for years and I finally pulled it down. I'm glad I did. He expounds on aging, the west, books, his own writing, and reading. His writing is conversational and comfortable. Very enjoyable! ... Read more

Product Description

When Larry McMurtry's classic novel of the post-World War II era was originally published in 1961, it created a sensation in Texas literary circles. Never before had a writer portrayed the contemporary West in conflict with the Old West in such stark, realistic, unsentimental ways.

Horseman, Pass By, on which the film Hud is based, tells the story of Homer Bannon, an old-time cattleman who epitomizes the frontier values of honesty and decency, and Hud, his unscrupulous stepson. Caught in the middle is the narrator, Homer's young grandson, Lonnie, who is as much drawn to his grandfather's strength of character as he is to Hud's hedonism and materialism. Memorable characters, powerful themes, and illuminating detail make Horseman, Pass By vintage McMurtry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

"Hey, pass them old potatoes before I kill you!"
This is a complete rewrite of an earlier review. My essays tend to be sloppy, but this one was so bad, I was obliged to completely redo it. My apologies to anyone who wasted their time trying to read the earlier version.

It's impossible to discuss this novel without also discussing "Hud", which has become a classic film in its own right. Most readers will have seen the film before having read the novel, which is not a bad thing, as it gives a better appreciation of the novel's strengths (as is true of "No Country for Old Men").

The /fundamental/ difference between the novel and the film is that the novel is about the post-War changes in Texas cattle ranching, whereas the film is about the people experiencing those changes. This difference extends to making the film characters not merely advocates of (or opponents to) those changes (as they are in the novel), but the (figurative) changes themselves.

The development of the Texas oil industry encouraged ranchers to lease their land to oil companies, rather than raising cattle. In the novel (and film), Homer Bannon declares that he will never lease his land, because he wants to work at something he has direct contact with, rather than sit around collecting royalties. Larry McMurtry, the son and grandson of cattlemen, obviously agrees with Homer. But...

McMurtry is a better novelist than to think that characters who are all-good or all-bad are interesting. The novel's characters -- unlike the film's -- are not easily categorized. This is especially true of Hud (birth name: Scott). There's justification for his strained relationship with Homer (who, in the book, is his step-father). Homer not only failed to keep Hud out of the draft when he easily could have, but wouldn't let him go to college. (The Bannons aren't filthy-rich, but both the novel and film make it clear they're hardly scraping along.)

Hud also has justification for feeling that his father used him as cheap labor. (Both the film and novel have him remark about "working from the neck down".) When Hud gripes "You assumed that what you wanted for me was what I wanted for myself", we are partly on his side. The Hud of the novel isn't ignorant about ranching, and was correct in trying to keep Homer from buying the cheap Mexican cattle that spread hoof-and-mouth -- a point the film conveniently omits. Even Hud's attempt to have Homer committed for "incapacity" is partly understandable, as Homer is likely to make additional mistakes that will further reduce the ranch's value.

The novel's Hud, rotten as he is, is not so much evil as he is the representative of a new era, in which people ranch simply to make money (or abandon it altogether for oil). When, in the film, Homer accuses Hud of having no concern for anyone but himself, the screenwriters are conflating Hud's character with McMurtry's feelings about the way the West changed after WWII.

Nor is Homer Bannon the blameless good guy. He's a man stuck in his ways, approaching senility and incapable of handing off control to others. Lonnie tells us that, contrary to the minister's eulogy, his grandfather was not particularly well-liked or widely respected. The film conveniently deletes Homer's remark that, although he loves raising cattle, he also loves having money, and lots of it. This supports Hud's view that Homer is cheap -- and not only because he wouldn't pay $50 for tinted glass for the car.

Despite the film's "adultness" for its era (it's amazing the script got a Production Code seal), it insults the audience's intelligence by portraying its characters in such a "one-note" fashion. This is true even of Lonnie, who initially admires Hud, then turns against him. In the novel, Lonnie (who narrates the story) has no need to read "Low-Lifes for Dummies" to understand that there's no good reason to admire Hud. Lonnie admits he's afraid of Hud, who, as Homer says, "has no rope on him".

The film largely reduces the characters to dramatic stereotypes. The problems besetting the Bannons are not Homer's fault, nor are they the result of social and economic changes (with Homer and Hud on opposing sides). Rather, they are /wholly/ due to the bad behavior of Hud, who is A Really Awful Person. We learn that Hud was indirectly responsible for the death of Lonnie's father (which is not in the novel), and Melvyn Douglas is given a watered-down-Chayefsky rant in which he condemns Hud as A Rotten Human Being. We are not far-removed from "The Bad Seed".

The novel's most-brutal moment -- Hud's murdering Homer with Lonnie's .22, "to put him out of his misery" and assure ownership of the ranch -- should not be viewed as a "legitimate" element of the story, but rather the first-novel prototype of McMurtry's over-the-top characterizations and repeated cruelty/brutality/sadism. Homer is in such bad shape he would have died anyway, and McMurtry could just as easily bumped him off that way. Instead, we're treated to a revolting and gratuitous murder. (It's amazing a decrepit Blue Duck didn't show up out of nowhere to gut Homer. How old would he have been in 1954?)

There are compensations. Perhaps the best part of the novel is the prologue, in which Lonnie describes what the end of day is like on a ranch. The description of Thalia's rodeo, from its bright beginning to dispirited end, is almost as good.

"Horseman, Pass By" anticipates "The Last Picture Show" (and beyond). Some of the action takes place in McMurtry's fictional Thalia; the black man who runs the pool hall is Lem the Lion; one of its regulars is Dumb Billy; there's talk about sex with heifers; and Lonnie watches a Gene Autry movie, "Streets of Laredo". (McMurtry apparently didn't like Autry, and has Lonnie observe "in the picture he was his chubby fat self".) I'm inclined to think McMurtry gave "Horseman" a second look, decided "I can do better", and "The Last Picture Show" was the result.

McMurtry is a well-known gynecophile, and "Horseman, Pass By" includes the first of his near-perfect females, Halmea the black housekeeper. Why she became the film's white Alma (Patricia Neal) will probably never be known. It was likely due to nothing more than difficulty in casting the role. Other possibilities come to mind, such as her being (mis?)-interpreted as the idealized nurturing (or seductive) black mammy, but I leave it to readers and viewers to draw their own conclusions.

"Horseman, Pass By" is a short read, and worthwhile, if only to view 1954 Texas from Lonnie's (McMurtry's) perspective. You'll also get to see what was "lost in translation". If you're even the least interested, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

----------

"Hud" can't even be /mentioned/ without reference to MAD's classic parody (12/1963). The first page announces that "adult" Westerns have a new kind of not-100%-good "hero", and "Hood" is the first "sick" Western of this sort. The second and third pages riff on every rotten thing Hood does, the funniest of which is his gleeful Schadenfreude in burying the diseased cattle alive. This oddly anticipates the sadism that (in my view) has infected too many of McMurtry's novels.

Just watch Hud instead
This is a great story with a great character about a man who simply has no morals.Very poignant because instead of heroic acts it shows what most men would do when faced with decisions where they can either help others at a cost to themselves or help themselves at a cost to others.Sadly, the book does not expand upon the movie "Hud" with Paul Newman.In fact, based on the short length of the book the movie probably expanded on the book.I would argue that this was Paul Newman's greatest role because he delivers on this flawed character flawlessly.

Meaningful, descriptive, with emotional depth
As I continue my goal to read every McMurtry book, I realized it was time to read his first one, Horseman, Pass By. In most ways, the McMurtry style of describing people through the events and reactions of situations remains true, but in other ways, this book is atypical of his later books. Told in first person by a young man, Lonnie Bannon, whose admiration for his grandfather shines forth throughout the book, Horseman, Pass By is a gripping story set in the 1950s Western culture of a small town and a nearby ranch.

The fictional town of Thalia, located near Wichita Falls bears some resemblance to many of the small towns in the region, including McMurtry's hometown, Archer City. Replete with rodeos, cafes, cowboys, oil workers, cattle, and small town gossip, Thalia becomes the location for many of McMurtry's later books. In this pointed, and somewhat frightening novel, a successful cattleman deals with aging, sick cows, and a violent family member whose anger leads to many of the events of the story.

Lonnie is a hard-working, but fun-loving young man with a heavy sense of responsibility, love of his family, and concern for other people. It is Lon's character and integrity that seems to represent the strength of the Western heritage, a heritage that needs to remain. His commitment to helping his grandfather and the ranch puts him at odds with the impetuous and pain-inflicting Hud, a man with no scruples and no morality.

The story moves well and demonstrates human confusion, fear, love, and the hopelessness of certain situations. While justice is implied at the end, the reader gets the sense that it may not happen. The accurate descriptions of the cows, the people, the rodeo, and the town place this book several notches above typical modern fiction. Highly recommended for all McMurtry fans and those interested in the modern Western.

