The Last Picture Show

This is the story of Duane, Jacy, and Sonny—teenagers longing for love and a more thrilling life—as well as some of the adults in their small town of Thalia, Texas. The teenagers dream of bigger things than the town seems to offer and the adults are drawn to the fresh teenagers like moths to a flame. The adults’ misery with life in Thalia is palpable.

This story is humorous and nostalgic, yet melancholy and dejected. The sadness most of the characters feel about their lives is front and center, and even when the teenagers are thrill-seeking, their bad decisions come back to haunt them in the form of unexpected outcomes. The adults are no better. Even in the last chapter when Ruth rages at Sonny’s ineptitude and inadvertent coldness toward her, she still longs for his youthful touch while she exclaims, “I’m really not smart.”

I’m certain around the time of its original publication, the spotlight on the internal lives of these teenagers’ sex lives must have been illuminating. But reading it now, the revelations are somewhat cliché and groan-inducing, rather than thrilling.

But more importantly, McMurtry’s writing is economical yet sturdy, even poetic at times. And he has a strong ability to develop characters in a natural way. There is one chapter that affected me deeply, the one where Sam the Lion goes to the lake with Duane and Sonny and tells them about a time when he was their age and took a girl to the same spot on the lake. It is a moment of reflection for Sam the Lion that affects him and the reader deeply, revealing his longing for a love and a place in time that is distant yet ever-present in his heart. The teenage boys have a difficult time imagining their elder statesman as a teenager like them, doing the same lusty pining they themselves are guilty of doing. It’s an excellent scene with a lot to contemplate and unpack, and its written beautifully.

Terrific. Great American writer. Texas comes to life for me through him.

I thought it’d be important to say a few words about the wonderful Larry McMurtry, who passed away last week in Texas at the age of 84. Larry enjoyed a powerful 60+ year career which included such notable works as Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, The Lonesome Dove quadrology (!!), and co-authorship of the screenplay to Brokeback Mountain. He never owned a computer, writing everything on an old typewriter. In all, he wrote over 60 books and screenplays. Astonishing.

The NY Times and other pubs have lovely articles about his life and work. But to me, as a guy in Arizona who’d father-in-law was an honest-to-God actual cowboy himself, McMurtry’s works were extra special. He not only contributed to the Western genre and literature about the West, he advanced it.

I always thought his early stuff (Leaving Cheyanne, Last Picture Show) about life in the small and fictional West Texas town of Thalia, were in a genre of their own, which I called Hillbilly Western. McMurtry usually mixed humor with his drama, through characters who could not avoid drifting downhill paths to lonely failure. His work was gritty, and could even be bleak. Fate seems to be relentless, grinding away at survival. There’s not a lot of good luck. He kept things sparse, but in motion. Dry humor. He never wrote the most complicated stories, but they were spellbinding nonetheless with their easy-going style of dialog and description.

One of my monumental reading JOYS in life was taking the time to read the sprawling 4 novel Quadrology that centered around Lonesome Dove. At 3,000 pages, I didn’t want it to end. The Series follows the lives of two cowboys. You’ll learn about humanity, Indians, the West, brotherhood, cattle drives. So entertaining. A true tour-de-force. And when the make a Hollywood mini-series (Lonesome Dove) out of your work, perhaps the literary movers and shakers slides you into the pop-fiction category, and de-lists you from serious literature. I’d be a real shame to do that to Larry.
I hope to go into more detail about a few of his books down the road; but for now, consider Leaving Cheyanne, Last Picture Show, Dove, and Commanche Moon as must-reads to honor this great writer.

By the way, few know that Larry owned several rare book stores over his lifetime. Booked Up, in the Texas panhandle, once stocked over 800,000 books in four buildings! Many times, when a good independent book store closed its doors, Larry M bought the inventory. He downsized several years ago, but still stocks hundreds of thousands. In his own home? He only had 30,000 books there.

Larry M was a giant. He moved the ball. Teacher, bookseller, thinker, novelist, Academy Award winner who kept his distance from Hollywood. He held our attention and admiration for 6 decades.

Michael Daswick won both of Columbia’s prestigious literary awards. His work is on BookBub and all the platforms. Today, he’s working on his 6th novel in Arizona.

Kind of a Kerouac type of writing. Story of youths growing into adulthood. Good read.

Everything written by Larry McMurtry is excellent.

I wish I could say I liked this book, but it was repetitive and kind of dull. Maybe I just did not get it but others should read and form their own opinions.

A marvelous and haunting read.

One of my favorite authors. I have read all of his books once and a few more than once over the years. His creation of characters and atmosphere is second to none