Rating: 
Summary: McMurtry's life in books
Review: As close as Larry McMurtry (author of "Lonesome Dove" and "The Last Picture Show") is probably going to come to an autobiography. A long essay that starts from pondering German literary critic Walter Benjamin's essay on storytelling, being read at the Archer City, Texas, Dairy Queen, and spinning out to include his early life on a small Texas ranch, the realities of pioneer and cowboy life; and including along the way McMurty's beginnings as a reader, book collector, bookseller, and writer. Food for thought for the voracious reader and/or book collector. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen
Review: As close as Larry McMurtry (author of "Lonesome Dove" and "The Last Picture Show") is probably going to come to an autobiography. A long essay that starts from pondering German literary critic Walter Benjamin's essay on storytelling, being read at the Archer City, Texas, Dairy Queen, and spinning out to include his early life on a small Texas ranch, the realities of pioneer and cowboy life; and including along the way McMurty's beginnings as a reader, book collector, bookseller, and writer. Food for thought for the voracious reader and/or book collector. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The man behind the words
Review: Ever since reading my first McMurtry novel, I've felt much more than mild curiosity about the man behind the words. Information gleaned from media interviews has served only to heighten that curiosity, so this offering of himself is one of the most satisfying books I've read in recent memory. At roughly the same time Mr. McMurtry's grandparents were trying to carve a spot for themselves on the Texas flatlands, my great-grandparents were doing the same on the Kansas prairie. His observations on what life was like for them and for himself resonate with memory for me. But even if one had never set foot on the high plains, his musings would be still be equally compelling. Especially poignant is a chapter setting forth McMurtry's experience with heart bypass surgery and the subsequent loss of self he suffered. I have read other accounts by persons having a similar experience, but didn't come as close to understanding as this brought me. Juxtaposed throughout the book are the decline of book-collecting, as it was -- decades ago -- done on grand scale, and cowboying. The cavalcade of great authors mentioned might spur the casual reader, of which I am one, to dig a little deeper into the vast amount of literature available once one knows where to look. Maybe I'll give Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf another try. There is a tantalizing sentence near the end of the book. It reads, "Of mother, wives, lady loves, and amities amoureuses--well, that's another book." Well, all right. I'm waiting.
Rating:
Summary: A Most Interesting Read!
Review: Everything has been said about the book. As for me,a fellow Texas, living in California, I enjoyed getting to know more about Larry McMurtry, his family roots, heritage, and his present attitudes. I remain his constant fan.
Evelyn Horan - children's author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl, Books One-Three
Rating:
Summary: Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen : Reflections at Sixty an
Review: Having read all of Larry's novels at least twice, I feel well acquainted enough with the author to call him by his first name. (Lonesome Dove leads the pack, a book I've read 11 times in it's entirety.) For this reading, I planted myself at one of the few DQ's in the Austin area and read all of these reflections in one sitting. As expected, the narrative of these essays is as captivating as his fiction, and the attempt to read critically proves difficult. Yet as often as I have tried to read his works with a critical eye, I typically succumb to the easy path, reading for the deep enjoyment and occasional introspection that his stories induce. And like most of his books, native Texans and any residents of tenure are once again absorbed by McMurtry's genius in creating prose that subtlely yet clearly belies all that is Texas. In fact, the author's world view, as it is shown here, is defined by the pride and frustration of being wholly Texan - a romantic yet tragic land that imbeds itself almost immediately in those who live here. McMurtry fears what all artists must: whether his work will survive and have relevance for the generations to come. Though this book is a stream of free-flowing thoughts and erudition on a wide range of subjects, McMurtry seems focused - always - on asserting his love for the state of Texas and all those traits that make him - and us - Texans. And for that, he need not fear; there will always be a place for Larry McMurtry in the Lone Star State. The grace and clarity of his writing will forever remind the natives and the rest of the world what is Texas.
