Larry McMurtry:
the slow quiet demise of the West

Larry McMurtry has been a fixture on the American scene for a long time now, and he has experienced several kinds of success along the way. His novels are popular—several of them have been made into films. Lonesome Dove won the Pulitzer Prize, and the accompanying miniseries was wildly successful. He’s become a respected critic of the literature and history of the American West, with articles appearing regularly in the New York Review of Books. And he is probably the only successful used-book scout known to folks who don’t follow that fascinating business closely. Through it all, McMurtry has somehow retained the aura of a fairly nice guy, a down home sort of fella who never lets things go to his head.

How does he do it? I suspect that one significant factor may be that he spent the first twenty-one years of his life on a horse, cow-punching on the family ranch out in the desolate landscapes of West Texas. An introvert and a “sensitive soul” by nature, he suffered the misfortune to live in a place where there were few books. He may be among the few twentieth century readers of Don Quixote to have presumed it was a contemporary novel. Growing up on a failing ranch in the midst of adults who had few real prospects may well have given him, at an early age, a degree of perspective on the fate that might be his, or anyone’s, as a result of circumstances; and this, in turn, would tend to heighten the allure of the romantic aspects of literature, while also encouraging the development of humility. He once described his entire writing career as a long exercise in describing things that are on the point of vanishing. It’s a timeless theme, and he handles it well.

Whatever the underlying causes may be, McMurtry’s early works possess a charming sincerity, a sensitivity to landscapes, and a self-depreciatory humor that make for engaging reading. I must confess that my own exposure to them is limited to Horseman Pass By, McMurtry’s first book, and to the film versions of Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment. But I’ve read quite a few of his commentaries on the West, which are elevated by a refusal to accept the currently fashionable zeal to debunk its romance. People who’ve never been there have always romanticized the West, no doubt, but in McMurtry’s view, those who went out there to live were after something, and occasionally they found it.

It’s generally agreed that McMurtry’s recent novels have been thin pastiches, parodies and entertainments that don’t measure up to his earlier work. On the other hand—in a natural progression of the spirit from poetry to prose, I guess—with his recent book-length essay Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, McMurtry has scored big.

The weakest thing about the book is its title, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Yet the title does suggest the sweep of McMurtry’s reflections, from the evident profundity of an Old World philosopher to the banality of an American fast-food chain. McMurtry’s own chain of thought was triggered one day in 1990 when he was sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of the Dairy Queen in Archer City, Texas, reading an essay in which the Austrian thinker Walter Benjamin bemoans the disappearance of the oral transmission of information within a culture—the disappearance of story-telling. This gets him to thinking about the fact that the Dairy Queen—the first air-conditioned public building in town—is the only one cool enough to allow people to sit around and chit-chat. From here he moves on to ponder what types of things people discuss out in ranch country. Usually, he concludes grimly, it’s the way other people have died. For example, conversation ensued for years when a German dairy farmer killed himself one morning after milking his cows. What kept the story alive was a difference of opinion as to whether or not the man should have finished the milking before taking his life.

In time, and at an easy pace, McMurtry leads us down the path to consider aspects of his own childhood, and the essay becomes an autobiography of sorts. The story of McMurtry’s transition from a ranch hand who had never seen a television set and was afraid of chickens and hornets, into a university student in bustling Houston, and then a participant (along with Ken Kesey and others) in the famous Stanford writers’ workshop taught by Malcolm Cowley and Frank O’Connor, makes for a bildungsroman of unusual interest. Yet the emphasis of his reflections is less on amassing details than on pondering the significance of what’s taking place. McMurtry speculates that he may be the only writer of his generation to have actually experienced the frontier, having been raised in the midst of genuine cowboys, in an environment that was still rooted in immigrant sensibilities, desperate industry, and endless debt. The question he ends up asking is why someone from such a background would become a writer at all.

I don’t think he ever comes to a satisfactory resolution to that issue, but he tells a lot of interesting stories along the way. The speculative framework allows him to quote from Valery, Woolf, or Walter Benjamin himself when it seems appropriate. He can reflect sagely on the significance of the Internet and the airplane. And he can also share his insights on the American West, about which he knows a great deal.

The fact is, the American West was settled in one long lifetime. From Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee is less than ninety years; the pioneer cattleman Charles Goodnight lived longer, and so did the plains historian Angie Debo. Well before the Custer battle, that shrewd entrepreneur William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) was already putting on Wild West shows for people who had never been, and would never be, west of New Jersey.

Well everyone knows this, I guess. But McMurtry can add his own personal touch to it all.

What rodeos, movies, Western art, and pulp fiction all miss is the overwhelming loneliness of the westering experience. When my uncles (and even my father, for a year or two) were cowboying in the Panhandle they would eagerly ride horseback as much as thirty-five miles to a dance or a social, and then ride back and be ready for work at dawn. In Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, the distances were even greater. Many Westerners were alone so much that loneliness was just in them, to a degree that finally made domestic and social relations difficult, if not secondary. The old joke that cowboys get along better with horses than they do with women is not a joke, it’s a tragedy.

Other subjects that fall under McMurtry’s roving intellect include film-making—once again the personal insights come into play, as he describes the making of The Last Picture Show in a small Texas town. He discusses Europe at length, in the context of his grandparents emigration, and also his own piecemeal discovery of the Old World as a student. He talks about Western literature, about modern literature, about teaching (and why he’s not much good at it). There is a very long chapter on book-dealing (he’s been a book scout and dealer for many years). He discusses his heart attack, which leads on to a consideration of the medical profession. He describes the Archer City Rodeo Parade, and how it’s changed over the years.

The range of subjects is vast, in short, and the remarkable thing is that McMurtry moves from one to the next—and back again!—without jarring juxtapositions or abrupt changes in direction. As we come to the end of the essay, he’s still talking about his family and the West and literature, and himself. And we’re still listening.

McMurtry has done a lot of living, and a lot of reading, and a lot of thinking too, but his prose is still as natural and as easy to read as a comic book. One cannot help but think of Montaigne, who possesses a comparable range of subjects and ease of expression. Montaigne wrote a great deal more that McMurtry along these lines, of course, and he has a better command of the classical poets, but I don’t think he ever sustained the effect for such an extended span of time. Nor is he anywhere near as funny as McMurtry can be.

Near the end of the book McMurtry tells us of a visit he made to the town of Uvalde, Texas, to give a series of lectures. He had been proud, on the evening of his arrival, to see the sign “Welcome Larry McMurtry, Author of Terms of Endearment” on the marquee of the local Holiday Inn. The next day, during a break between lectures, he had been informed by telephone while resting in his room that he’d just won the Pulitzer Prize. Quite an exciting moment, no doubt. Before long local reporters had caught wind of the award, and they asked McMurtry to come out for an interview. As he did he noticed that the marquee at the motel had been changed. It now read “Lunch special, Catfish: $3.95.” He writes:

Even as [my agent] was telling me how great he had made me, my moment had passed. It was a lesson to be learned. The Pulitzer Prize was well and good, but there was lunch to think of, and catfish at $3.95 was a bargain not to be scorned. The locals were already flocking to it, and as soon as the needs of the press had been satisfied, I went in and did the same.