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Larry McMurtry: Three Complete Novels
A trio of powerful novels by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author features The Last Picture Show, Leaving Cheyenne, and the award-winning Lonesome Dove.
932 pages, Hardcover
First published June 21, 1994
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220 people want to read
About the author
Larry McMurtry
150 books4,095 followersLarry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations (13 wins). He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.
His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove was adapted into a television miniseries that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins). The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were adapted as three more miniseries, earning eight more Emmy nominations. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2014, McMurtry received the National Humanities Medal.
In Tracy Daugherty's 2023 biography of McMurtry, the biographer quotes critic Dave Hickey as saying about McMurtry: "Larry is a writer, and it's kind of like being a critter. If you leave a cow alone, he'll eat grass. If you leave Larry alone, he'll write books. When he's in public, he may say hello and goodbye, but otherwise he is just resting, getting ready to go write."
His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove was adapted into a television miniseries that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins). The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were adapted as three more miniseries, earning eight more Emmy nominations. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2014, McMurtry received the National Humanities Medal.
In Tracy Daugherty's 2023 biography of McMurtry, the biographer quotes critic Dave Hickey as saying about McMurtry: "Larry is a writer, and it's kind of like being a critter. If you leave a cow alone, he'll eat grass. If you leave Larry alone, he'll write books. When he's in public, he may say hello and goodbye, but otherwise he is just resting, getting ready to go write."
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 10, 2024
Note: I read "Lonesome Dove" and "The Last Picture Show" from this collection of three books by Larry McMurtry. I will have to make a gripe that the font and the print are so tiny that it hurt my eyes badly. I will read "Leaving Cheyenne" one day as a standalone novel. This was the first time I read Mr. McMurtry's work.
Review for "The Last Picture Show": 5 stars and beyond.
"The Last Picture Show" is one of my favorite films of all time, and I also believe one of cinema's finest masterpieces. The Oscar winning performances by Ben Johnson (as Sam the Lion) and Cloris Leachman (as Ruth Popper) remain as two of the worthiest wins in Academy Award history. Plus, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn, and Eileen Brennan are part of a magical ensemble that can never be repeated. Simply said, its one of the loneliest, bleakest films I have ever seen.
The book is equally as imperishable to the Peter Bogdanovich adaptation. McMurtry writes with landscapes so hot and barren that represent a piece of America that was slowly dying, attempting a last gasp at being seen as a place that represents the cycles of life: life and death brimming in every pore of its Texan setting, "the grey pastures ad the distant brown ridges looked too empty as the country looked it was too risky going out into it" (McMurtry 930).
Some of literature's most unforgettable characters are a part of McMurtry's Anarene, Texas:
The dramatic personae include:
Sensitive jocks Duane and Sonny are the protagonists who find themselves at a crossroads. Duane is about to enlist to fight in the Korean War, as Sonny inherits a bar and an old movie theater from Sam the Lion. They both have affairs with the vapid and beautiful Jacy.
Jacy wants more out of life, and her mother Lois is a cold and hardened social climber. She has a complicated interior.
Sam the Lion is the irascible and kind hearted bar and movie theater owner who lives vicariously through Duane and Sonny and wants them to get more out of life than he did.
Billy is the hapless, ill-fated friend of Sonny’s.
John Cecil is the disgraced teacher fired for being gay. Genevieve is the earthy and weary waitress.
Finally there is closeted gay Coach Herman Popper and his wife Ruth.
It's a coming of age story for sure that focuses a lot on Duane and Jacy's affair, and of Sonny's sexual coming of age with Ruth Popper. Sonny sees Ruth's yearning for love both thrilling and uncomfortable- he becomes her will to live.
Duane and Sonny's friendship falling apart after Jacy comes between them is heartbreaking, with a sadness that hangs permanently in the air, "Sonny put his hands in his pockets and walked back across the street, not feeling too good. It was another one of those mornings when no one was there" (McMurtry 328).
But it is Sonny and Ruth's final confrontation that places this book and the film into legendary status: "You're the one who ought to be sorry...I bet you left plenty of nights. I wouldn't treat a dog that way but that's the way you treated me, and Billy too" (McMutry 931).
Written with tenderness and with the anger of a heart bitter and breaking, Ruth Popper delivers one of the greatest closing monologues.
