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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 great 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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Summary: What does McMurtry have in common with John Berger?
Review: They've both read and admire Walter Benjamin.For those readers who haven't been to Tx., DQ (dating from the fifties or earlier, ancient history for the late great state of Tx) is not fast food, it's slow food: you sit and wait while the burger (typically hard and thin) is cooked. One theme of the early part of WB at the DQ: why pioneer women in LM's family didn't talk. In this connection, ch. 1 (geography and rainfall in the Tx Hill country) of Caro's "The Path to Power" is quite interesting, describing the brutal conditions met by settlers who tried to farm and ranch there. My wife wrote a Masters' thesis on German settlement of the hill country in the mid 19th century. Many settlers were well off and educated. It took about one generation before literary cultivation was erased by the environment (German is still fairly widely spoken in that region). How does WB at the DQ read? sort of like listening to The Prairie Home Companion, had Keillor grown up in Texas.
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Summary: McMurtry Reflects Elegantly
Review: This was on my stack of books to read, but I hadn't gotten to it. Maybe the title isn't as intriguing as it might be. Then a letter came from a friend with raves, and a few photocopied pages of the book that I had to read, because they would speak to ME. I stayed up all night, fascinated with McMurtry's life, reading habits, life as a book dealer, and thoughts about what he has learned--about himself, about human nature, about history. My husband and I have loved his fiction, different titles, for different reasons. Now McMurtry, past 60, thinks the grasshoppers pretty much have eaten all those fictional leaves. Too bad, but our good luck is that he has given us an eminently readable memoir, about growing up in a spare Texas landscape, riding a horse for 20 years, yet not really comfortable with horses, afraid of bushes (once rode into a hornet's nest), and poultry (they peck). Then off to college and the pursuit of his real passion: herding ideas and words, rounding up books and paragraphs. Now he has a difficult time dividing time (so many books to read, so little time) between reading and writing. If justifies my letting the ironing, weeding, mending, and cooking go, and sending out for pizza so I can read another book instead. Walter Benjamin is next.
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