The Last Picture Show

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Summary: texas soap
Review: I found this novel to be an easy and enjoyable read. I remember watching an edited version of the movie on network television many years ago. The novel covers a few additional characters than the movie. The novel mainly deals with the sexual escapades of the inhabitants of a small Texas town. This does not rank with McMurtry's best, Lonesome Dove and such, but it is a book you will enjoy as a touching, fun, and sometimes sad, journal of small town American life in the nineteen fifties.

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Summary: One of McMurtry's Best in Telling it Like it Is
Review: I have read the book and also seen the movie several times.
True life events in a small Texas town of about 30 years or so ago. I was a young person in just such a town and the events and the characters all ring true. Things happen in small towns just as in big cities and there is a poignant mood throughout this interesting story of teens and adults and all their shared and not so shared human experiences. A worthwhile read.
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl Books One - Three

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Summary: Read in a single night
Review: I picked this up off the shelf to read while my husband was out of town for a wedding. (I needed something not too scary!) I've only lived in Texas for 3 years and I'm still relishing the experience of getting to know the culture. This "classic" proved to be a great way to continue my love affair with my new home. The characters are compelling and the description of the small, dusty town are right on. I couldn't put it down until I'd read the entire thing. I haven't stayed up with a book all night in a long time. A Gem.

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Summary: Not as good as the movie.
Review: I remember back in the seventies watching an incredible movie, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, that was one of the best expressions of teenage angst, small town boredom, and adult malaise I have ever witnessed. This movie made an indelible impression on me, but I had not read the book on which the movie was based until now. I'm sorry to report that the novel does not measure up to the movie.

The Last Picture Show is the story of coming of age on the northern plains of rural Texas, an area full of dirt, mesquite, incessant wind, and dingy, hopelessly sad small towns. I still remember the opening scene of the movie and the feeling of loneliness it immediately imparted to me. One would think with such a backdrop, that McMurtry would have created a work that would have investigated the hold such an environment has on its inhabitants -- why some people are able to leave and why others never do. The book has a promising beginning and a powerful conclusion, but the middle hundred and fifty or so pages are more interested in fanciful sexual liaisons and convenient plot twists and relegate the more important questions to a few (although powerfully written) parenthetical asides.

After finishing the novel, I rented the movie again. Once more, I was deeply moved by Bogdanovich's beautiful grainy and over exposed black and white creation. The question that remained with me as I re-wound the tape was how I could like the movie and screenplay so much more than the book on which it was based. After some reflection, I decided that McMurtry's novel is in great need of a good editor, something that the screenplay inherently enjoyed since it was a collaboration between McMurtry and Bogdanovich. I think given the time constraints of a movie, McMurtry had to start chopping and the things that got removed (such as an improbable senior trip to San Francisco and the ludicrous tryst between Sonny and Lois Farrow) made the story much stronger. Sometimes I feel that McMurtry is more interested in the process of story telling than he is about the story told.

I am giving this novel three stars only because of the powerful foundation that McMurty laid, a foundation that was built on by the McMurtry-Bogdanovich collaboration to create a unique and powerful work of art.

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Summary: Has earned a top-notch spot on my bookshelf.
Review: I'm 17 and have lived in a small town all my life, although my town is a little less depressing than the community of Thalia. The theme of this book is the trappings of small towns, the loneliness of them, and the bittersweetness of youth, which I could relate to all too well. I had not read McMurtry before, but was instantly smitten by the 50's setting and the author's excellent characterization. The book reads swiftly, thanks to the compelling characters (and their many love affairs), who are likeable but still recognizably flawed, yearning for what they can't have, and settling to get what they can.

This is not your typical coming-of-age novel. It is a beautifully crafted work of Southern lit that I think even a city-dweller could relate to; although it is predominantly about being stuck in Thalia, it's also about feeling so lost in a place you know so well. My first McMurtry novel to read is now one of my favorite books.