I have paired the film when I have taught "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". Both are works that represent a slice of life with a thirst for love and the yearning for bigger things that it hurts and consumes.
Review for "Lonesome Dove"- 5 stars.
"The very youngness of the young moved him to charity, they had no sense of the swiftness of life or its limits" (McMurtry 200).
A true American masterpiece of the American frontier. Beginning in Lonesome Dove, Texas and its setting shifting from Nebraska to Montana, it's the indelible friendship between two retired Texas Rangers, Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call who dream of creating a home and cattle drive in Montana.
McMurtry's imagery is so vivid and his dialogue so entertaining that a long novel like this is compulsive reading material. McMurtry has called this book "the Gone With the Wind" of the West- and I agree. Both are Pulitzer Prize winning, gigantic magnum opuses that romanticize history after the Civil War. Except McMurtry's book is about an American landscape so vast and full of possibility, that you lose your way.
Enter other unforgettable characters such as Lorena the sex worker who loves Gus very much; the lazy rogue Jake Spoon; Call's illegitimate son, the faithful Newt, Joshua Deets-black, proud, and wise; July and his wayward wife Elmira, the villainous Blue Duck, and proud, independent Clara, Gus' ex lover, who takes Lorena in as a companion for her daughters- these characters are all vividly described through McMurtry's love of storytelling- though characters like Blue Duck might come across as offensive to readers today who see things through a political correct lens.
I actually thought so much about the work of Cormac McCarthy and Willa Cather as I read this. It sounds like a swashbuckle epic and an escapist yarn. At the heart of it is a bleak and sad tale of men like Gus and Call who are unable to tell those they care about that they truly love them- and it’s women like Clara and Lorena who are much stronger than the men they loved.
I loved "Lonesome Dove" because it swept me away. Its storyline of rakish old men, beautiful women, a setting that is both lonely and sweeping- what's not to love in a good old fashioned story?
I intend to watch the 1989 miniseries that star Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Danny Glover, Diane Lane and Anjelica Huston one day.
Note: article of Larry McMurtry comparing "Lonesome Dove" to "Gone With the Wind":
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories...
Postscript- I sat and watched the iconic 1980s miniseries, and enjoyed it very much. I think it’s one of Robert Duvall’s best performances as Gus, and Tommy Lee Jones is his irascible self as Call. Diane Lane and Anjelica Huston are wonderful as Lorena and Clara.
Review for "The Last Picture Show": 5 stars and beyond.
"The Last Picture Show" is one of my favorite films of all time, and I also believe one of cinema's finest masterpieces. The Oscar winning performances by Ben Johnson (as Sam the Lion) and Cloris Leachman (as Ruth Popper) remain as two of the worthiest wins in Academy Award history. Plus, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn, and Eileen Brennan are part of a magical ensemble that can never be repeated. Simply said, its one of the loneliest, bleakest films I have ever seen.
The book is equally as imperishable to the Peter Bogdanovich adaptation. McMurtry writes with landscapes so hot and barren that represent a piece of America that was slowly dying, attempting a last gasp at being seen as a place that represents the cycles of life: life and death brimming in every pore of its Texan setting, "the grey pastures ad the distant brown ridges looked too empty as the country looked it was too risky going out into it" (McMurtry 930).
Some of literature's most unforgettable characters are a part of McMurtry's Anarene, Texas:
The dramatic personae include:
Sensitive jocks Duane and Sonny are the protagonists who find themselves at a crossroads. Duane is about to enlist to fight in the Korean War, as Sonny inherits a bar and an old movie theater from Sam the Lion. They both have affairs with the vapid and beautiful Jacy.
Jacy wants more out of life, and her mother Lois is a cold and hardened social climber. She has a complicated interior.
Sam the Lion is the irascible and kind hearted bar and movie theater owner who lives vicariously through Duane and Sonny and wants them to get more out of life than he did.
Billy is the hapless, ill-fated friend of Sonny’s.
John Cecil is the disgraced teacher fired for being gay. Genevieve is the earthy and weary waitress.
Finally there is closeted gay Coach Herman Popper and his wife Ruth.
It's a coming of age story for sure that focuses a lot on Duane and Jacy's affair, and of Sonny's sexual coming of age with Ruth Popper. Sonny sees Ruth's yearning for love both thrilling and uncomfortable- he becomes her will to live.