An American Classic
This is a book that should be required reading in every high school in America. It is an unflinching portrayal of the American reality: a mix of strong moral principles vs. greed. When McMurtry nails a book, great things occur. This is also a novel that foreigners with a good level in English, must read if they want to understand what is America and who are the Americans.

Horsemen, Pass By
I did not care for this book at all. Very disapointed. Such a sad story. I have read other novels by this author and have enjoyed his books but not this one. Kind of boring, I kept expecting it to get better but it did not. ... Read more

Product Description
A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize— winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.Amazon.com Review
Larry McMurtry, in books like The Last Picture Show, hasdepicted the modern degeneration of the myth of the American West. Thesubject of Lonesome Dove, cowboys herding cattle on a greattrail-drive, seems like the very stuff of that cliched myth, but McMurtrybravely tackles the task of creating meaningful literature out of it. Atfirst the novel seems the kind of anti-mythic, anti-heroic story one mightexpect: the main protagonists are a drunken and inarticulate pair of formerTexas Rangers turned horse rustlers. Yet when the trail begins, the storypicks up an energy and a drive that makes heroes of these men. Their missionmay be historically insignificant, or pointless--McMurtry is smart enough toaddress both possibilities--but there is an undoubted valor in their lives.The result is a historically aware, intelligent, romantic novel of the mythicwest that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (432)

My Favorite Book!! And I Read A Lot!
I loved this book. It is well written, and has some very memorable characters. If you have never read it, give yourself a treat.

He is one great writer !!!

Worth your time and money
This is the first book I read on my new Kindle.While I was disappointed with the $12.99 price compared to the paperback price, I purchased it because I needed to read it as part of a book club I'm in with some friends.

I read the story probably 15 years ago, and I liked it just as much now, if not more, then I did then.

I thought the story was a good view into the harsh environment that men, and especially women, found themselves in back in the Wild West in the late 1800's.This is a slow, epic story, but I think it is well worth your time to read because you meet a great set of characters and see the things they struggled with on a daily basis.At times, I found myself wishing some of them would "figure things out"; however, I think that is part of the attraction to the story in that it is a tragedy, and people live with the decisions they make.

Full of action and unforgettable characters
McMurtry has written 29 novels (and more than 30 screenplays). Predominantly set in the American Southwest, McMurtry's novels are as much about the place as about the people who live there. His depictions of harsh, rugged landscapes are beautifully written and give a balance to his hapless, roguish heroes and villains.
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's vast, wild tale of a cattle drive is full of action and unforgettable characters. The western epic won him the Pulitzer Prize. The story follows two longtime friends and former Texas Rangers, Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae, at the end of the 1800s. Their lives as cattle ranchers along the Rio Grande have lost the excitement of their younger lawman days, so they set off on a long and difficult cattle drive to Montana.

McMurtry's immense talent takes the myth out of the cowboy legend with such a master's touch that the reader never feels the sting. His has the ability to create believable and lovable characters no matter what the setting. Larry McMurtry is one the finest writers in the world of American fiction. His novels are compelling, unforgettable, and fun.

Sleepless nights
I ran across this book at the library some 20 years ago, started reading the first couple pages and was immediately hooked.I lost a lot of sleep the next couple weeks because I just couldn't put it down then I lay awake thinking about the characters.This is definitely one of my all time favorite books.

Pure magic
Easily the best book I have ever read.Do yourself and get lost in this masterpiece.I am jealous of anybody who has not read this and is about to.Enjoy!! ... Read more

Product Description
Not since the publication of his own beloved classic Lonesome Dove has there been a novel like this one -- another big, brilliant, unputdownable saga of the West from Larry McMurtry. Telegraph Days is at once a major work of literature and a completely absorbing read, not just great fiction, but fiction on a great scale, encompassing many years, many characters, real and fictional, and the whole vast landscape of place, time, life, and heart, which has served for more than one hundred thirty years as the background for "the Western" in fiction and on the screen. Nobody writes, or has ever written, better about the West than Larry McMurtry, and nobody has caught better in words its myths, its often brutal reality, its overwhelming size, and the way it captured both the imagination and the hopes of those who settled there, only, as was so often the case, to dash those hopes.

Told in the voice of Nellie Courtright, a spunky, courageous, attractive young woman whose story this is in part, Telegraph Days is the big novel of the Western gunfighters that people have been hoping for years Larry McMurtry would write.

When Nellie and her brother Jackson are unexpectedly orphaned by their father's suicide on his new and unprosperous ranch, they make their way to the nearby town of Rita Blanca, where Jackson manages to secure a job as a sheriff's deputy, while Nellie, ever resourceful, becomes the town's telegrapher.

Together, they inadvertently put Rita Blanca on the map when young Jackson succeeds in shooting down all six of the ferocious Yazee brothers in a gunfight that brings him lifelong fame but which he can never repeat because his success came purely out of luck.

Propelled by her own energy and commonsense approach to life, Nellie meets and almost conquers the heart of Buffalo Bill, the man she will love most in her long life, and goes on to meet, and witness the exploits of, Billy the Kid, the Earp brothers, and Doc Holliday. She even gets a ringside seat at the Battle at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight in Western history, and eventually lives long enough to see the West and its gunfighters turned into movies.

Full of life, love, shootings, real Western heroes and villains, Telegraph Days is Larry McMurtry at his epic best, in his most ambitious Western novel since Lonesome Dove. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (75)

Wonderful Audio Version
I have never listened to an audio version of a book before Telegraph Days which I took from the library for a long road trip. It was wonderful. I attribute the enjoyment mostly to Annie Potts narration. She captured the main character so well and really brought the story and humor to life. I am not so sure I would have enjoyed the tale as much if I had read the book. As one reviewer said, it is episodic, and yes it is. But the first half, which takes place in the small western town of Rita Blanca when Nellie is 22 and her brother Jackson 17, is wonderful. After Nellie hits the road it becomes episodic but as McMurtry weaves in tales of real life well know western cowboys - Buffalo Bill, the Earp brothers, Jesse James, Bill the Kid, etc. the episodes, while not believable, are entertaining. I felt the ending (once Nellie ages and heads out to California) was the most unbelievable portion and felt like the author was trying to trump all of Nellie's past accomplishments and tie up loose ends.

I've never read anything by McMurtry but may give it a try now. But I'd really like to see what else Annie Potts has narrated, if anything.

FANTASY OLD WEST
Protagonist Nellie takes you on a fun,entertaining romp thru the Old West with Jesse James, Wild Bill, Billy the Kid, the Earps, Buffalo Bill Cody, et. al. She's a spunky, lively gal (loves to kiss the cowboys), and has a brother who luckily shot up and killed all the members of the notorious Yazee gang of cuthroats. Just the descriptions of the diners at mealtime at Mrs. Karoo's supper table is worth the read.The passing of the vittles, the comments and burping, and smoking of the pipes afterwards is just downright amusing.Larry McMurtry does his typical job in producing a book that you just can't leave and walk away.Highly recommended about spoofing the Old West and some of its well-known characters.Nellie has an opinion about them all.

Telegraph Days by Larry McMurtry
When Nellie and Jackson Courtright's father Perceval hangs himself from a rafter in the barn it brought to an end a family of seven, causing the last two members to re-group in the town of Rita Blanca. Jackson takes up a position with Sheriff Ted Bunsen as a deputy after they arrive. His sister Nellie is later hired as the town telegraph operator after the existing man takes a Comanche bride and moves down by the South Canadian. This job leads Nellie into some precarious adventures.

Deputy Jackson Courtright, only seventeen and with scarce knowledge of a six gun confronts the Yazee gang--the most feared bunch of desperados in the West--and manages to gun down all six of them in succession as if by some form of mythical luck making him a town hero, and later a much talked about lawman. His sister Nellie writes a dime novel about the event and it becomes a best seller in the West. A museum in town is started to enhance the event. Together the two go to Dodge City to get the story printed. There they meet Marshall Wyatt Earp and his three brothers. Later, Virgil Earp proposes to Nellie, who turns him down.

When Buffalo Bill Cody hears of Deputy Jackson's exploits he wants to hire him for his Wild West Show. Bill comes to Rita Blanca, becomes enamored with Nellie's efficient telegraph operating and instead offers her a job to work for him. Nellie takes the job and moves to North Platt, Nebraska where she handles Buffalo Bill's tempestuous financial affairs for four years.

Nellie meets Jesse James, Doc Holiday and Billy the Kid and records the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral while working as a reporter with her husband Zenas at their newspaper.

Telegraph Days is a genuine western romp through the imagination of its author, Larry McMurtry, a Texan who knows how to spin a tale about the land he loves.

Charles Hamilton Sr, Former Executive Director Northwest Teen Challenge and author of From Darkness To Light and A Step Of Faith.

