| Title | : | Texasville |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0684857502 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780684857503 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 544 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1987 |
One of Larry McMurtry's funniest and most touching contemporary novels.
Texasville Reviews
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Question: Can one of your favorite authors write one of the worst novels you've ever read? Sub-question: Is 542 pages of scraps from a favorite author better than no novel at all? These questions were more compelling to me than anything in the first half of Texasville, Larry McMurtry's sequel--the first of four continuations, actually--to his acclaimed 1966 novel The Last Picture Show. Published in 1983, this book is a crushing disappointment, a massive jokefest that takes place thirty years later in the fictional town of Thalia as it still struggles to survive, hanging on now through the oil bust of the early 1980s.
The sequel focuses on Duane Jackson, a former Prom King who as a high school senior was married to town beauty Jacy Farrow for a few hours before it was annulled. Duane made millions in the oil boom, built a huge house and married a whirlwind named Karla he has four sociopath children with. With the oil bust, Duane is twelve million in debt and for more reasons than that, depressed. He shuttles between his office, the Dairy Queen and city council meetings which he presides over as mayor and is in charge of planning a centennial celebration for the county, which debates whether to acknowledge the existence of Texasville, the county's first town that has been lost in the sands of time.
There was an opportunity for a compelling novel here, one that shows how every material item a teenager in the '50s might've yearned for--money, cars, drugs and a multitude of sexual partners, or marriage and kids, or all of the above--is available as an adult in the '80s, but happiness remains as elusive as ever. McMurtry isn't interested in writing a novel that can stand up to The Last Picture Show and is content to simply let the reader hang out with the characters as they exchange jokey banter or obsess over sex in order to stave off boredom. A little bit of this would've been fine at the service of a story, but the jokes are all that's here. Imagine 542 pages of this:
Karla had also encouraged the kids to scribble their plans on the calendar, on the theory that it might make it easier to find them in case of emergency. She had tried to start calendar training when Dickie and Nellie were teenagers, but it hadn't worked well.
Dickie liked the idea of a calendar, but his entries had often alarmed his mother. His very first entry read "Go fuck girls." Many of his plans seemed to involve criminal violence. Once he wrote "Go start a fire." Or he might write "Go beat the shit out of Pinky." Pinky had briefly been a friend. Karla was always having to tear pages off calendars and buy new ones for fear that Dickie's entries might be used against him in criminal proceedings.
Larry McMurtry's novels are given to a lot of banter and broad comedy--he enjoys a car stunt almost as much as Burt Reynolds did in the movies he was making in the late '70s--but Texasville felt like a first draft being passed off as a finished book. Every chapter is exactly the same: Duane is depressed, women enter stage right to say something crazy, he drives somewhere else, men enter stage left to say something ridiculous, Duane remains depressed. I gave up at the 50% mark. It's one of the most self-indulgent pieces of free-writing that I've ever had to read and bares no resemblance to the quality of The Last Picture Show. -
In 1966 a thirty-year-old writer named Larry McMurtry published The Last Picture Show.
It's a work of art, as far as I'm concerned, and one of the tightest, brightest and most adeptly edited novels ever handed to the world.
And Larry let it be. . . let it be brilliant, all by its little old self, let it be a famous novel turned into an even more famous movie, until he was finally convinced to return to Thalia, Texas, twenty-two years later.
The Last Picture Show was brought to life in film by a stunning young woman named Cybil Shepherd, and Texasville, the novel, is dedicated to her. (Both she and Jeff Bridges returned, two decades later, to reprise their original roles in the movie).
This sequel is a strange offering.
A book like Texasville could never be published in today's market. It's too meandering, too sprawling, too unedited. It is, in almost every way, a 180 degree offering, of the original.
I can see what happened (what I'm about to write is completely made-up, but still probably true): Larry M walked into his editor's office, muddy boots and all, two years out from the height of his success (the publication of Lonesome Dove in 1985) and plunked down 400 yellow legal pads filled with messy cursive. He said to his editor, “Here's the sequel. Have at her. Got to go.”
The editor probably brought it in to his boss and shrugged his shoulders and said, “Let's just print it.”
You can't convince me that this book was ever edited. If it were, it would be 100 pages lighter, and a lot tighter.
