Larry McMurtry has died

Re:Larry McMurtry has died by defen on Sunday March 28, 2021 @01:53AM (#26608312)

If you have any interest whatsoever in Westerns as a genre you should read Lonesome Dove. It's about 850 pages but I'd be surprised if it took you more than a week to read. For the longest time I had no interest in reading it because, of all the things, the title put me off (I thought it would be a romance of some sort).

His uncles were cowboys toward the end of the cowboy days, and when they were young, they'd heard stories from the old-timers about how things used to be. Those uncles told Larry those stories and he eventually incorporated that knowledge into his westerns, and it really shows. One thing I find fascinating about Lonesome Dove is that, as the article says, he intended it to deconstruct some of the myths of the West and show what a hard life it was, but everyone who reads it falls in love with the world and the characters.

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by TheTrotters on Sunday March 28, 2021 @05:07AM (#26608932)

I’ll also recommend the work of his son, James McMurtry. He’s an outstanding songwriter.

See for example:

Choctaw Bingo: https://youtu.be/Nggqe-L9ZQ8

Copper Canteen: https://youtu.be/IM_BjzDCDXs

Painting by Numbers: https://youtu.be/kca5E3xk8II

Lights of Cheyenne: https://youtu.be/TbSmMeJN8tc

Cutter: https://youtu.be/1jGEedvJMDU

Charlemagne’s Home Town: https://youtu.be/AkCNldGIbio

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by chrissnell on Sunday March 28, 2021 @01:36PM (#26612299)

I'm partial to:

You Got To Me https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QNBA5wAyI7c

Lobo Town https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng_D8b6qfDM

Restless https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iBTkHd8DMo0

No More Buffalo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=54u0OlJQB7g

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by flir on Sunday March 28, 2021 @12:34PM (#26611690)

Best of his generation, in my opinion. Ruby and Carlos should be at the top of your list, but there are so many to choose from.

Have you watched his recent work? Post-pandemic? He was always acerbic but now he spits out every syllable like he has a personal grudge against it. It's getting to the point where I'm actually worried about him.

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by karaterobot on Sunday March 28, 2021 @12:54PM (#26611889)

Wow, I feel dense. I didn't know James McMurtry was related to Larry McMurtry. Ruby and Carlos rules. For some odd reason I woke up with it stuck in my head a couple weeks ago, and it stayed stuck for a few days. Hey, there it is again!

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by rasfincher on Sunday March 28, 2021 @09:33AM (#26610248)

Agreed, I’ve seen James live a few times and he is a great songwriter.

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by arwhatever on Sunday March 28, 2021 @05:57AM (#26609140)

Lonesome Dove is the best book you’ll ever read.

If you feel uninterested in reading a western novel, consider that it’s primarily a character drama, and would be just as good if the setting were space pirates or whatever else.

I spent 5 years living near where Mr. McMurtry lived and wrote about - flat and boring as can be, but holy moley did his writing ever romanticize that area’s history effectively.

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by garciasn on Sunday March 28, 2021 @03:15PM (#26613271)

The best book you’ll ever read? That’s a bit of a stretch but everyone is allowed their opinion.

I feel it’s long-winded and, for the most part, incredibly slow moving. The novel would have better been a 180 page western romance novel series than a 900 page behemoth.

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Re:Larry McMurtry has died by planet-and-halo on Sunday March 28, 2021 @11:53AM (#26611338)

The way McMurtry articulates this "turnabout" is great (you can find it on his wikipedia page). I get his point—the characters suffer immensely, and you would hope the reader could recognize that it wouldn't be the best world to live in—and yet he portrays the characters with such heart that I don't know why it would be surprising that people fall in love with them. I won't post any spoilers, but there's a moment where one of the characters is leaving the group, and he says something to the effect of, "Most of the cowboys were rude and incompetent, but they were still his compañeros." Those family dynamics, the mixture of love and annoyance we feel with the people around us when we're part of a tribe, is such a hard thing to portray, and McMurtry does it beautifully. So not only do you have these incredibly complex characters, but circumstances bring them together as a family (something I think is often deeply missing in the modern world, and people pine for).

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