From Darkness To Light

Larry McMurtry-Telegraph Days
This book on cd is one of the many I have purchased through Amazon.com. They have made great gifts for my grandfather who is a big reader of many western novels. He has a hard time reading these days because of poor sight. So these are a great alternative. He has enjoyed them very much.

Audiobook review
Listen to this book on tape!!Actress and reader, Annie Potts, brings life and laughter to the story and to all of the characters, especially Nellie.Her range of voices and accents is remarkable.She will have you chuckling as long as you are not offended by an outspoken woman who is a candid observer of life.What fun that McMurty introduces his readers / listeners to so many famous individuals from the wild, wild West. ... Read more

Product Description

Zeke and Ned is the story of Ezekiel Proctor and Ned Christie, the last Cherokee warriors -- two proud, passionate men whose remarkable quest to carve a future out of Indian Territory east of the Arkansas River after the Civil War is not only history but legend. Played out against an American West governed by a brutal brand of frontier justice, this intensely moving saga brims with a rich cast of indomitable and utterly unforgettable characters such as Becca, Zeke's gallant Cherokee wife, and Jewel Sixkiller Proctor, whose love for Ned makes her a tragic heroine.

At once exuberant and poignant, bittersweet and brilliant, Zeke and Ned takes us deep into the hearts of two extraordinary men who were willing to go the distance for the bold vision they shared -- and for the women they loved.Amazon.com Review
With this new historical Western, Larry McMurtry returns tothe genre in which he created such memorable characters as AugustusMcCrae and Woodrow Call. In collaboration with Pretty Boy Floyd coauthorDiana Ossana, he dramatizes the Cherokee struggle for independencefollowing the Civil War. Ezekiel Proctor and Ned Christie are the lastCherokee warriors, men of legend and history, whose fates are aconsequence of such brutal policies as the Indian Removal Act of 1830and the infamous Trail of Tears. They struggle to find honor in aharsh, violent land under the relentless pressure of white law andbroken promises. Every bit as tough as their men, the women in Zekeand Ned are determined to raise their families and keep the two menalive--whatever it takes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Zeke & Ned
I was very pleased to be able to source a copy of this book thank you

Zeke and Ned
"Zeke and Ned",based on true facts, the story of Ned Christy and his lifelong friend Zeke.Both Cherokee, with families after the civil war, trying to survive both before and after the Federal government stepped in and ordered the judge in Fort Smith to order the arrest Ned Christy and several others for trial in Arkansas.Simple mistakes on everyones' parts, coincidence, chance meetings, everything seems to go wrong at just the wrong time, and Zeke and Ned find their lives challenged, going on the run, trying to survive amid murders, whites out for revenge, posses being manned by rough fast-shooting outlaws.
In the tradition of "Lonesome Dove" Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana blend tragedy and murder with humor and true grit as the 2 friends try to do the right things for their families, their lives.
Recommended most highly.

Brilliant
I almost lost faith in McMurtry in his Sin Killer series, but I went back and picked up Zeke and Ned and rediscovered the writer I fell in love with in Lonesome Dove.

I live 30 miles east of Tahlequah and the setting is dead on. Ned is a strong character, representing the Cherokee Nation well, while other characters are rich and real, and downright funny at times, while tragic and flawed as well.

This is a brilliant book, well-written, and a portrait of Native America as real people.

my very favorite story
I read quite a variety of books. In the last two years I've tried to stick with the classics. Still Zeke and Ned is my favorite story. I find the main characters so interesting, down to earth, and good human beings. It tells of strength, courage, conviction, and the principles of men. Everytime I've read it (3 times) I find it very difficult to read the end, my heartaches.
The injustice suffered by the American Indians is so tragic. There are many non-fiction books that tell the tragedy much better. But for a novel and an all around good story, it's my favorite.

Great Western
Written in simple language, this action packed western also carries with it heavy emotions. McMurty and Ossana show the sad plight of the Cherokee years after the Trail of Tears as they try to live according to the white man's ways. But when Zeke accidentally kills a woman, he and Ned learn the hard way that the whites will seldom try to unravel the truth or even follow their own rules, such as they are. The Cherokee and their families are not dealt a fair hand and the bodies pile up. Though the novel comes to a sad conclusion, it is truly worth the journey.

Chrissy K. McVay
author of 'Souls of the North Wind' ... Read more

Product Description
In The Wandering Hill, Larry McMurtry continues the story of Tasmin Berrybender and her eccentric family in the still unexplored Wild West of the 1830s. Their journey is one of exploration, beset by difficulties, tragedies, the desertion of trusted servants, and the increasing hardships of day-to-day survival in a land where nothing can be taken for granted. By now, Tasmin is married to the elusive young mountain man Jim Snow (the "Sin Killer").

On his part, Jim is about to discover that in taking the outspoken, tough-minded, stubbornly practical young aristocratic woman into his teepee he has bitten off more than he can chew. Still, theirs is a great love affair and dominates this volume of Larry McMurtry's The Berrybender Narratives, in which Tasmin gradually takes center stage as her father loses his strength and powers of concentration, and her family goes to pieces stranded in the hostile wilderness.

The Wandering Hill (which refers to a powerful and threatening legend in local Indian folklore) is at once literature on a grand scale and riveting entertainment by a master storyteller.

Amazon.com Review
The Wandering Hill, the second volume in Larry McMurtry's The Berrybender Narratives, retains the humor of the first installment, Sin Killer, while establishing a more meditative mood. Picking up where Sin Killer left off, The Wandering Hill finds noble English family the Berrybenders waiting out the oncoming winter at a high plains trading post, delaying their hunting expedition through the frontier-era American west.Tight confines force the spirited, bickering Berrybenders to contend with one another, as well as an assortment of colorful attendants and raw trappers.Conflict has arisen between fiery and very pregnant heroine Tasmin and her stoical, evangelical mountain man husband Jim Snow, a.k.a. Sin Killer.Selfish, randy patriarch Lord Berrybender, having lost a leg, seven toes, and three fingers thus far on their journey (though not his "favorite appendage"), is slowly losing his sanity.Malicious youngest child Mary begins an odd pseudo-sexual friendship with naturalist Piet Van Wely, while "foppish" heir Bobbety's no less ambiguous relationship with priest Father Geoffrin inspires his father to accidentally stick his son in the eye with a fork.In between many such self-inflicted disasters, three children are born, fierce native tribes attack, a man is sewn into a buffalo carcass, and many lives are lost, often in the presence of a strange, mobile hill whose legendary appearance signals impending doom.McMurtry, meanwhile, continues the momentum he built with Sin Killer, offering graceful storytelling, wonderfully dimensional realism, and deadpan wit. The wintry Wandering Hill, however, diverges from Sin Killer's madcap activity to further consider the inner lives of many of its splendid characters. McMurtry will have his fans clamoring for an answer, though delighting in his wandering path toward a resolution. --Ross Doll ... Read more

Customer Reviews (38)

It Grew On Me
I skipped Sin Killer: A Novel (The Berrybender Narratives) (the first in the series) and started with this book, the follow-on in the series (perhaps I'll go back and pick up the first at some point -- though I'm largely undecided). Second in a a four part series, this one seemed slow to me right off and I could have put it down a dozen times, I thought, because the narrative seemed to lack a driving force, a reason for me to keep reading. It was largely a strung-together series of loosely linked episodes, recounted from the perspectives of the various characters in the cast. And yet I didn't put it down and, finally, ended up reading it in a single day. It isn't a long book and it lacks the sense of great tragedy and the pathos of McMurtry'sLonesome Dove: A Novel, the Western tale that stands out for me among all McMurtry's works in the genre. But this one had something.

The Wandering Hill follows the doings and, of course, the wanderings of the Berrybender clan, consisting of the English Lord Albany Berrybender and his horde of offspring and servants as they wend their way west to sate the old man's comically clumsy tastes for adventure and satisfaction in all things (from good claret to women to shooting at whatever moves). The main character around whom much of the narrative is built, however, and to whom we return again and again despite the many excursions into others' points of view, is Lady Tasmin Berrybender, the feisty and self-willed eldest daughter of Lord Berrybender. Tasmin having married a wild untameable mountain man in the earlier volume, Jim Snow, known among friend and foe alike as the Sin Killer, now must struggle to adjust to the choice of mate she has made for herself.

Jim Snow is the product of a brutal and lonely childhood, taken and raised first by Indians and later by a harsh Christian preacher who, after adopting him out of "charity," proceeded to beat the hell out of him to expunge the devil. Impartially administering the same treatment to his actual kin, including his wife, and to his various parishioners, the preacher was apparently struck down and deep fried by a bolt of lightning which left Jim's adopted ma deranged and Jim, himself, imprinted with an aversion to sin and prone to fits of sacred fury when confronted by it. But Jim has only a limited education and his knowledge of the bible and its nuances reflect that. Still he is a good man, when not in one of his sin killing rages, and something of a heart throb for the Lady Tasmin to boot, leading her to passionate desire for her man, when he isn't smacking her around for a somewhat foul mouth. (The matter of his strict enforcement of respectable language preys on the lady and will lead to her own vengeful response by book's end.)

