That's the most interesting line in Hugh Hewitt's account of his life history of reading, misleadingly titled "What I’m reading this summer" (WaPo).
The years lost to Larry McMurtry seem to have been when Hewitt, who is 66, was in his 30s. He offers no explanation for why McMurtry books were a rabbit hole and does not examine what life would have been like if he hadn't escaped from it.
I was only distracted by that because I'm in the middle of reading 2 Larry McMurtry books — "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond" and "The Last Picture Show" — and I'd never even considered reading McMurtry until this year.
Did I fall into a rabbit hole? I've been reading the first book, WBATDQROSAB, for months and can't remember why I started, and I've been reading TLPS because I happened to finally, after all these years, watched the movie, and I had a few questions — Did Ruth have an abortion? — and I wanted to find the answers — No, she had a mild case of breast cancer.
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Wait a minute? The Last Picture Show is connected to Lonesome Dove?
That explains a LOT (and, not in a Good Way)
I tend to go down rabbit holes with authors. Orwell for a couple years in the 70s,a rabbit cavern with Nevil Shute for about 20 years in the 80s and 90'S. www.nevilshute.org
Currently finishing the 7th volume of "Behind Every Blade of Grass" (started vol 1 last week) SYNOPSIS: China invades US. Kamala surrenders. Some fight on. Makes Clancy seem unimaginative and boring.
I listened to a bunch of mcmurtry in the 80s & 90s on tape. Liked them pretty well. Really enjoyed the 2 "Lonesome Dove" tv series.
I tried to read the Dairy Queen book a year or two ago and could not get into it. I had really liked Cadillac Jack back in the day on Tape. Tried rereading it last year and meh.
I'd love to watch Lonesome Dove again.
Let's hear it for rabbit holes. I love 'em.
John LGBTQ+ Henry
We did Lonesome Dove on audible while driving. McMurty is a great story teller. Him and Michner are great storytellers.
Gus and Call led us to the 3 prequals, plus a couple of others.
McMurtry was a hell of a novelist/screenwriter, though he seemed a bit uneven with some incredible works and quite a few lesser ones.
And don't forget he's also responsible for the movies Hud, Terms of Endearment and Brokeback Mountain.
I listened to a podcast on Peter Bogdanavich (7 1 hr eps) earlier this year. Because of that I watched last picture show again. I didn't get in in the 70s and still don't. I got about 45 minutes into it.
The podcast was "the plot thickens" from TCM.
Also series on Lucille Ball and Bonfire of the Vanities (movie) all 3 are excellent.
John LGBTQ+ Henry
2 books? So you're not monogamous? Or is that monobiblious? Monanagnous?
I bought Lonesome Dove when it was first published and couldn’t put it down. Not sure why, but I was captivated immediately. Second book in the series was just too dark and violent for me. So I never read any of the others. My rabbit hole didn’t last long.
He mentioned Robert Ludlum. Read those in high school and college on summer vacation. Amusing. So many exclamation points and all caps. I think A Prayer for Owen Meany is the book I read, got half way through, put it down and
promptly forgot I was reading it. It’s the book the made me realize I don’t have to finish a book.
Am reading The Splendid and the Vile about the Blitz and Churchill. Love it but will have to return to the library unfinished. I need it via Kindle.
Larry McMurtry had the ability to write a conversation as if you were there and were part of it. He used familiar terms and lingo that captured what people actually say and that made his work very readable. Pat Conroe has a similar ability.
I haven't read Larry McMurty, although I'm familiar with his work and can find on a map where the "The Last Picture Show" was filmed, which seemed important to my family for some reason. However, much of the OP reminded me about my experience with Hugh Hewitt. I began listening to him when I was about 30. He hit the right time for my afternoon commute. However, I felt like it was a rabbit hole and not very satisfying, so I began listening to more audiobooks for my afternoon commute.
It's not a rabbit hole. It's my home.
