On Reading McMurtry

A deep dive of his non-fiction writing.

I remember watching the 1989 made-for-TV Lonesome Dove miniseries, at least in part, in reruns with my dad. Later I’d watch The Last Picture Show, adapted from his book of the same name, and then Hud, a much more optimistic take on McMurtry’s Horseman, Pass By. So I’ve always had some awareness of Larry McMurtry, but it wasn’t until he pops up in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kook-Aid Acid Test (in fact, he later married Ken Kesey’s widow) that I actually did a deep dive- and I haven’t even dipped into any of the western writing he’s probably best known for- I’m saving getting into the Lonesome Dove series for the same reason I haven’t watched the last season of The Sopranos, sometimes I just don’t want a good thing to be over.

So while he’s better known for his fiction, I’ve recently read through a good portion of his nonfiction writing- namely his trio of books on the Indian wars- Crazy Horse: A Life, Custer, and Oh, What A Slaughter. These are sure to elicit what I will call “The Eli Cash Effect” and you’ll walk around all day saying “Everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn, but what my book presupposes is…. maybe he didn’t?” All three are under 200 pages and can be read in a day or two, and McMurtry’s writing on the subject is so conversational in tone that they never veer into the stuffy academic territory of some of the books that I’ve read on the subject.

I’ve also recently finished a couple of his autobiographical books of essays- Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood, and Roads: Driving America’s Great Highways. Roads in particular was one of my favorite reads this year- a series of essays around his trips down specific highways, recounting the history around each one- famous authors and the books they’ve written, massacres of wagon trains, revolving restaurants, and whatever else he was thinking about driving down the interstate. It’s a book that I often found laugh-out-loud funny and you begin to understand how his love of roadtripping informed books like Cadillac Jack- with its antique-collecting, Cadillac-driving protagonist- or the semi-autobiographical All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers. Read those few and you’ll start to convince yourself you’re ready for a cross-country trek.