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Summary: No one does it better!
Review: Larry McMurtry is a master writer, and "The Last Picture Show" is an excellent example of his craft. The finely-drawn characters pull you into their world, which McMurtry illustrates with an eye for detail. You can almost smell the dusty air and feel the West Texas heat.

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Summary: A true slice of Americana
Review: Larry McMurtry is one of the finest American authors because he knows a simple rule to writing. KISS...Keep it simple, stupid. This story works because he didn't try and fill it with zany plot twists or artifical characters. Their isn't a false passage in the book and their isn't an instant of when the characters don't act like simple human beings. Anyone who has read this should see the 1971 film version by Peter Bogdanovich. It works the same way the book does thanks in no small part to Bogdanovich and McMurtry's screenplay. (They co-wrote it together.)

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Summary: Outstanding
Review: Larry McMurtry is the quintessential author on all things Texas. In the Fall semester of college, 1985, his novel, "The Last Picture Show," was assigned reading in my Literature class. I had never heard about the film version, and I am very glad. I believe this is a novel about good versus evil; only the "evil" here is the righteous, narrow-minded, bigoted, bible-beating, and monotonous, which represses all in its path, and the "good" is the carefree, spirited, reckless, and adventurous, which is supposed to lead all to happiness. The only problem is in 1951 Thalia, Texas, the "good" was still supposed to be taboo; hence the conflicts for this great novel. McMurtry tells this tale with humor, drama, and warmth. The things that make us human are worthwhile, even if others do not condone them. For most in this story, sex and love are the things that they believe make their lives worthwhile, but for Billy, the mentally challenged friend of Sonny, sweeping is what made him human. In the end, only Sonny could see this tragedy of his death while the "evil" spat and farted in the wind making excuses for the tragedy. This novel moved me, and I have read it several times. I highly recommend it.

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Summary: McMurtry "captures" a Texas mentality!
Review: Larry McMurtry's "The Last Picture Show" as a novel is admittedly autobiographical and the characters he introduces us to, he later admitted, are also based (loosely, he says!) on real people. This is the story of vibrant young people in the not-so-vibrant West Texas town of Thalia.

A true coming-of-age and rites of passage story, we find Duane Moore, pal Sonny, and girlfriend Jacy at true crossroads of life. They are ready to enter adulthood but they are stuck literally in the middle of nowhere, a dying, last of the old timer-towns in dusty West Texas. But as Grace Metalious earlier showed us that beneath the surface of a small town lies a much more involved--even disgusting--involvement and the secrets that lie there do not need to be uncovered. Uncovered they are, of course, as McMurtry--perhaps on a personal mission of his own--is not content to live with the status quo. He takes the ennui of everyday life in a small town and, after careful study, surgically exposes them, for better or for worse.

This is not a "they lived happily ever after" accounting. It is a tumbleweed infested, drought eroded, down-and-out account of the lives of his protagonist, who find (but they've never really expected anything more) that the world is not lit by candlelight, but by lighting, as Tennesse Williams wrote. They view--but never understand--the mysteries of sex and of love. With McMurtry's sometimes not so subtle humor, these realities are somewhat softened. But it is this exposure to the realities of life--its disappointments and depressions--that carry "The Last Picture Show." ([e-mail])

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Summary: One of the best of its kind
Review: Larry McMurtry, probably America's most uneven 'great' writer, produced at least one masterpiece of contemporary storytelling, The Last Picture Show. This book is so true to its time and place, so honest in its language and its character's actions, that one comes to feel that these are real people that one has known - and maybe loved - for a long time. The story is so direct and the characters are so simple and ordinary that the emotional empact of the book comes as some surprise. One doesn't expect that the stuff of great emotional intensity could be built on such a prosaic foundation.

All of McMurtry's really good books have been turned into better than average cinema. I think it's a toss up as to whether the movie or the book is better in this case, but there can be no question that the book is an American classic and will be read with pleasure (and tears) by generations.

Now, if we could just keep him from bad sequels - like Texasville . . .