After the discussion about whether Ethan is truly a racist, I've started The Searchers (the book). It's a little confusing in these opening pages because some of the names have been changed (to protect the innocent). Ethan is Amos, for example. And Old Mose (played by the incomparable Hank Worden in the movie) has kids apparently.
Literary rabbit hole suggestion. George McDonald Frazier’s Flashman series. Easily the most politically incorrect books written in the last 60 years. Also the funniest. Would not get published now. It led me to his Dirtiest Private in the Army short stories and his autobiography focusing on his experience in Burma under Slim.
I would suggest skipping book one of Flashman and starting with the rest of them. Read the first book after finishing the series.
I go through them every 5-6 years. The footnotes are great too.
I liked The Last Picture Show both in book and movie form.
However, be forewarned that in the book there is a part where some drunk and horny teenage boys spend a Friday night having sex with a blind cow. I think they left that part out in the movie.
I haven't read much of his work. The last picture show scared me away. I just don't care about characters "living lives of quiet desparation". And I'm tired of reading about teenagers, or weirdos, or people with "issues".
And putting those types back in the Old west doesn't make it better for me.
.
Every time I reread Lonesome Dove', I get a hankering for a good poke.
Every time I reread Lonesome Dove', I get a hankering for a good poke.
I have recently gone down a rabbit hole with Andrew Wareham. He has novels in series. His background is as an economic historian. He has a number of series about British army and navy in the 17th and 18th centuries. His best are about world war I, both about the Royal Flying Corps and the army in the trenches. He also has a long series about the Industrial Revolution beginning in the late 18th century and it has 13 novels so far. Technically, I keep checking him and the details are all correct. I just finished Churchill's "The World Crisis" to compare the events and time line.
Lonesome Dove is a great book, well worth reading, but optimists beware: McMurtry sure doesn't think a meaningful life is much about happy endings.
I've been reading the Walter Benjamin book off and on this summer as well. It's enjoyable and I can pick it up at lunch and then not read more of it for a few days and not be bothered by that fact. I would not consider myself a McMurtry fan, but I've also read Last Picture Show and the 2 books after it and liked them all. And when I first moved to Houston, I read All my Friends are Going to be Strangers, much of which takes place here, close to Rice, where I lived then and do now as well. I didn't enjoy it at 22, because I liked my endings neat and clean, and didn't have enough patience for the messiness of life. I re-read it a year or two ago and it was a better book. Or, more likely, I was a better reader.
My husband loved the Lonesome Dove books and has tried several times to get me to read them. Occasionally we'll be somewhere traveling and he'll mention the books and how something in them happened there - I'm not exactly sure where that's happened, but clearly the books mean a lot to him and have stayed with him. He knew Sally Wittliff in law school - her husband Bill wrote the screenplay for the Lonesome Dove mini-series - and she knew (and approved) of his love for McMurty's books. She gave him a poster of a Sam Houston quote as a graduation present; it hangs on his office wall to this day. And that is far and away my favorite (if very tangential) Larry McMurtry connection: an old poster reminding a young lawyer to "do right and risk consequences".
Lonesome Dove Just grabs you and carries you along.
And Robert Duvall made sure that it will not be forgotten.
The Last Picture Show is McMurtry's first book in what would become a five (or six) book "Duane series". Duane didn't leave town--and the series follows him through his life. I've read all of the series.
I've read Lonesome Dove but the McMurtry book I've enjoyed most is "Leaving Cheyenne" which is his second novel. Written (or at least published) in 1962 it follows the lives of two men and a woman through a bit more than three decades in Texas. The characters and the story are memorable.
And a hat tip to Jefferson's Revenge. All of the Flashman books are funny--and you can start anywhere in the series. And George McDonald Frazier's "Quartered Safe Out Here"--his memoir of his war in Burma is a great read. I reread it every three or four years. It's telling about the growth of a young man--and also as foretaste of what changes would come in English society after WW II--the old structure had to go.
Strick--Brokeback Mountain was Annie Proulx.