Rating:
Summary: interesting reflections
Review: I had read McMurtry's other essay collections; "In a Narrow Grave" and "Film Flam" and was not particularly impressed with them. I WAS, however, very impressed with the author's fiction in those days. In my humble opinion, McMurtry has written three or four excellent novels with a number of other very enjoyable ones as well. In my book the top three would be, in no particular order, "Leaving Cheyenne", "The Last Picture Show" and "Lonesome Dove" (I'm considering throwing in "Horseman Pass By"). I was always buying the latest McMurtry book to come out but, in his later years, I was frequently disappointed. I was finding plots and characters increasingly more and more bizarre. Knowing the man's potential, I kept trying. I am glad I did because I enjoyed reading "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen". This is the first really good book he has written in years. It is a collection of 4 essays that are a reflections by the author on his life thus far. The first essay and the last one are of general interst but it was the middle two that got me energized. Those two are about his love of reading and his fascination with book collecting and book selling. Although his tastes in literature differ from mine (how can anybody enjoy a multi-volumne set of a work by Proust?), his love of literature and the ownership of books gave me a sense of a kindred spirit. I also discovered something very revealing; why his later works (this one excepted) took such a turn for the worse. McMurtry talks about his heart surgury and his post-operative loss of interest in his profession. He returns to writing but says it hasn't been the same. Perhaps some of his readers have told him the same is true from our perspective. For the record, his last book before the heart surgury was "The Evening Star" and I would say that most of his readers would agree that the real change in quality began there as well. Hopefully, this exercise in self-examination will lead him back to the Old McMurtry. The big joy was comparing notes as a book collector. Having filled my nine bookcases some years ago, I go through the agony of pruning to make room for the new. I related to the author's affection for different books more for their sentimental value than for their literary value. I finally had to rummage Wallace's "The Man". It wasn't much of a book (who remembers it anymore?). However, it was the first lengthy book I read as 6th grader just getting out of the juvenile sections. Listening to McMurtry share his similar stories was heartwarming. The author gets a lot off his chest with a brevity of words and the reader feels thankful for the opportunity to listen. No doubt you will find similar shared memories like I did.
Rating:
Summary: interesting reflections
Review: I had read McMurtry's other essay collections; "In a Narrow Grave" and "Film Flam" and was not particularly impressed with them. I WAS, however, very impressed with the author's fiction in those days. In my humble opinion, McMurtry has written three or four excellent novels with a number of other very enjoyable ones as well. In my book the top three would be, in no particular order, "Leaving Cheyenne", "The Last Picture Show" and "Lonesome Dove" (I'm considering throwing in "Horseman Pass By"). I was always buying the latest McMurtry book to come out but, in his later years, I was frequently disappointed. I was finding plots and characters increasingly more and more bizarre. Knowing the man's potential, I kept trying. I am glad I did because I enjoyed reading "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen". This is the first really good book he has written in years. It is a collection of 4 essays that are a reflections by the author on his life thus far. The first essay and the last one are of general interst but it was the middle two that got me energized. Those two are about his love of reading and his fascination with book collecting and book selling. Although his tastes in literature differ from mine (how can anybody enjoy a multi-volumne set of a work by Proust?), his love of literature and the ownership of books gave me a sense of a kindred spirit. I also discovered something very revealing; why his later works (this one excepted) took such a turn for the worse. McMurtry talks about his heart surgury and his post-operative loss of interest in his profession. He returns to writing but says it hasn't been the same. Perhaps some of his readers have told him the same is true from our perspective. For the record, his last book before the heart surgury was "The Evening Star" and I would say that most of his readers would agree that the real change in quality began there as well. Hopefully, this exercise in self-examination will lead him back to the Old McMurtry. The big joy was comparing notes as a book collector. Having filled my nine bookcases some years ago, I go through the agony of pruning to make room for the new. I related to the author's affection for different books more for their sentimental value than for their literary value. I finally had to rummage Wallace's "The Man". It wasn't much of a book (who remembers it anymore?). However, it was the first lengthy book I read as 6th grader just getting out of the juvenile sections. Listening to McMurtry share his similar stories was heartwarming. The author gets a lot off his chest with a brevity of words and the reader feels thankful for the opportunity to listen. No doubt you will find similar shared memories like I did.
