Lonesome Dove and Adam Bede

I've recently read George Eliot's first novel, "Adam Bede." It's a racier novel than I had come to expect, having read "Middlemarch" and "Silas Marner". Do people still speak of "racy" novels in this day and age? Well, I considered calling it straight-up sexy, but this is still 19th century Victorian literature, and it's still … Continue reading Lonesome Dove and Adam Bede

The Last Picture Show

I knew nothing about this story going in.  I thought it was going to be some sober, artsy-fartsy thing.  It’s actually filled with sex, much of it surprisingly explicit and even erotic.  The sex is painted real, meaning it’s only occasionally a joyful thing and more often: sad, boring, painful, calculating, stolen, paid for, animalistic … Continue reading The Last Picture Show

Hero, meet your villain; or, never mind

It's a common trope in fiction: a final confrontation between the central hero of a story and its central villain. It's an important trope in Westerns, both on the page and screen -- Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" is just one famous example. And we see it in works of fiction that are too many to count: … Continue reading Hero, meet your villain; or, never mind

Theology and morality in Laredo

Maria didn't believe in hell. If there was a hell it came to you in life."Streets of Laredo," chapter 8 “Streets of Laredo”, the sequel to "Lonesome Dove," is so filled with cruelty and death that paradoxically, it doesn’t feel ultra-realistic; it feels theological and moral – and the environment feels otherworldly.  Larry McMurtry once … Continue reading Theology and morality in Laredo

McMurtry and Cervantes

Larry McMurtry published “Streets of Laredo”, his sequel to “Lonesome Dove”, in summer 1993.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution then ran a piece by Michael Skube, who compared “Lonesome Dove” to “Don Quixote”:   Living briefly off the luster of its predecessor, a sequel establishes its own grounds as art or it diminishes the work from which … Continue reading McMurtry and Cervantes