Nonetheless, I'm a Superfan of Larry's, so I finished the novel, and I enjoyed it, but I would never, in good conscience, advise someone unfamiliar with Mr. M's work, to start here. -
“It’s really swift, this life.”
TEXASVILLE takes place thirty years after its predecessor THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. The main characters from that earlier text are now in their late 40s, and the town of Thalia, Texas is about to celebrate its centennial. The main focus of this text is Duane Moore. Duane is a rich oilman, now facing bankruptcy. His good friend from his teenage years, Sonny Crawford (and a big part of TLPS) is relegated to a secondary role in this novel. Duane and Sonny, who were the closest of friends in TLPS are casual friends at this point, despite having lived in the same small town all of their lives. They have had no big rift, life just happened and caused the drifting apart. It really saddened me, and added to the melancholy that hangs over the entire novel.
The text is funny. The situations and dialogue are crackling with humor. This novel is so ridiculous, so over the top in the situations that it presents the reader, that in anyone else’s hands it would have been a disaster. In Larry McMurtry’s hands it is merely perplexing. I’m not sure what exactly I feel about it. It’s not love, but it certainly is not hate.
Some items worth mentioning:
At one point a character says of Thalia, “We’re all crazy and life in this town is what’s done it.” The book seems intent on proving that statement true in spades. It makes for some enjoyable scenarios.
The protagonist, Duane, has a dog named Shorty. He kinda ambles through the book and I just delighted in most every mention of him.
There is an unexpected and touchingly apt analogy that appears later in the book when Duane looks on his life like an old sheet being torn up for rags. It’s a moment that will give the reader pause.
Quotes:
• “Getting rich had been tiring, but nothing like as tiring as going broke.”
• “ ‘I was just laughing at nothing’, he said. ‘It’s either that or cry about everything, and I wasn’t in a crying mood.’ "
• “There doesn’t have to be anything so good about somebody to make you jealous when you’re in high school.”
• “A young man is even more unreliable than a drunk.”
• “Sundown brought with it a quality of peace that belied almost everything that happened during the day.”
• “Most people are forgotten.”
• “I guess I’d just like to lead a sensible life.”
• “Everybody causes somebody trouble.”
• “I think my wits live somewhere else now.”
• “That’s my limitation, it don’t have to be yours.”
• “Despite all the problems, past, present and to come, he felt deeply happy to be where he was.”
Notwithstanding the fact that I am not sure what the point of TEXASVILLE is (it feels a bit undefined), I did not mind the read at all. When I picked it up, it held my attention. Even with the outlandishness I felt the characters had dimension (McMurtry was very good at that) and I saw flashes of myself from time to time in the words of the text.
Sometimes with a book that is enough. -
It's rare to find a book that really, truly, makes you laugh out loud. Many are humorous, and you think "That's pretty funny...clever". But Texasville will get you kicked out of church for cracking up. I should add that I've read it three times, and it's not short. I just go back to it every once in awhile because nothing can pull me out of a funk like this book.
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Too many characters without enough differentiation, such that after 542 pages I still wasn’t sure (nor did I care) who Billie Ray and Bobby Sue even were. These people were hard to care about, the new rich in small town America reeling from a loss of fortune. I spent too much time in poor Duane’s brain, and his midlife crisis just wasn’t that interesting. He never does figure out all the women in his life, who run him ragged and manipulate his every waking hour. His kids and grandkids are out of control and his many mistresses unreliable. Duane himself is frustratingly stuck, and he never gets out of it. This reads like a long slog narrative, even the many chapters seemed arbitrary (who really plans 97 chapters, seemingly arbitrarily chosen?). McMurtry seems to have dialed this one in, almost as if he was fulfilling the terms of a contract for a certain number of words, thumbing his nose at his publisher (I have no knowledge of this, pure speculation).
Yes, I was disappointed, having loved the other two I’ve read by Larry (Horseman, pass by and The Last Picture Show). I’ll read Lonesome Dove someday, but I won’t be reading his entire lexicon, as I had once planned.
I’m glad this is over, but I don’t regret it. The humor was there and he’s a talented writer, just not at his best, and I did learn about small town life in Texas where the people congregate at the Dairy Queen and swap their empty headed drivel. I know this is the way it is in some places, I just didn’t need to read 500+ pages of such.