Whose novel "The Shipping News" I highly recommend.
Lonesome Dove was the first 'great' television I remember watching.
Cybill Shepherd was luminous in Last Picture Show.
A good friend went to high school or college (can't remember)with McMurtry.
She is a smart, tough woman...don't mess with Texas in her case : )
I picked up Lonesome Dove to read on a long train ride from New Haven to Washington CD. Loved it. Great story, compelling characters, seemed more realistic than most westerns. Soon after that they made the miniseries, and it was the rare case of TV being as good as the source material. Wonderful music, the acting was superb in every way.
McMurtry wrote a sequel, which I read, but because the best character (spoiler) already was killed in Lonesome Dove to set up the final adventure, the sequel was not very satisfying. So McMurtry wrote a couple prequels showing how the key characters first met and interacted. I read those as well, but they were not the equal of Lonesome Dove.
James Clavell is also a great story teller, especially Tai Pan.
My real rabbit hole was the work of Robert Heinlein during my misspent youth. I found Asimov and others down that hole as well.
"Second book in the series was just too dark and violent for me."
McMurtry was aghast over the reception of Lonesome Dove. He had intended to obliterate the mythology of the American West, but the reading public found it to be classic of the genre. He professed to have had nothing to do with the miniseries, and never to have seen it.
McMurtry then had major heart surgery, followed by extended depression. Thus, the sequel to Lonesome Dove - "Streets of Laredo" - was written in about as foul a frame of mind as a book could be written.
I go down rabbit holes with individual authors a lot in my life. I find most them worthwhile. I have read "Lonesome Dove" and "The Streets of Laredo", but never any of his other novels.
Loved the movie "The Last Picture Show", but was never intrigued enough to read it.
One additional comment: I'd rather fall down an Ivan Doig rabbit hole than a Larry McMurtry one. Much less prolific writer, but such amazing characters and stories.
Jefferson's Revenge said...
Literary rabbit hole suggestion. George McDonald Frazier’s Flashman series
.........................
Have them all. Discovered GMF when I picked up an abandoned copy of 'McAuslan in the Rough' in the barracks. Priceless humor and history.
rcocean said...
"I haven't read much of his work. The last picture show scared me away. I just don't care about characters "living lives of quiet desparation". And I'm tired of reading about teenagers, or weirdos, or people with "issues".
And putting those types back in the Old west doesn't make it better for me."
They aren't in there. The rest are ripping yarns. Pure escapism.
Lots of characters die in "Lonesome Dove" and McMurtry spends a disconcertingly long time with them as their consciousness fades. I don't remember an afterlife being anybody's option.
"Lonesome Dove was the first 'great' television I remember watching.
"Cybill Shepherd was luminous in Last Picture Show."
Lonesome Dove started its life as a screenplay for Wayne, Stewart, and Fonda, with Bogdanovich directing. Cybill was expected to be the prostitute, Lorena.
Rabbit holes are often gateways to a warren, a confusing and contradictory labyrinth. People do well to escape from a warren.
There are, however, rabbit holes that lead to wonderlands.
Rory said, "McMurtry was aghast over the reception of Lonesome Dove. He had intended to obliterate the mythology of the American West, but the reading public found it to be a classic of the genre."
There has to be a whole file of authors and artists saying such things. Supposedly, Glenn Frey of The Eagles said, "We wrote 'Life in the Fastlane' as a warning and it was embraced as an anthem."
“Lonesome Dove” was apparently first written by McMurtry as an original screenplay, intended as the followup to Last Picture Show, and also to be directed by Bogdanavich. They supposedly tried to get John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda to play the three leads, but the project fell through. McMurtry decided to greatly expand the unused script and release it as a novel, and it went on to win the Pulitzer.
There’s a great video on YouTube that’s from the On Story PBS series that focuses on The Women of Lonesome Dove, and McMurtry‘s literary agent talks at length about how the novel came to the screen. Highly recommended.