Duane and Sonny's friendship falling apart after Jacy comes between them is heartbreaking, with a sadness that hangs permanently in the air, "Sonny put his hands in his pockets and walked back across the street, not feeling too good. It was another one of those mornings when no one was there" (McMurtry 328).
But it is Sonny and Ruth's final confrontation that places this book and the film into legendary status: "You're the one who ought to be sorry...I bet you left plenty of nights. I wouldn't treat a dog that way but that's the way you treated me, and Billy too" (McMutry 931).
Written with tenderness and with the anger of a heart bitter and breaking, Ruth Popper delivers one of the greatest closing monologues.
I have paired the film when I have taught "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". Both are works that represent a slice of life with a thirst for love and the yearning for bigger things that it hurts and consumes.
Review for "Lonesome Dove"- 5 stars.
"The very youngness of the young moved him to charity, they had no sense of the swiftness of life or its limits" (McMurtry 200).
A true American masterpiece of the American frontier. Beginning in Lonesome Dove, Texas and its setting shifting from Nebraska to Montana, it's the indelible friendship between two retired Texas Rangers, Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call who dream of creating a home and cattle drive in Montana.
McMurtry's imagery is so vivid and his dialogue so entertaining that a long novel like this is compulsive reading material. McMurtry has called this book "the Gone With the Wind" of the West- and I agree. Both are Pulitzer Prize winning, gigantic magnum opuses that romanticize history after the Civil War. Except McMurtry's book is about an American landscape so vast and full of possibility, that you lose your way.
Enter other unforgettable characters such as Lorena the sex worker who loves Gus very much; the lazy rogue Jake Spoon; Call's illegitimate son, the faithful Newt, Joshua Deets-black, proud, and wise; July and his wayward wife Elmira, the villainous Blue Duck, and proud, independent Clara, Gus' ex lover, who takes Lorena in as a companion for her daughters- these characters are all vividly described through McMurtry's love of storytelling- though characters like Blue Duck might come across as offensive to readers today who see things through a political correct lens.
I actually thought so much about the work of Cormac McCarthy and Willa Cather as I read this. It sounds like a swashbuckle epic and an escapist yarn. At the heart of it is a bleak and sad tale of men like Gus and Call who are unable to tell those they care about that they truly love them- and it’s women like Clara and Lorena who are much stronger than the men they loved.
I loved "Lonesome Dove" because it swept me away. Its storyline of rakish old men, beautiful women, a setting that is both lonely and sweeping- what's not to love in a good old fashioned story?
I intend to watch the 1989 miniseries that star Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Danny Glover, Diane Lane and Anjelica Huston one day.
Note: article of Larry McMurtry comparing "Lonesome Dove" to "Gone With the Wind":
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories...
Postscript- I sat and watched the iconic 1980s miniseries, and enjoyed it very much. I think it’s one of Robert Duvall’s best performances as Gus, and Tommy Lee Jones is his irascible self as Call. Diane Lane and Anjelica Huston are wonderful as Lorena and Clara.
October 22, 2019
WOW!! After finishing Lonesome Dove, I feel like I can read almost anything. I typically do not read Westerns and I first heard of Lonesome Dove when my family watched the mini series back in the 90’s. I never realized that this is a Pulitzer Prize winning work of fiction. It is a great work of fiction and I was sad to leave the World of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call. I will echo what others have said, If you read only one Western, this is the book you should read.
February 28, 2024
“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
Walt Whitman eloquently captures my sentiments for "Lonesome Dove" in his poetic verses. Honestly, I might never have delved into it if not for the gift of my friend. Should you choose just one Western novel in your lifetime, let it be this one. McMurtry, a masterful storyteller, weaves a narrative that captivates, skillfully navigating through different histories at the same time and allowing room for readers to absorb and interpret events. Every character breathes life, immersing me in the wilderness, forging connections with the heroes' struggles and triumphs. It even feels sad to say goodbye to the world of Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae. This was a highly immersive and poignant experience, indeed.