The plot plodded and the end just stopped abruptly as if the word quota was met. Moving on to something better. -
This was quite different in tone than the first book of this series,
The Last Picture Show. TLPS was a coming-of-age story about 3 teenagers trying to make sense of their worlds in a dusty town with no visible futures for them. There's a scurrying to find place and direction.
In Texasville, there's also a scurrying to find place and direction but from a middle-age position. The same three characters are again the center of the story but with the focus on one, Duanne. While TLPS is warm and touching, Texasville is humorous and farcical, with the action meandering all over the place. This is Duanne's coming-of-age story. He's trying to figure out where his life is going and what the point is.
It's very hard to get a feel for any of the characters, except perhaps Sonny (my favorite from TLPS). The characters are rather broadly portrayed without any glimpse into their true thoughts or psyches. Yet, this is an interesting bunch of characters and they grow on you......you just don't get to know them well.
All in all, an interesting continuation of The Last Picture Show, yet difficult to get a true grip on. I will continue this series with
Duane's Depressed (that's not looking too rosy for Duanne's future).
Larry McMurtry's writing is enjoyable and I trust that he'll close this series with the answers and resolutions for everyone. -
The guy who told me to read this said I was in for quite a laugh. That proved to be true, at first; most characters are immediately likeable, and the crude and shameless use of foul language is a masterpiece. However, as I plunged deeper into Texasville, I became increasingly sad. This is a book that displays human nature, and the sadness of it. No matter if you are a bank president, an oilman, a housewife or just a total nobody, everyone is just as miserable as you are. I'd like to think that the book’s central thesis is 'the grass isn’t greener on the other side'.
Beautiful but heartbreaking. That being said, I could not put this goddamn book down. -
McMurty is the best writer of the Ole West, and his contemporary works like terms of endearment and Cadillac Jack had spark and humor.
The last picture show was a fine Bildungsroman.
This book is awful.
There’s no plot and no characters or more accurately the characters are caricatures of something or another.
These folks aren’t human and their predicaments fall outside even the range of farce.
Naming the book Texasville makes me think the author was trying to make some point about Texas, and America, and the time but the characters are so poorly crafted that the whole novel just comes across as one very long poison pen note to a people and a state. -
Thirty years have passed since Duane Moore and Sonny Crawford graduated from high school in Thalia, Texas. The events of "The Last Picture Show" are a distant memory to everyone except Sonny, who continues to live in the past and occasionally gets lost there. Duane has married, gotten rich in the oil boom, raised a bunch of kids, built a 12,000-square-foot house outside of town, and is now $12 million in debt. The boom is over, and disappointment, the dominant mood of the characters in McMurtry's earlier book, is settling in again.
This time, however, disappointment and depression are mostly played for laughs. Sonny, the poignant central character in "Picture Show," has been sidelined in this story by Duane's domestic conflicts, his efforts to remain optimistic in the face of bankruptcy, and his affair with a married woman who is also carrying on with Duane's dope-dealing, womanizing son. McMurtry plays up the ironies and absurdities of life in Thalia where, as Duane observes, everyone seems to have gone crazy. The married and unmarried swap partners with the free-for-all abandon of romance as it's portrayed in country and western songs. And a kind of lunacy grips others, whose adventures push the narrative into wildly implausible episodes of farce, such as a mammoth egg-throwing fight on the closing night of Thalia's centennial celebration.
The melancholy mood that dominates "The Last Picture Show" makes only a brief appearance in this much longer novel, as Duane remembers a young employee killed in Vietnam. And readers, like me, who are fans of McMurtry's earlier work, will be disappointed that McMurtry treats the sorrows of his characters this time so lightly. At worst, the behavior of the town's residents gives Duane headaches and he comes to a realization that his "success" as an oilman and a respected citizen is not an achievement that gives him much self-esteem. The liberated 1980s women in his life (wife Karla, mistress Suzy, and old high school sweetheart Jacy) constantly remind him that he's less than adequate as a man. And at 48, he understands that he no longer has the energy he once had.