My rabbit holes at that age were Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell.
Ann, I think you would like his Houston novels set partially in grad school - "All My Friends are Going to Be Strangers", "Moving On" and "Terms of Endearment." I haven't read the three sequels.
Cappy said...
It's not a rabbit hole. It's my home
Amen, amen and again I say Amen.
I wish I'd said what Cappy said
Welcome to the world of Scots-Irish writers. McMurtry, Conroy, Webb and Watkins, and Sledge. Of course Robert Duval is the actor for all these books.
What a wonderful thread, so full of good book suggestions.
Lonesome Dove to me will always be one of the best novels ever written. That it was loosely based on actual texas lore makes it even sweater.
Michael K said...
I have recently gone down a rabbit hole with Andrew Wareham.
Talk about a rabbit hole! In a discussion about the Industrial revolution on the Chicago Boys blog someone mentioned wareham's "Poor Man at the Gate" series. Might have been you.
I love industrial history and figured I'd give it a try. I blew through all 9 books in about a week.
In the next 8-9 months I read 70-80 of his other books/series. I like his 20th century series, including the earl's other son series which begins in 1890 or so. But they are all excellent.
Great and prolific author.
Thank you for the rabbit hole
John LGBTQ+ Henry
Agree with the recommendation of the Flashman series made by Jefferson's Revenge and Lars Porsena above. After reading Flashman in the early 70s I knew that both the Russian and US forays in Afghanistan were doomed to failure. His last tome was not up to his previous works and I wish he had put his pen to Flashy's exploits in the US Civil War.
As to other rabbit holes, every couple of years I read the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series. The movie based on that, Master and Commander, is the best movie to never have a sequel made.
I love industrial history and figured I'd give it a try. I blew through all 9 books in about a week.
There are now 13 books. I like the "Earls Other Son" too. I have a nonfiction memoir about the Americans in China during the Boxers and it jibes nicely with the novels.
My ignorance of McMurtry's and Bogdanovich's is comprehensive. I haven't read the books or seen the movies and series mentioned and am sure I will not in the future.
My appreciation of the literary Old West is pretty much confined to Berger's novel Little Big Man. I found some of Berger's books to be brilliant and others not so much. Phillip Kerr was the same way--very mixed in quality, so much so I suspect he was farming out and phoning in some of his later Bernie Gunther books.
I'll add my votes for Fraser and O'Brien.
I'm going to reread Catton's AotP trilogy eventually. That, and Peter Green's books on ancient history, stick with me as hard to put down.
I have read all the Clavell novels and they form a nice sequence. The first was of course, "King Rat" about the Changi prison camp where Clavell, a young RAF enlisted man, spent the war. That got him interested in Asian culture. The most brutal guards in Changi were Koreans. He studied the "Opium wars" in China and that led to "Tai Pan" and the sequel "Noble House." Sadly, the Hong Kong in those books has been destroyed by China. Then he wrote "Shogun," which is based on a real incident in Japan. "Gaijin" was a sequel to "Shogun." "Whirlwind" and "Escape" are about the Iranian revolution. "Whirlwind" is very good and has an interesting anecdote. A mountain warlord has a TWA stewardess as a slave. About that time, the guy who worked on my sailboat had a girlfriend who was a TWA stew. She was on a route to Egypt. She said the stews were all warned never to go shopping alone in Egypt. She knew two girls who had disappeared there.
Lary McMurtry rabbit hole? Try his used book store. It's a full fledged warren.
George McDonald Frasier was an interesting character--given to some priceless lines. He was born in Cumbria--on the English side of the Scots-English border. He was educated enough to become a newspaper editor in Glasgow. In his war years, he was a very young man in an English regiment composed of Border Reivers. They were men from his part of the country. The Border Reivers had a centuries old tradition of mild outlawry and raids on both sides of the border. And their regiment in WW II had a reputation of stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. And if it was nailed down, they'd still find a way to steal it as sort of a matter of maintaining their self respect.