Delighting in her lovemaking with the handsome, magnetic Sin Killer, Tasmin is also estranged from him because of his bewildering penchant for violence, even with her. Against the backdrop of these two people and their efforts to find one another within the strange marriage they have made, we're given the world of the mountainmen and the plainsmen in the 1830's American West as it might have been. The actors include famous Westerners like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Toussaint Charbonneau, George Caitlin (the Western painter) and many more.

The events in which the Berrybender party -- replete with butlers, cooks, laundresses, gunsmiths and so on (many having died off by the time this volume's installment occurs) -- participate seem to have been lifted from the annals of real Western history though the Berrybenders appear to be invented additions. This second installment of the Berrybenders in the West opens to find them stranded at a trading post in the dead of winter somewhere off the Missouri River, Lord Berrybender having lost a leg and his wife (the Lady Constance) in the earlier tale but not having forsaken his lustful ways or his willful misuse and abuse of the people around him. Lady Tasmin, for her part, is busy trying to accommodate herself to Jim Snow's ways as the whole party waits out the winter.

In the early going the story seemed a mite disjointed but, as McMurtry moves us skillfully from one actor's perspective to another, the tale grows together and the characters become real and compelling. How they manage to face so much seemingly senseless violence and the harshness of the frontier ultimately carries the tale forward.

Instead of going back downriver with the spring thaw, after having barely survived the frozen river, the selfishly incompetent libertine, Lord Berrybender, decides to push on in hopes of shooting at more big game (a bad shot he rarely, if ever, hits anything he's actually aiming at), despite the losses his party has already endured. Jim Snow and Kit Carson agree to take the Berrybenders west and south to Santa Fe (still Mexican territory in those days) with an eye toward putting them on a vessel out of New Orleans to take them home to Europe. Babies are born over the winter and the proximity of the men and women, in the close quarters of the trading post (and, later, on the journey west), lead to all manner of complications and liaisons, which only promise to increase in complexity in future installments. In the meantime Indian attacks and the vagaries of the wilderness continue to prove daunting obstacles, even to as hardy a bunch of holy fools as the Berrybenders.

As with many of McMurtry's Westerns we're treated here to an array of grotesques, from crazy old Greasy Lake, the Indian medicine man and prophet (even his own people can't stand him), to the white-hating Sioux war chief, The Partezon, and the heedless Ute chief Walkura who is finally pushed to action near the book's end by the irritating ravings of Greasy Lake, leading to an abortive Indian raid that will mean the end for some of the characters and the unaccountable survival of others. With McMurtry's Western tales death often comes suddenly, out of the blue and, at times, with terrible violence. But almost always there is an eerie matter-of-factness to it all, leaving us speechless before the doings of the heedless universe.

And so it is with The Wandering Hill. Taking its title from a mythical mound peopled by ancient devils which the Western tribes imagine moves about the countryside and whose apparition signals terrible things to come for those who see it, this image forms the focal point of the latter part of the book. A number of the characters in the tale have the unfortunate experience of seeing the mysterious mound, with its lone tree upon its summit, although few are sure that they have -- except for old Greasy Lake (he gets his name from the foul smelling grease he smears on his flesh to ward off mosquitos). He thinks he has seen the wandering hill more frequently than others and, believing in its significance more fervently than most, he is finally moved to report the matter to Chief Walkura and the Ute council, leading to a violent and largely senseless denouement.

The Wandering Hill grew on me as I read it and while it lacks the resonance Lonesome Dove had, so did the various prequels, and the sequel, McMurtry wrote to THAT book. After all, a great masterwork doesn't come along everyday, especially to the same writer. But The Wandering Hill is a fine addition to McMurtry's Western opus; the characters are interesting and subtly drawn on a scale and with a dimension that warrants the continuation of their tale.

Stuart W. Mirsky
author of The King of Vinland's Saga

Second in a series
This is the second in a series of novels about the Berrybender family's adventures in the American West during the mid-19th century. I especially enjoyed listening to the CD version as each part is read in the character's voice, and this book is full of characters. It is especially entertaining to watch the father pursue his two main loves: hunting buffalo and young women.Its not for the faint of heart, with graphic violence and raw language.

PIcked off where Sin Killer left off...
This book will make very little sense to you if you haven't yet read Sin Killer.The second of the Berrybender series is just as exciting as the first.I feel that McMurtry is unfairly compared to Lonesome Dove in every other work he does.This is not Lonesome Dove and should not be compared to it.It goes without saying that LD is his best (although Zeke and Ned is my favorite) but it certainly is far from his only work.
Without skipping a beat the story of the eccentric, odd, and always entertaining Berrybender clan picks up where the first left off.New and unexpected story lines continue to impress and entertain me as they always do.This series has a direct link to our present as well.Making it abundantly clear that every persons actions affect others in positive and negative ways and lest we forget we are all linked together one way or another.
A great series that should not be overlooked.

The Wandering Hill
I am probably not an impartial critic of Larry McMurtry's books - I admire them all. The same about The Wandering Hill and Boon's Lick. What seems to be the most wonderful is comparison of the life of wild Indians and contemporary Texans (for example in LonesomWae Dove and Cadillac Jack). Frankly speaking lord Berbyybender seems to me a bit fantastic figure, but Larry probably knows better.

Sincerely yours,

Igor Afanas'ev, Moscow (Russia)- Porto (Portugal)

The humor of differences
I adore McMurty's westerns, and having read and enjoyed "Sin Killer", I promised myself to read more of the Berrybender series, and now, several years later, have read the second of the four books.As in Sin Killer, the humor runs deep, and so do the references to violent and gory acts on the western plains of 1833.The clan of English Lord Berrybender continues its time in the wild west, with daughter Tasmin the central figure and married to the Sin Killer, Jim Snow.She bears a child and faces his famous emotional outbursts with a very sharp tongue and English gentry outlook not familiar or comfortable to Jim.Also preset are trappers Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, painter George Catlin, Charbonneau of Lewis and Clark fame and the son, Pomp, he ostensibly had with Sacajawea, and others who may or may not have really existed, including many Indians (Blue Thunder existed, but Greasy Lake or Little Onion?Who knows?).Then there's the Wandering Hill of the title, a mythical moving hill that's an omen of death to Indian cultures.There's lots of action here, more than a smattering of humor, some quite bawdy, much on cultural and male/female relationships, and enough historical figures and what seems to be historically accurate detail to make this a lot of fun.Next, coming soon, book three, By Sorrow's River. ... Read more

Product Description

Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry writes novels set in the American heartland, but his real territory is the heart itself. His gift for writing about women -- their love for reckless, hopeless men; their ability to see the good in losers; and their peculiar combination of emotional strength and sudden weakness -- makes The Desert Rose the bittersweet, funny, and touching book that it is.

Harmony is a Las Vegas showgirl. At night she's a lead dancer in a gambling casino; during the day she raises peacocks. She's one of a dying breed of dancers, faced with fewer and fewer jobs and an even bleaker future. Yet she maintains a calm cheerfulness in that arid neon landscape of supermarkets, drive-in wedding chapels, and all-night casinos. While Harmony's star is fading, her beautiful, cynical daughter Pepper's is on the rise. But Harmony remains wistful and optimistic through it all. She is the unexpected blossom in the wasteland, the tough and tender desert rose. Hers is a loving portrait that only Larry McMurtry could render. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Light, bittersweet, and slightly disturbing
While the sequel to Desert Rose, The Late Child, is filled with one funny episode after another, the comical moments in Desert Rose do not balance well with the general lack of goal-direction or the pervading sadness of the story. Harmony, an aging but still beautiful showgirl in Las Vegas, has a maturing teenage daughter who eventually earns her way to replace her retiring mother. Yet Harmony somehow retains an optimistic spirit, while Pepper, her shallow and somewhat amoral daughter, seems to revel in her own fortunes and her budding career. This makes for a bittersweet read without a lot of purpose other than demonstrating the superficiality of the life of a showgirl.

The story moves along at a normal pace and is filled with the kind of antics that make McMurtry an enjoyable writer of great perception and entertainment. Hilarious moments related to the peacocks, a goat, and many quirky people remind us of McMurtry's ability to find the humor in the middle of the sadness. It is somehow not surprising to find a myriad of personalities involved in the Las Vegas show world, but it is surprising to focus on so many who seem to have little interests outside of their profession. Harmony herself seems primarily interested in her friends, finding a man, and keeping her job. Yet, the style of writing is smooth and entertaining, poignant and sentimental, realistic and hopeful. In spite of the constant challenges of the life in Las Vegas, the people find a way to enjoy life and remain optimistic.