Meanwhile, there are pleasures to be had in the novel. In particular, I enjoyed the endless varieties of ironic and humorous disputes that characterize the verbal exchanges between the characters. Duane has a comic ruefulness that both protects him and reveals his vulnerability. And finally, that is the central theme of this novel as all the middle-aged characters (and there are a host of them) try in one way or another to come to terms with lives that haven't lived up to expectations. -
I gave this book a whole 268 pages. At some point I crossed a boundary where I thought, "Well, I'm not liking this but I'm too far in to stop now." And then later I crossed another boundary where I thought, "Am I really going to read another 250 pages of this?" At page 268, the start of chapter 47, I threw in the towel. The writing is fine, but the characters are not interesting or eliciting of any care. I know this is a sequel of sorts to *The Last Picture Show,* so perhaps if I'd read that I might've enjoyed it more. Instead, it's just boring, soulless characters talking to each other about nothing. It's like Seinfeld, but not funny. It's like My Dinner with Andre, but not interesting. It's like Dazed and Confused, but not nostalgic. It just *is*. And consequently I'm just *done*. Tell McMurtry I tried.
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Turgid, slow, and irritating. I didn't believe any of the characters, especially the women. They were all so arbitrarily mean and mercurical, nasty to each other without cause, uniformly depressed and sex-obsessed. None of the continuing characters seemed at all like the very interesting people in The Last Picture Show, the first-class novel to which this is a "sequel."
I loved Larry McMurtry's books up to and through Lonesome Dove (one of the best American novels), but post LD...it's downhill all the way. -
"’Duane, you keep harping on the wrong things,'
Suzie said. ‘Something doesn't have to last a hundred
years to be beautiful.’”
A great take within the story but also my criticism of the story. -
In the sequel to The Last Picture Show, Duane is depressed and no longer horny. He’s trying to be horny again but it’s completely futile. He only gets horny once or twice but you can tell his heart isn’t really in it. The town of Thalia is suffering from an economic depression so in a way the town is also metaphorically not horny. Larry McMurtry’s beautiful and sparse prose lights up ever page and gives readers a strong sense that no one is having a horny time in Thalia.
By the end of this moving, funny novel, you don’t really know if Duane will ever be horny again but you still hold out hope. And that’s what makes Larry McMurtry a master of fiction. -
I'm quitting this book around page 300 and counting it as "read". About 200 pages into the book I started wondering what the plot was, because nothing had really happened and up to the point that I stopped reading, no action appeared to be building. There are about a thousand characters and really nothing to distinguish one from another. It wasn't horrible to read, but with so many other books out there I can't devote any more time to this one.
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I'm an absolute sucker for Larry McMurtry. This book once again proves that this man is a genius at character development. After reading Last Picture Show, who could imagine wanting to read a whole book from Duane's perspective? Well, this works, and Duane's pretty darn likable once you are in his head. And his wife Karen, wow!
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Only if you really want to know what's become of Duane, Sonny and Jacy since Last Picture Show. I didn't care for it.
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Larry McMurtry has been one of my favourite authors since I first read Lonesome Dove 30 years ago. When I first joined Goodreads I immediately followed half a dozen people who had 5 starred Lonesome Dove, figuring that this was as good a sign as any that I’d have similar taste in books. I’ve read a fair proportion of McMurtry’s work and loved a lot of it but Texasville has remained my second favourite of his books and is the one I pull out when I need a lift. This sequel to The Last Picture Show catches up with Duane, Sonny and Jacy almost 30 years after the first book. Duane is 48 with a wife, family and $12m of debt hanging over his failing oil drilling company. The townsfolk of Thalia are collectively losing their minds as they plan a centennial celebration. McMurtry draws a colourful cast of townspeople, rich in detail and foibles. The book is funny and sad by turn, a collection of mid life crises and a commentary on the joys and tribulations that come from being part of a family.
This is one of those books that creates a fictional world I’d love to visit and characters I wish I knew. -
The spin off/follow up to The Last Picture Show we witness Dwayne and all the characters of Thalia, Texas as in soap opera like fashion interact and manage not to kill themselves or each other. I just gulped this one down as it was the perfect antidote to a a lot of crap going on in my life. It's nothing deep or thought provoking just the myriad of situations and people who get themselves involved with: sexual indiscretion, drugs, infidelity and all aspects of small town life where everyone goes to the same Dairy Queen and everyone knows everyone's business.
love it. -
If you've ever spent time in small Texas towns, you'll relish the sardonic humor of Larry McMurtry's Texasville, where the kids are unmanageable, those who got rich on oil are going bankrupt, breakfast is at the DQ and it's hard to keep track of who's screwing whom. I thought this book was hilarious but it's not a page-turner.