Call, a stoic protagonist, undergoes a profound transformation. “He tried to gird himself for a fight-Gus might miss, or not even shoot, though both were doubtful-but his own weakness held him in the chair. He was trembling and didn’t know why.” This was the first scene the reader got to know the vulnerable Call, and McMurtry depicted it marvelously. Call was quivering and didn’t know what to do. I believe, we do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love. Here, eventually, we see Call-the loving friend; indeed in a very unique way but still. It's a moment of revelation, exposing Call as more than just a resilient figure. Call is a hard worker-keeping himself busy with work to numb his feelings. As Gus observes in his final moments: “That’s my favour to you, it’s the kind of job you were made for (carrying his body to Texas to bury him there,) that nobody could do or even try. Now that the country is about settled, I don’t know how you will keep busy. But if you do this for me, you will be alright for another year, I guess.” Even though Gus knows Call’s psyche well, he could never imagine that suddenly Call would no longer believe in the work. Gus, inadvertently, manipulates Call's beliefs, leading to a transformative juncture. Paternal instincts stir within Call, yet his actions, like bequeathing his horse to Newt without bestowing his name, reveal a poignant failure. Despite a lifetime advocating honesty, Call falters in honesty with his own son—a lonely, tragic, and undeniably real existence and certainly an unhappy one.
The most captivating part of the novel is that no hero ends up happy; no one achieves whatever they were seeking. Obviously, genuine happiness can never be attained through the fulfillment of one’s ambitions. Life cannot solely revolve around pursuits. This goes back to Dostoevsky’s famous quote-“Love life more than the meaning of life.” All McMurtry’s heroes values their meanings more than life itself. Many of them, during their journey, reminisced about the tranquil days in Lonesome Dove and longed to return. I believe, McMurtry wanted to essentially make us feel the importance of being present and mindful of your possessions and reality, which is the greatest source of happiness, instead of relentless pursuit of goals with a hope for fulfillment…
The grown man shudders and is silent. The man who has wandered pathless at night on the mountain-range of his feelings: is silent!
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
Walt Whitman eloquently captures my sentiments for "Lonesome Dove" in his poetic verses. Honestly, I might never have delved into it if not for the gift of my friend. Should you choose just one Western novel in your lifetime, let it be this one. McMurtry, a masterful storyteller, weaves a narrative that captivates, skillfully navigating through different histories at the same time and allowing room for readers to absorb and interpret events. Every character breathes life, immersing me in the wilderness, forging connections with the heroes' struggles and triumphs. It even feels sad to say goodbye to the world of Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae. This was a highly immersive and poignant experience, indeed.
Call, a stoic protagonist, undergoes a profound transformation. “He tried to gird himself for a fight-Gus might miss, or not even shoot, though both were doubtful-but his own weakness held him in the chair. He was trembling and didn’t know why.” This was the first scene the reader got to know the vulnerable Call, and McMurtry depicted it marvelously. Call was quivering and didn’t know what to do. I believe, we do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love. Here, eventually, we see Call-the loving friend; indeed in a very unique way but still. It's a moment of revelation, exposing Call as more than just a resilient figure. Call is a hard worker-keeping himself busy with work to numb his feelings. As Gus observes in his final moments: “That’s my favour to you, it’s the kind of job you were made for (carrying his body to Texas to bury him there,) that nobody could do or even try. Now that the country is about settled, I don’t know how you will keep busy. But if you do this for me, you will be alright for another year, I guess.” Even though Gus knows Call’s psyche well, he could never imagine that suddenly Call would no longer believe in the work. Gus, inadvertently, manipulates Call's beliefs, leading to a transformative juncture. Paternal instincts stir within Call, yet his actions, like bequeathing his horse to Newt without bestowing his name, reveal a poignant failure. Despite a lifetime advocating honesty, Call falters in honesty with his own son—a lonely, tragic, and undeniably real existence and certainly an unhappy one.
The most captivating part of the novel is that no hero ends up happy; no one achieves whatever they were seeking. Obviously, genuine happiness can never be attained through the fulfillment of one’s ambitions. Life cannot solely revolve around pursuits. This goes back to Dostoevsky’s famous quote-“Love life more than the meaning of life.” All McMurtry’s heroes values their meanings more than life itself. Many of them, during their journey, reminisced about the tranquil days in Lonesome Dove and longed to return. I believe, McMurtry wanted to essentially make us feel the importance of being present and mindful of your possessions and reality, which is the greatest source of happiness, instead of relentless pursuit of goals with a hope for fulfillment…
The grown man shudders and is silent. The man who has wandered pathless at night on the mountain-range of his feelings: is silent!
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