Yet I was more than slightly disturbed by the ease of the sex and the behavior of the daughter. The lack of moral standards and ethical behavior by many of the characters left me feeling cold and suspicious of most of the characters encountered in the story. While realism means presenting people as they really exist, I often wish to read about people with strong character traits and goodness in their actions. Very few of these kind of people are presented, resulting in feeling of disappointment. But aside from this problem, it is a light-hearted read that should be read before reading The Late Child. Not one of my favorites for sure, but the stories of the peacocks are very funny!

Leaving Las Vegas
The last time, I believe, that it I mentioned Las Vegas in this space was regarding a review of the late Hunter Thompson's classic "gonzo" piece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that used that city as the backdrop for his drug-addled adventures spoofing the rubes.The last time that I mentioned the author of the book under review, Larry McMurtry, was just recently praising his Texas trilogy that was based on his classic 1950's coming of age tale The Last Picture Show. In a sense McMurtry tackles the scenes that the drug-rattled Thompson failed to get- a view of those who actually live and work in Vegas 24/7/365. That story has a certain pathos that McMurtry is able to milk. Maybe not in the definitive way that he can milk small town Texas for a story but milk it nevertheless.

Hollywood and Las Vegas has stood culturally in America as meccas for generations of young girls from places like Oklahoma and guys from Kansas as places to achieve fame, if only for that proverbial fifteen minutes. That is one of the strands that McMurtry weaved into his tale of the loves, dreams, losses and forfeitures of Las Vegas showgirl extra ordinaire Harmony and her ill-fated marriage to that Kansas boy, Ross.

This is also a story of generations as the product of the marriage, Pepper, although only a teenager seems destined to avoid most of the mistakes that "mom" made by having more talent - for picking right guys, rejecting bad guys and being a dancing prodigyrather than a mere showgirl. The problem, however, is that for Pepper to rise Harmony must fall. The two cannot share center stage in the casinos or in life. Moreover, in a youth-crazed culture epitomized to the nth degree in Vegas aging "mom" cannot fight the fates, even if she had the capacity to do so.That is the drama that centrally drives this little piece.

Along the way we get to look at the lives and loves of the people who hold Las Vegas together (if not themselves). We get to view lifelong Vegas denizens, the inevitable gay wardrobe guy, assorted talented or talentless showgirls and their trials and tribulations, sundry backstage types who share the dreams of the spotlight. Is this a McMurtry work that you must read? No, I already told you that Last Picture Show trilogy is a must read. But if you have a few hours, and want to read about what Thompson missed on his sojourn, then read this little novel.

Pointless, mindless, plotless, etc.
This is quite possibly the worst supposedly good book I have ever read.On the grammatical level, every other sentence contains a comma splice.I know that sounds like a minor nit to pick, but consider this: that is no exaggeration -- at least half of the sentences have exactly the same structure: "Jessie had already had her sedative and was a little groggy, she sort of dozed off while they were getting her room ready."Here's a paragraph-long sentence from the first page: "Ross was always thinking up funny names for things, it kept her laughing right up until they had Pepper, plus about a year more, and then she and Pepper took him down to the bus station behind the Stardust one day, he was going to check on a job doing lights for a show up in Tahoe, and had just sort of never come back, although Pepper was as cute a little girl as anyone could want and Harmony herself at the time had been said by some to have the best legs in Las Vegas and maybe the best bust too, although that was long before she had ever done topless, so that only Ross and a few of her old boyfriends really knew the whole story there."That is a SINGLE SENTENCE, ladies and gents! It becomes mind-numbing at some point, which is actually helpful in wading through this complete drivel.I only read the whole thing because I thought something interesting might happen.Let me spare you the anguish: Nothing ever happens! Nobody learns anything, or does anything, or thinks anything at all!I only cared about the characters in the sense that I wanted them all to fall into a tar pit together.I was very disappointed when this did not happen.

The abject badness of this book actually made me angry.In the foreword McMurtry admits that he crapped out this steaming pile while he was in the middle of writing Lonesome Dove, which I can only assume is a better book.It would be difficult to imagine otherwise.

I would agree with one of the other reviewers that an editor of some kind should have looked at this book pre-publication... but I think that would have resulted in an empty dust jacket.The blurbs and the foreword were certainly better-written than the text of the book.

Please note that Amazon does not allow zero-star reviews; one star is definitely not deserved.

A Disappointing Book From A Talented Writer!!!
In this book the author introduces the reader to Harmony and her rebellious daughter Pepper. Harmony goes through the usual Mother and Daughter Trials and Tribulations which the reader is supposed to feel empathy for. Harmony's own life is a mess so I don't know how she is supposed to be of any great help to her daughter. Harmony also works as a topless Las Vegas Showgirl and although I did not expect her to be a Candidate for Mensa she comes across in this novel as an airhead who no doubt would have been the subject of lots of "Blonde Jokes". As Judge Judy says "Beauty fades but dumb is forever". I give this book 5 stars because the author has succeeded in describing life in the town of Las Vegas where nothing is real and it is all a maze of smoke and mirrors.

Sad and sweet all at once
Set in tawdry Las Vegas, the story is about Harmony, now hitting 40, and once a real show-stopper on the Strip. But life has stopped being good for Harmony, and nothing in her life - her career, her lovelife, and especially her daughter Pepper - is going right. But she's a trooper, and nothing gets her down for long. McMurtry gets the sweetness and sadness of Harmony just right, even though at times her innocence comes across more as just ignorance of the ways of the world. Well done. ... Read more

Product Description
The biggest collection of writing about Texas yet assembled.

A vast land combining the West, the South, and the Border, small dusty towns and gleaming modern cities, Texas has a history and identity all its own, and a mythology bigger than the Lone Star State itself. In this anthology, Don Graham has rounded up a comprehensive collection of writings that provides an overview of the diversity and excellence of Texas literature and reveals its vital contribution to America's literary landscape: from early accounts of life on the wild frontier told by the likes of Andy Adams and J. Frank Dobie to contemporary fiction by such well-known Texan authors as Larry McMurtry and Sandra Cisneros, as well as recent nonfiction by Molly Ivins, Mary Karr, Robert Caro, and Kinky Friedman. The result is a sometimes rowdy, always artful panorama of fable and truth, humor and pathos—all growing out of the state that continues to stimulate the collective imagination like no other. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

You don't have to be a Texan to like this
This is a conglomeration of stories in an array of styles and points of view. This is a great book for those of us who love to read something written in a genuine style that ignores the capriciousness of editors and agents. With the exception of a few contemporary successes, most of the authors in this compendium are unknowns who simply wanted to tell their stories. After reading, I've purchased several copies for gifts.

Very Pleased
The book I ordered came in a timely manner and in great condition. I am very please and will be sure to order more in the future.

Pretty good survey of Texas literature
As someone who has recently been turned on the fascinating history and culture of the Lone Star state, I got my hands on this book shortly after it was published.The anthology's editor thoughtfully divides the pieces into four sections based on the major geographical regions of Texas.There is a wide range of authors represented, from Dobie and McMurtry to Cisneros and Glib.My only problem with Lone Star Literature is that while Don Graham includes works from dozens of authors, he leaves out pieces from, in my opinion, two of the best novelists to ever produce Texas fiction: Cormac McCarthy and James Carlos Blake.It is possible that these two simply did not want to be included, but I don't think the anthology is complete with out them.All in all, Graham has created a great, thick volume of Texas literature that will provide hours of reading entertainment.

Deep in the Heart of Texas
This humongous book - 733 pages - is of the un-put-downable kind. Except you can put it down when you absolutely HAVE to and then pick up easily where you left off because it consists of many short pieces, each entire of itself. In fact, it's the kind of book you can dip into. But what will happen, or at least what happened with me, is that you'll think you're going to read a selection or two from, say, the 'West' section and will look up two hours later and realize that your coffee got cold, that the phone had gone unanswered several times or that you're only going to get three hours sleep before you have to be back at work.

The editor of this jewel is Don Graham, who is the J. Frank Dobie Professor of American and English Literature at the Univerity of Texas in Austin, a man who probably knows more about Texas writers than anyone. J. Frank Dobie, of course, was the Texas writerwho put Texas history on the map back in the middle years of last century (it still seems funny saying 'last century,' doesn't it?). There's a piece of Dobie's, 'Bogged Shadows,' that is a great place to start; it tells of a yarn-spinner of the quintessential Texas cowboy sort, and is funnier than all getout.