Rating:
Summary: Useful Contrast Between Building from Emptiness and Fullness
Review: I was delighted to see that Larry McMurtry shares one of my favorite prejudices. We both love to read what modern novelists have to say about their work more than we like to read the work itself. Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen is fine example of why I feel that way, and I am a major fan of Mr. McMurtry's. Although intended as an essay on the development and encouragement of cultural forms and experiences, the book draws so heavily on Mr. McMurtry's own life that sections certainly border on autobiography. In the end, you will marvel at an amazing synthesis of thoughts about the oral story-telling tradition (that preceded the written word), the American frontier, book scouting and collecting, reading, and writing novels. Mr. McMurtry finds that in his sixties, he is ever more drawn to reexamining his roots and to reading. The "immortality" of writing has less appeal, by contrast. As to his roots, he draws marvelous comparisons from his father's life as a fairly financially unsuccessful Texas rancher to his own life as novelist and book dealer. The book's title is a reference to Mr. McMurtry's experience of rereading an essay by Walter Benjamin about oral story-telling traditions at the Dairy Queen in his hometown of Archer City, Texas. Mr. McMurtry selected that location because that's where any oral story-telling was likely to occur, if there were to be any. From the absence of that tradition, except among the Native Americans, he draws the observation that you have to be well removed from the challenges of making something out of nothing on the frontier before you can hope to generate a Virginia Woolf or a Marcel Proust. But the book's greatest revelation is that the American concept of the frontier was based on false premises. The land would have been better left for the buffalo than being grazed by English cattle breeds. The open range was bound to be turned into small farms due to the immense land hunger of pioneers, as measured by their willingness to be exposed to deadly risks. Even the myth of the cowboy holds on today only in the context of beautiful high range scenery and herds of horses, not cattle. The few remaining cowboys are not even drawn to that lofty vision, while suburbanites are. Some of the most beautiful moments in the book relate to describing the experience of studying with great writers and teachers, and of the libraries of important writers. If you like book collecting, you will probably also enjoy Mr. McMurtry's descriptions of his own experiences, and of legendary book stores that are no longer in business. If you are like me, you will also be fascinated by Mr. McMurtry's life-changing experience of having a multiple-bypass operation. What do your roots mean to you today? What did they mean to you twenty years ago? What do you think they will mean twenty years from now? Capture the stillness, emptiness and fullness around you!
Rating:
Summary: The Juxtaposed Life
Review: I'm no expert on McMurtry, but he got my interest with that juxtaposition in the title: Like a lot of people, I know about Walter Benjamin from having read him a bit in college, and like any native Texan, I know something about Dairy Queen, too. On one level the link is simple. McMurtry says the book has its origins in the day back in 1980 when he was sitting at a Dairy Queen in West Texas reading Benjamin's "Storyteller" essay. This becomes the jumping off point for McMurtry's observations about story telling, the West, book-scouting, writing, reading, cowboys, movies, nostalgia, and the other side of 60. Benjamin is a bit of a fleeting presence, though at one point McMurtry does observe that Benjamin's greatness was diffused, a lot small bursts of light rather than a single supernova-sized work. This book is similar, I think. It's a book of ruminations, which sounds faintly pejorative, but I don't think the book greater in its parts than in its sum. In fact I'm not sure I could say what the sum is, since McMurtry passingly asserts that this is no memoir. I guess I'm inclined to disagree with him on that. If this isn't a self portrait per se, it's at least a sketch of the kind of life and intelligence one needs to be authoritative and at ease (not merely acquainted, like me) with the cosmopolitan and the down-home, Benjamin and Dairy Queen.
Rating:
Summary: Notes of a compulsive reader. . .
Review: I've read much more of Larry McMurtry's fiction than his nonfiction, and sometimes I find myself enjoying his nonfiction a good deal more. His wry, humorous point of view, gift for quiet irony, and depth of thought come across so much more strongly in his own voice, compared to those of the characters in his novels. And while I am very fond of "Leaving Cheyenne," "Horseman, Pass By" and "The Last Picture Show," my favorite McMurtry novels, it is an equal pleasure to be in the presence of the man himself, as he reveals himself in the essays in this book.
Writing in his 62nd year, McMurtry lets himself free associate across a number of subjects; his life as a compulsive reader and book collector; the brief span of West Texas frontier history where three generations of McMurtrys lived, worked, and multiplied; the realities and myths of cowboys and ranching; his education at Rice in Houston; a short story writing course at Stanford with Frank O'Connor; his life as a novelist; the making of the movie "The Last Picture Show"; the passing of the urban secondhand bookstores; the emergence of Dairy Queens as social centers in small towns; the Archer City, Texas, centennial celebration; the demise of storytelling; the fragmentation of the American family; the importance of Proust and Virginia Woolf at a critical point in his life; the winning of the Pulitzer Prize for "Lonesome Dove"; and - most remarkably - his descent into a fierce depression following heart surgery in his 50s, from which he has not completely recovered at the time he was writing this book. There is a deep melancholy in many McMurtry novels, played sometimes for laughs, as in "Texasville" (where characters hang out at the Dairy Queen). Indirectly, he accounts for some of that in this book, turning as he sometimes does to the themes of loss and the impermanence of things - represented in so many ways, from the vast outpouring of books that sit in piles and on shelves, collect dust and will never be opened again, to the death of his father, a rancher who worked hard all his life and saw in his last years that his achievements were far too few. I recommend this book to anyone who's read McMurtry's novels and has wondered about the man whose imagination has produced so many memorable characters and stories. For the fun of it, you might just take it down to the Dairy Queen and read it there over a MooLatte.
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