But still I always wondered how Fraser had the gumption to put the following words in Flashman's mouth:
"They are Scottish troops, but they will do well if they are led by white men."
As to other rabbit holes, every couple of years I read the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series.
i went into the Horatio Hornblower, Midshipman rabbit hole early this summer
i'm up to Admiral Hornblower now; so i Just Might make it out yet!
“I have recently gone down a rabbit hole with Andrew Wareham. He has novels in series. His background is as an economic historian.”
I have thoroughly enjoyed all of Wareham’s books, but the typical story line of a minor noble boy running away from home and becoming rich and marrying well and becoming a lord grows old. He definitely is all about the British Empire Elite class, but that’s ok. The “it’s who you know” and getting your sister married well is pretty entertaining, “don’t I have a cousin who went to Eaton with Old Lord Balderdash? I need him to do me a turn.
Rory writes, "McMurtry was aghast over the reception of Lonesome Dove. He had intended to obliterate the mythology of the American West, but the reading public found it to be [a] classic of the genre."
To obliterate a mythology one must first understand it. If you set out to debunk something and the result is that something is more bunked than before, I'd conclude your self-image needs revision. (see St. Paul on the road to Damascus)
RE: George MacDonald Frazier
His "McAuslan" series is well worth the effort.
Gordon Pasha:
..every couple of years I read the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series.
------------------
I've been down the O'Brian rabbit hole three times.
I’ve only read two McMurtry books and one of them was Lonesome Dove. The other? Can’t remember. My bro-in-law says Lonesome Dove is so head and shoulders over anything else McMurtry wrote that he wonders if someone else actually penned it.
I don’t know about that but I do know Lonesome Dove is a masterpiece.
One of my rabbit holes was The Long Day Wanes aka the Malaysian Trilogy by Anthony Burgess, based on his experience working for the British government there. I read that during a stay in Morocco, which may have influenced my experience of it. Another is the Enderby series by the same author, the first entry of which I find amazing. Other than with A Clockwork Orange, he seems to have missed big fame by that much.
I went down the Larry McMurtry rabbit hole. I loved the way he wrote women. I'm not sure I've read a male writer who does women as well and as sympathetically.
I giggle that my copy of "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers" has a lengthy literary introduction that delights in the fact that McMurtry has finally gotten away from westerns and predicts a wonderful future for the writer. Of course "Lonesome Dove" came later.
I tried Flashman and disliked it so thoroughly I haven't been tempted to try Fraser again. Think it's because I'm a girl?
I, too, went down the Heinlein rabbit hole. I loved that he wrote accomplished women. Still, I'm not sure I've read a male writer who does women as poorly.
Naipaul,Stephenson, Gaiman, and Georgette Heyer are other of my rabbit holes, so I guess that's where I live, too.
"McMurtry . . . had intended . . . ." You can stop there.
Everybody knows that authors of fiction are the last people to ask about intentions and meanings. That's just Basic LitCrit, isn't it?
I envy people who haven't discovered Forester and Hornblower yet.
Speaking of Scots troops, Robert Graves--veteran of the first war--wrote that they ran like hell, both ways.
The Graves rabbit hole got me for a span of a few years. I gave up on his mother-goddess mysticism, but the historical fiction is top drawer.
i went into the Horatio Hornblower, Midshipman rabbit hole early this summer
i'm up to Admiral Hornblower now; so i Just Might make it out yet!
When I was an intern we had to schedule vacation (one week) 6 months in advance. The week I had for vacation rained every day. I read the entire series of Hornblower novels that week.
I went down the James Clavell rabbit hole as a teenager- "Nobel House" was the first one I read, almost by accident- picked it up (was my mother who bought it as a two book novel) not really intending to read it, but got hooked within an half hour. Great novelist. Loved every one of his books.