The book primarily consists of 20th-century writing and is divided into logical sections: 'The West,' 'The South,' 'The Border,' and 'Town and City.' Each section is ordered chronologically. For me, the selections from memoirs are the most arresting, but there are also short stories, humor pieces and essays covering everything from pioneer days to the JFK assassination and beyond. There are many well-known writers here--like O. Henry ('Art and the Bronco,' with a funny O. Henry ending), John A. Lomax (from 'Adventures of a Ballad Hunter'), Robert A. Caro (not a Texan, but the honored writer of the multivolume LBJ biography, here represented by 'The Sad Irons,' from Volume I), Larry McMurtry (from 'The Last Picture Show'), Sandra Cisneros ('La Fabulosa: A Texas Operetta'), Katherine Anne Porter ('The Grave'), Molly Ivins ('Texas Women: True Grit and All the Rest'), Donald Barthelme (the hilarious 'I Bought a Little City'), and Kinky Friedman (the equally hilarious 'Social Studies'). And there's much more that I don't have room to list. For instance, there is an excerpt from 'The Wind,' by Dorothy Scarborough that was the basis for Lillian Gish's greatest silent movie of the same name set in the unrelenting harshness of the Panhandle.

The real discoveries, as I've said, are the raw and veristic memoirs. There is 'The Bride,' by Hallie Crawford Stillwell, who tells of being an 18-year-old bride taken by her new husband to live on his godforsaken ranch forty miles from the nearest town. Cowpoke James Emmitt McCauley's 'Headed for the Setting Sun,' gives a gritty yet funny picture of life on the cattle trail. C. C. White's 'No Quittin' Sense,' recalls life as a boy of color in East Texas in the early years of the century.

Most arresting of all is the excerpt from the memoir of Gertrude Beasley, 'My First Thirty Years,' written in the mid-1920s in language that is still shocking today. When the book was published in Paris (France, not Texas) it was banned in England because of its sensational content. Still, it fairly throbs with the reality of growing up in a dirt-poor household, one of eleven children, and the product of a rape. I'll say no more; you really must read this. I, for one, am going to see if I can't find the complete book--it's THAT good.

For someone like I, who grew up in rural Oklahoma (and felt a kinship with Texaspartly because half our family were and are Texans) the scenes and situations in this collection were at least vaguely familiar, yet I learned things on every page. For someone with no connection with Texas there will be discoveries that at least partly dispel the notion that Texas is nothing but George W. Bush and Enron. Texas is a real, honest-to-goodness place that fairly vibrates with energy, that is populated with some of the wryest, kindest, orneriest, most independent people on earth.

Heartily recommended.

Scott Morrison ... Read more

Product Description

The first time I saw Billy he came walking out of a cloud....Welcome to the wild, hot-blooded adventures of Billy the Kid, the American West's most legendary outlaw. Larry McMurtry takes us on a hell-for-leather journey with Billy and his friends as they ride, drink, love, fight, shoot, and escape their way into the shining memories of Western myth. Surrounded by a splendid cast of characters that only Larry McMurtry could create, Billy charges headlong toward his fate, to become in death the unforgettable desperado he aspires to be in life. Not since Lonesome Dove has there been such a rich, exciting novel about the cowboys, Indians, and gunmen who live at the blazing heart of the American dream. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (29)

A FUN ""YARN"" TO READ
WOW!!!THAT WAS QUICK!!!WHAT A FAST, FAST BOOK TO READ.??3DAYS??
ALSO A PRETTY DECENT BOOK.IT WAS FUNNY AT TIMES--SAD AT TIMES.
AN AUTHOR MEETS ""B-T-K"" BEFORE HE RRREEEAAAALLLLLYYY BECOMES ""B-T-K""
AND TAKES US ALL OF THE WAY TO THE END---VERY ENTERTAINING.

He just never disappoints.
The stories that he creates just never cease to amaze me.The story takes you to yet another undiscovered time and place that I would only want to visit with Larry McMurtry.This time he focuses on a well known name, but not a well known person.We all know Billy the Kid, but none of us know Billy, and Mr. McMurtry artfully weaves a tale that is more than believable and entertaining.
If you have or have not read one of his book it should not matter, but you need to make sure you start or continue with this one.It's entertaining, engaging, thought provoking, and just good.Read this book and enjoy it.

Mythical, prophetic, and multi-dimensioned
With grace, style, humor, description, and perceptive insight, McMurtry's book Anything for Billy is poignant story that on the surface is about Billy Bone, a disguised version of Billy the Kid, but underneath is about a writer, his experiences, his successes, and his tragedies. Plenty of action abounds in this tale, with the expected violence, sadness, and personality found in most westerns and particularly the books of Larry McMurtry.

What makes this book a little different are the hidden tensions that accompany the events presented. Is the narrator really crazy or simply trying to experience the world that has made him successful? Is Billy an amoral psychopath or a young man who can't find any meaning in life and takes a journey down the pathway of self-destruction? Are the many people who show up as confused as the main characters and searching for their place in the world, making decisions that serve nobody but themselves?

All these things and more are in this marvelous book that ultimately seems to be about the problems of a writer, who is the narrator of the story, attempting to demythologize the west, but instead adds to it. As he experiences the reality, his books take on less appeal. The tragedy is in his generally average output of dime novels that lose their value, at least to a publisher, when told with literary honesty and accuracte depiction. In some ways, the flashbacks, the asides moments, and the questioning of human responses, point to a type of disenchantment with popular expectations and with the delusions found in many people.

This is definitely one of McMurtry's strongest works of fiction, and worth reading as a bittersweet story of human failings. Entertaining, page-turning, and fascinating for its writing style and psychological overtones, it is highly recommended. As mentioned in other reviews, comparison to Lonesome Dove is unfair and in a subtle way, perhaps what this book is about!

did this man write "Lonesome Dove" ?
I made it to 100 pages, it's absolutely awful. He generates no feelings for these characters at all, they are so wooden and lifeless. Do not waste a dime on this book about dime novels.

Anything for Billy
Not only is this a great read, it is McMurty's masterpiece.I examines all the the themes of every other book he has written (including the Lonesome Dove epic) with a rare economy of words.It is not a historical recounting of the Billy the Kid story.It is much more important.This slim and spare novel (compared to McMurty's usual volumes) successfully recounts and examines the myths about the American west that still shape our national character.And it exposes how myths can become more powerful than historical fact. ... Read more

Product Description
The timeless, bestselling four-part epic that began with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove takes readers into the lives of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, two tough-as-nails Texas Rangers in the heyday of the Old West.

Dead Man’s Walk

As young Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call--"Gus" and "Call" for short--have much to learn about survival in a land fraught with perils: not only the blazing heat and raging tornadoes, roiling rivers and merciless Indians, but also the deadly whims of soldiers. On their first expeditions--led by incompetent officers and accompanied by the robust, dauntless whore known as the Great Western--they will face death at the hands of the cunning Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump and the silent Apache Gomez. They will be astonished by the Mexican army. And Gus will meet the love of his life.

Comanche Moon

Texas Rangers August McCrae and Woodrow Call, now in their middle years, are still figuring out how to deal with the ever-increasing tensions of adult life--Gus with his great love, Clara Forsythe, and Call with Maggie Tilton, the young whore who loves him--when they sign up to pursue the Comanche horse thief Kicking Wolf into Mexico. On this mission their captain, Inish Scull, is captured by the brutally cruel Mexican bandit Ahumado, and Gus and Call must come to the rescue, with the aid of new friends including Joshua Deets, Jake Spoon, and Pea Eye Parker, as well as the renowned Kickapoo tracker, Famous Shoes.

Lonesome Dove

Gus and Call, now retired from the Texas Rangers and settled in the border town of Lonesome Dove running the Hat Creek Cattle Company, are visited by their old friend Jake Spoon, who convinces Gus and Call to gather a herd of cattle and drive them north to Montana in order to start a cattle ranch in untouched territory. Gus is further motivated by a desire to see the love of his life, Clara Allen (nee Forsythe), who now lives with her children and comatose horse-trader husband in Ogallala, Nebraska. On the way to Montana they travel through wild country full of thieves, murderers, and a lifetime's worth of unforgettable adventure.

Streets of Laredo

Woodrow Call is back in Texas, a Ranger once again and a general gun-for-hire, but increasingly a relic as the westward sprawl of the railroads rapidly settles the once lawless frontier. Hired by a railroad tycoon to hunt down a dangerous bandit named Joey Garza, Call sets out once again with a hapless Yankee named Ned Brookshire who works for the railroad company that hired Call. Call's old friend Pea Eye Parker--who initially refused to join the expedition because of his family--sets off with the Kickapoo tracker Famous Shoes to try to catch up with Call, until he runs into troubles of his own. The long pursuit of Garza leads them all across the last wild stretches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town and, finally, into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Classical Historic Series
Larry McMurty's four- novel saga of the adventures of a group of Texas Rangers is a must- have for not just any Westerns fan, but for anyone who appreciates superbly written literature. LONESOME DOVE, chronologically the third part of the series, was the winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and you'll be amply rewarded for investing your time in reading this fantastic historical epic.
BUYER BEWARE:
Although I can't recommend ths series strongly enough, I have to add that this Kindle edition IS NOT INDEXED, which considering the size and scope of the material is a big letdown. You might consider buying the titles seperately, if you prefer to read them that way.
... Read more

Product Description

In 1999, Larry McMurtry, whose wanderlust had been previously restricted to the roads of America, set off for a trip to the paradise of Tahiti and the South Sea Islands in an old-fashioned tub of a cruise boat, at a time when his mother was slipping toward a paradise of her own. Opening up to her son in her final days, his mother makes a stunning revelation of a previous marriage and sends McMurtry on a journey of an entirely different kind.

Vividly, movingly, and with infinite care, McMurtry paints a portrait of his parents' marriage against the harsh, violent landscape of west Texas. It is their roots -- laced with overtones of hard work, bitter disappointment, and the Puritan ethic -- that McMurtry challenges by traveling to Tahiti, a land of lush sensuality and easy living. With fascinating detail, shrewd observations, humorous pathos, and unforgettable characters, he begins to answer some of the questions of what paradise is, whether it exists, and how different it is from life in his hometown of Archer City, Texas.Amazon.com Review
The bard of the Texas plains ventures into unfamiliar territory in thisslender, entertaining travelogue of the tropical islands of the SouthPacific.

McMurtry, a veteran of long car trips along the back roads of the Americandesert, boards a cruise ship this time around, and not without someforeboding; wandering among the Marquesas with a motley complement ofinternational "island junkies" with whom he finds little in common, thismost bookish of writers finds himself running short of reading matter,forced to slow down to the tedious pace of long-distance sea travel, andnot entirely content at the turn of events. McMurtry doesn't complain:instead, he passes the time remarking on the national and personalidiosyncrasies of his fellow passengers, mostly in good humor, and reflecting on closeted family skeletons, feelings of marginality and loneliness, mortality, and other matters while observing the passing scene.

A departure in many ways, Paradise finds McMurtry in a contemplativemood. "Nowhere else," he writes, "have I felt so far," and not onlygeographically. There's enough local color, enough dank glens, mistymountains, and sun-dazzled beaches to satisfy armchair travel buffs, butthis is a quiet, thoughtful voyage that reveals that true paradise liesclose to the heart. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Intelligent ramblings, beautiful settings, and human depth
As I have mentioned before, with a couple of exceptions, I tend to prefer McMurtry's non-fiction over his fiction. It is in his non-fiction that I hear his voice, learn his heart, discover his thoughts, and walk his footsteps. Through his journey to Tahiti and the surrounding islands, we hear about writers, painters, historical events, culture,and perceptive insights on fellow travelers. Intermingle this with personal comments on growing up, parents, siblings, and childhood events, and Paradise shimmers with interest.

Unusual for McMurtry, in Paradise he takes some time to describe the geography and the people, juxtaposing the past with the present in a kind of mosaic of personal experiences. In fiction, telling the story is paramount over any kind of knowledge gained; whereas in non-fiction, the cognition of the facts and circumstances can be quite enriching. Being a well-read author, McMurty is able to interject quotes from other writers as well referencing great books he has read. This makes for a relaxed, informative read that could easily fall into a simplistic trap of simply sharing facts and personal stories. But in the hands of master writer McMurtry, this book has an overriding artistry that leaves the reader with an optimistic, yet reflective spirit.

The ending of the book is touching and personal with hints of religious overtones, perpetuated by the impending death of the author's mother. While it is a weak practice to find the one magical sentence that seems to capsulize an entire book, the sentence that comes the closest is on page 158: "Perhaps that is paradise: the fresh, unqualified love of children for their moms and dads--a love before knowledge, which was the sort of love the God of Genesis intended for Adam and Eve." This book, like many of McMurtry's books, is a journey through a new land, yet it is also a journey through the life of a successful writer and his reflection of the past and the present. Worth reading by McMurtry enthusiasts but also by anyone curious about Tahiti, Paradise resonates with those curious philosophers wanting a different look at life and its meaning.

Paradise
This was bought as a present for a friend.However, I have enjoyed all the novels I have read by McMurtry, especially Lonsome Dove.My friend did say that he liked the book and now had all the 'berrybender' series.
af

A trail of books
The book tries to place a finger on what love (or search for paradise or an undefined ache) means. The author/narrator is visiting Marquesa (Paradise on earth, as felt by a variety of authors over the last 2 centuries) while his mother is in death bed. Mother dies one day after the author returns. A quick read, but not necessarily thought provoking. It almost felt like the author could not penetrate into his own ego-chill (to consider one's own non-existence - Erik Erikson reference in the book). The book is filled with references to books which provide a background to the author's thoughts, which is very useful.

Not for the hard-core McMurtry fan
I confess: I have tried to read "Lonesome Dove" and have failed. My old school chums (McMurty was at Rice, years ago)stay loyal to their freshman English prof, and urge me to try again.Nope. But I like "Paradise."McMurtry claims at first to be getting away so he can write about his parents.But he as much as says that he's got to churn out prose to meet a deadline, and some of the book feels like words for hire. Well, that's a well-worn path for many authors: Think of Dickens. The product here is a low-key travelogue. The voice is that of the a sympathetic observer, well-read and well-spoken. (The tone reminds me of M.F.K. Fisher, who also wrote about the crew and fellow travelers on a cargo ship. ) I found it a delightful respite from plot-driven fiction.

For the Hardcore McMurtry fan
For those of you who enjoyed "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen" and "Roads", this is a briefer introspective work by the same author.This time he's vacationing in the South Seas while taking a break from the mental anguish of watching his mother slowly pass on.We start with a lot of family history and assume that this will be the theme.Then we go off in a different tangent as the book becomes something of a cynical tourist guide to the Marquesa Islands.Ultimately we find ourselves at a very appropriate ending.

This book, even more so than the other two aforementioned books, is something of a free verse of observations by the author.One comes away wondering why this book was written and I guess my impression that it was more for the author than for us.We are able to follow, somewhat, McMurtry's attempts to resolve some of his inner feelings as he knows his mother is slowly drifting away (albeit several thousand miles away).Yet at the same time, his observations about his trip and fellow travelers confuse us as to the depth of any of his feelings.Perhaps that is the point; a man who is at one of those points in life where life itself is a numbing sensation.

Should you read this book?Probably not unless you, like many of McMurtry's literary aficionados, enjoy getting to know the author a bit better.Otherwise it is just a journal of a trip.And it's a trip that the reader has to feel would have been more enjoyable if we rather than McMurtry were the ones taking it.Nonetheless, I'm glad I read it. ... Read more

Product Description
A brilliant and riveting history of the famous and infamous massacres that marked the settling of the American West in the 19th century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

Worse Than Listening To Ill Informed High School Teacher
This feels like a slightly polished transcript of a one-sided conversation McMurtry could have had with an adoring fan.He makes his main point in the first few pages and seems to lose interest and momentum from there. His coverage of the actual massacres is incredibly superficial.It lacks basic details that are available in any number of books.To top it all off, while he seems too busy to research basic facts, he does manage to work George Bush and Guantanamo Bay into the book at least three times which makes it feel even less focused and worth while.One of the most vacuous books I've ever come across.

Indian wars
Everyone in the USA should read this book.There is a lot of truth that isn't written in our history books that you could learn.Plus anything by Larry McMurtry is always good!

An Interesting Study of Violence - a review of "Oh What a Slaughter"
"Oh, What a Slaughter" is not a popular pulp book about the Old West, nor is it your standard military or political history. If it was, McMurtry would have talked more about the famous individuals that were involved in these incidents, and/or he would have written more about how these events changed the course of American history.

But he basically ignores both of those prospectives and we find instead a much different analysis, principally a focus on the intimate circumstances that allowed the massacres to occur.

Oh What A Slaughter is, in other words, a study of Violence. But not the professional violence of organized armies that meet on a field, nor the personal sort of violence that erupts when two people come to blows. But rather the sort of violence that can emerge when small groups are overcome by fear and stress.

McMurtry asks what happens to men that they can get so worked up that they act out of character to what they profess as their standards. How it is that `normal' men can find themselves in a state of mind where murdering unarmed women and little children is acceptable. And where skinning the 'enemy' and wearing their private parts as a hatband or using them a tobacco pouch becomes a symbol of pride.

McMurtry examines these questions and builds a case that connects these violent episodes to what scientists now know about human physiology and psychology.


The most interestingly aspect of this book for me was McMurtry's arguments that related to exaggerated historical records. I'm sure you know what I mean if you are at all acquainted with ancient or medieval sources. There are simply circumstances where otherwise reliable individuals quote figures that are just unbelievable -- be it the numbers of ships launched, or the numbers of opponents met. McMurtry argues that the exaggeration is perfectly understandable if you take into account what modern science knows about human biology and physiology.