I still read a lot, but I'm not much for rabbit holes anymore. When young, if I liked a writer, there was no help for it but to go onto his next novel. In my peak rabbit hole years, I knocked off Kenneth Roberts, Eric Ambler, C.S. Forester, P.G. Wodehouse, Mika Waltari, and George Bernard Shaw. (GBS is actually more fun to read than to see performed.) Tolkien wasn't all that famous when I was in high school. I can't recall anyone reading him....I don't know if I can take credit for being all that intellectual. With the exception of exceptional movies, reading was the best available form of entertainment back then.
Lots of familiar names here--as seen on my Blogger profile. I put it up as an indication of my
interests and an invitation to conversation--but I don't recall anyone ever saying, "Narr, I love that too!" or "Narr, you have atrocious taste, and too much nose hair," but maybe I expected too much.
Can you go down a rabbit hole of travel books? I've followed Theroux, Naipaul, Raban, Thubron, the great Leigh-Fermor, and even Bryson through many a page, with pleasure.
There a woman haunting McMurtry. All my Friends, Terms of Endearment, etc.
She's been done wrong, and she has breast cancer.
John O'Hara was one rabbit hole. And George Eliot. I always needed one British and one American.
I agree that McMurtry's work is very uneven. I've read most of it, and like much of it, but I very much disliked the grisly Westerns after Lonesome Dove. I read one of those and stayed away from the rest of them.
I agree that "All My Friends are Going to Be Strangers" "Moving On" and "Terms of Endearment" are among his best work. I also really like Somebody's Darling. (A lot of his books have weak titles. He wanted Moving On to be called Patsy Carpenter, and he was right about that.)
Do not read Horseman Pass By, the book on which Hud was based. Unless you want to do an analysis of the dark side of McMurtry. In my opinion his work could have been much better if he had had another way of working out his psychological issues and concerns. (Or maybe if he had just had a great editor. I assume he did not, but I don't actually know.) He clearly loved people but he also hated humanity and he never seems to have integrated those emotions. On the one hand, this creates a nice tension and depth of understanding -- the good novels feel so realistic because they don't try to pretend that everything in life is wonderful, yet they have that love of life to keep the dark side at bay. In The Last Picture Show we see this marvelous balance -- it's quite dark, really; Jacy is just bad. But there is enough light to make it beautiful. In the Hud book, and some of the Westerns, he just writes the negative as if he's trying to show that he can take it, he can make evil live on the page. Not interested in that.
"(Or maybe if he had just had a great editor. I assume he did not, but I don't actually know.)"
McMurtry double uses a name for two minor characters in Lonesome Dove. Streets of Laredo refers to an Indian chief who seems to be the same character as was described in Lonesome Dove, but he gives the character a slightly different name - which happens to be the name of a famous movie chief.
Narr: Updike, Naipaul, historical preservation: I am with you. V.S.Pritchett maybe? Updike should have been raised earlier in any thread about rabbit-holes, as his 40-year series on Rabbit Angstrom gives us the most interesting and true and American character post-WWII.
Even if that commie hag Mary McCarthy was the one who said it.
My graduate university arranged for me to have supper with Updike once. Funny, despite how much they despised me -- and finally purged me -- I was always the one they would send to host the president's wife or Supreme Court justices.
Because everyone else was that astonishingly ignorant of the real world.
I turned them down because I loved his work so much I couldn't bring myself to meet the man. He sent me a lovely note when this was conveyed to him. If I have the choice, his In the Beauty of the Lilies will be the last book I read before I die -- re-read. It explains everything. The Little Sister ain't too shabby either.
Agreed about Updike--I haven't read everything, but who has? His art criticism in NYRB was a facet not many know about. Agreed about Rabbit--on my re-read pile. Someday . . .
Updike spoke on our campus a few years before his death. I recall him patiently signing books and chatting afterwards--polite even to the goober who wanted him to sign a whole box of books. I got tired of waiting and never reached the head of the line.
I understand about U-politics. I had achieved a level of indispensability that protected me until I could exit on my own in '15, but things are much worse now.
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