If you take the problem of body counts as an example, McMurtry would say that inaccuracies stem from two effects. The first being the actual physical difficulty of counting people who have been thoroughly dismembered. And the second being that adrenaline serves to alter how events are perceived.


To conclude, I'd say that if this type of approach to history interests you at all, that you pick up this little volume. It's a quick read and one that illuminated some aspects of warfare that I hadn't considered before.


Talking Points:::
Oh, What a Slaughter is an astute study of fear and violence and how these two emotions work to affect the perception of historical events. It's a thought provoking book that focuses on the psychological, physiological, and cultural elements that make massacres possible.

The book is a quick read and has many interesting old photos.

McMurtry makes quite a few smart observations that are worth applying to other historical contexts. [A point made more or less in the introduction where McMurtry points out similarities between events in the 1800's and more recent events in Rwanda and the United States (9/11/01).]

It should be noted that while the author outlines the events of different massacres, his focus is not on historical details. Or to put it a bit differently: Students of humanity and war-in-the-abstract will probably find the book of interest. Readers expecting a detailed history will probably go away unfulfilled.

Recommended to students of history.



Here are the Chapter Headings:

The Meat Shop
The Vulnerable Pioneer
The Big Massacres and Some Others
The Moral Taint
Did Kit Regret?
Counts
Images, Heroes, Stars
The Sacrament River Massacre, Spring 1846
The Mountain Meadows Massacre, September 11, 1857
Mountain Meadows (II)
Sand Creek, November 29, 1864
The Marias River Massacre, January 23, 1870
The Camp Grant Massacre, April 30, 1871
The Broken Hoop: 1871-1890
Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890
Wounded Knee (II)
Wounded Knee (III)
The Waning Moon
Bibliographical Note
Index

Pam T!
opinionated person and reviewer at PageInHistory

McMURTRY SHOULD STICK TO FICTION!
I have been a McMurty fan for a long time and have read practically everything that he has written. So when I saw this book I jumped in with considerable enthusiasm.

What I discovered was problematic for me. Interestingly, McMurtry states toward the beginning of this work that his intent is to discuss how the white race systematically went about removing Indians that were in the way. He then points out that, very often, massacres were the result.

So, why the immensely obvious departure from his thesis? Why include an account of a massacre that has nothing to do with Indian genocide? Why devote two chapters to an event that is as arguably out of place here as a an account of the Boston Massacre or, even closer to the nerve, of the Haun's Mill Massacre that occurred just a few years earlier in Missouri? I speak, of course, of McMurtry's inclusion of a very limited and misinformed account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

I'm really not surprised, though, that McMurtry would succumb to the temptation to do this. And I am not surprised, given his bibliography, that his account is as poorly written as it is. All of the books to which he refers, with the exception of Juanita Brooks' landmark volume, are decidedly anti-Mormon and lack proper referencing and research. Sally Denton's work, from which McMurtry quotes ad nauseam, is a pathetic, poorly written rag that reeks of prejudice and small-mindedness.

But again, what the Mountain Meadows Massacre has to do with the removal of Native Americans by white settlers remains a mystery to me. Moreover, by including its account, McMurtry marks himself as an apparent bigot and as tiny minded as the authors whose benighted works he chose to consult.

Unfortunately, OH WHAT A SLAUGHTER never really recovers from the chapters about the aforementioned misfit massacre. McMurtry's research seems flawed and limited and, like Sally Denton, McMurtry seems to have forgotten what he had to have learned early on in his editorial education: no notes, footnotes or responsible bibliography--about any and all of the massacres included here--is practically unforgivable. McMurtry should stick to fiction (which he capably does in the two chapters about Mountains Meadows). That's what he's good at.

THE HORSEMAN

Interesting concept - but disappointingly, too short.
This was a good quick read.I enjoy McMurty's style of writing, and find the topic of some interest.I recently read a book about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and I found McMurty's take on that event and its aftermath of some interest.He definitely has some opinions about that particular event, and I wonder whether this was the real impetus for his writing the book.No matter - it's well worth reading if you are interested in the topics, or even if you are a McMurty fan interested in learing a little more about the history of violence in the frontier days. ... Read more

Product Description
In this republication of his bestselling book, McMurtry tells the story of a rodeo cowboy turned antique dealer who wanders between the Texas flatlands and Washington's socio-political life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Creates great characters
I am an antiques dealer, and there are so few books written about the peculiar characters in the antiques business. Here is the best one. Highly recommended if you are part of the antiques world.

A jolly romp through the antique world
As I continue my goal to read every book by Larry McMurtry, I become more intrigued by his creativity, knowledge, and ability to pull the reader into the world he designs. Cadillac Jack is no exception as we find ourselves following the adventures and emotions of antique scout Jack McGriff, a man with an eye for valuable antiques and a man with an eye for women. As he roams the country scouting for that "unique" item that he must own and subsequently trade, his adventures take him to parties, estates, quirky people, and free-spirited women.

One of McMurtry's favorite literary concepts is the journey, traveling through the country experiencing life in all its glory and challenges. Cadillac Jack demonstrates this journey by going to New Mexico in search of a particular pair of boots where he encounters various personalities, value systems, wealthy people, and oddities. He returns to Washington, making several great deals, and alternating his time between friends, women, and acquaintances.

His adventures are full of the wit and gritty humor we often find in McMurtry's writing as he paints a picture of a wide variety of personalities that surround us. From the nest collector to the obsessed antique collector, we encounter people searching for their place in this world. Jack's confusion over women and his own quest for entertainment and security lands him in several relationships, none of which have any lasting value, much to his concern.

This was a fun book with an educational benefit. Learning about the antique world, including auctions, rumors, and unpredictable behaviors, demonstrates once again McMurtry's ability to capture emotions of the moment that result from particular events. If you are searching for an entertaining book about trading antiques, this is the one for you. Be warned, however, that the basic plot is a little weak and it is hard to discern the overall direction of the story. Jack himself seems a little disconnected to the people and the events. After reading the entire book, I am still not sure I know Jack very well. Yet, maybe Jack does not know himself very well and is satisfied with that lack of knowledge!

Cadillac Jack
A great book - funny, insightful, a Texas cowboy/connoisseur's adventures in America and the world of women.

Cowboy Angel Meets Pack Rat
With the exception of reviews of both the book and movie versions of The Last Picture Show in this space the usual reference I make to Larry McMurtry concerns his thoughtful reviews of the history of the Old West in the New York Review of Books (most recently on General Custer, March 6, 2008). Despite that merely nodding acquaintance I know three things about Mr. McMurtry from those articles. McMurtry loves books, I mean he really loves them. I understand that he is the consummate bookseller/pack rat. He loves, as mentioned above, the Old West; a place where he grew up (deep in the heart of Texas) and from the themes of his books formed a huge imprint on his character. And he loves to talk about swap meets and the vagaries of pack ratdom. That last point is important here because this seemingly bedraggled, scorned and misunderstood profession is central to the story that he tells here.

The plot line is pretty straightforward.Cadillac Jack is an ex-professional cowboy turned (to be kind) second-hand entrepreneur riding far and wide throughout the country in search of El Dorado- that elusive million-dollar treasure to be found at a flea market stall. At least that is his cover for this story. But we know from McMurtry's coming of age book The Last Picture Show that this is really about a man in search of himself and where he stands in the world. Especially with women. In other words the real eternal quest.

The major action of the story is centered in the secondary power lanes of Washington, D.C. Now we all know what one can expect will happen to an old cowboy when he gets messed up with that crowd. They make bull riding or auction cruising seem like a day in the park.But, Cadillac could handle that all and have time for lunch if he could solve what ails him and that is the above-mentioned woman question (surprise, surprise) although he seems to have had more than his fair share of interesting experiences with them. What ties the whole story together, as in my limited experience with McMurtry's s work he seems always able to do, are the doings (and undoings) of a strong secondary set of characters (some displaced Texans, some not) who are either buying or selling something, not always legally.Needless to say I need to investigate Mr. McMurtry's work further. But, dear reader, this is not a bad place to start.

Life was meant to be lived;and CJ sure knew how....
This was the first McMurtry novel that I read.I like earthy stories;and boy was this a dandy.If you enjoy novels like Cannery Row,Tobacco Road or anything by Kinky Friedman you should like Cadallic Jack.I enjoyed it so much,I started reading the rest of McMurtrys novels.So far, I found it the most humorous,entertaining and lighthearted of the ones I've read.He has written the episodes so well you feel you are travelling right along with him and loving every moment of it.
I assume a lot of these stories are fictional ,in whole or in part,but are probably based on some of the authors experiences.
What I have come to like about McMurtry's books is that they are all so different from one another;and I think this one is the most different.
If there is any truth about this character,there should a law against it;nobody should be allowed to have that much fun--not one person. ... Read more