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Funny in a typical Texas kind of way, though the title has little to do with the story. The characters are off the charts as are the situations, especially the Centennial Celebration which in and of itself is a farce! Great stuff by a talented author.
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This is sequel to the great Last Picture Show. It was an ok read but not nearly up to first book. The whole dark tone of Last Picture Show is lost.
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Deep, moving, trashy, entertaining, funny funny funny. He’s the best. I laughed, I cried, I groaned at some of the slapstick.
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only the 2nd from mcmurtry for me...the other
The Desert Rose: A Novel i happened to open before heading out for a yearly vacation so the reading suffered...and...seems like i read (an)other story(ies) although i no longer have a copy if i did...possibly
Lonesome Dove...and this matters to whom? to me...it matters...to me, for whom i write here...if you happen to benefit all is well and all manner of things are well.
texasville, 1987, and glancing at a few reviews, this sounds like something i ought to pick up and read...that time of year, need a few laughs, that or go throw snow off the roof. at least the neighbor lady won't be scowling at me from her living room window, one blue-veined & bony fist raised & shaking, whilst her other bony hand parts the drapes, bent over in her cotton night-gown doing the sister-act, (concerned about my liver) the ole grey-head bobbin' and weavin'... ...& i'm certain, her slipper-clad foot scratching at the shag rug she's standing on...meh...snow melts. still livin' the good life.
this one is dedicated: for cybill shepherd
must mean the movie star.
title, texasville
comes from a now-gone place on the flat map of texas where two browns, unrelated, speculated. texasville was the hardtop county seat up till 1906, when thalia took over...nothing left of texasville...no one is sure where it was...a tornado scattering the broke down bldg that once served as post office/saloon
story begins:
duane was in the hot tub, shooting at his new doghouse with a .44 magnum. the two-story log doghouse was supposedly a replica of a frontier fort. he and karla had bought it at a home show in fort worth on a day when they were bored. it would have housed several great danes comfortably, but so far had housed nothing. shorty, the only dog duane could put up with, never went near it.
okee-dokee, then...onward and upward.
time place scene settings
*the year is 1986...duane's the class of '54...this is their "30th" reunion...although in reality it is their 32nd reunion.
* 7 a.m. almost 90 degrees, duane moore's place, 5 miles from thalia, texas
*duane's oil drilling business office
*thalia dairy queen
*duane's truck
*sonny crawford's small video arcade
*sonny crawford's convenience store, kwik-sack
*wichita falls country club
*aunt jimmie's lounge, just over the hardtop county line
*bad driver's school, wichita falls...minerva attends
*an expensive hotel in ft. worth...janine/duane
*sonny crawford owns a laundrymat, the kwik-sack, the video parlor, 4 or 5 bldgs, & a recently installed carwash
*the dripping rib...b-b-q place where sonny's mind slipped...into the past...a nice scene
*danny deck's house...where jacy stays
*cozuma...moore vacation...past
*lake kickapoo
*hardtop county centennial committee meeting
*howlers, a steak house restaurant, where patrons are encouraged to howl like canines
*little 6-bed hospital, thalia
*parking lot of hospital
*an ambulance
*janine's house...previously her parents
*the e.r. of the hospital...waiting room
*texasville...previously the county seat, till 1906...gone now
*bowie...bille anne & dickie go there, honeymoon, 50 miles away
*rising star...to the north of thalia
*dallas...trip there to see neurologist/sonny
*the burnt-out shell of the old picture show
*odessa...where duane goes to meet a rich man
*olney...where duane parks his truck...meets jacy
*oilpatch motel...where jacy stays while duane goes to odessa
*a grocery store in olney
*jacy's mercedes
*karla's supernove & bobby lee's little datsun pickup
the cast of characters in order of appearance, if only by name
*duane moore, made money, lost money, in debt, married w/four kids, has an oil drilling business but business is bust, has a girlfriend, a great dog, will have his 30th-year high school reunion...he is 46 on page 87...48 on page 44...a member of the centennial committee...he was in korea...set to play adam to jacy's eve in the pageant
*karla moore, 46-yr-old, his wife
*shorty, duane's queensland blue heeler...a real hoot, this dog...i want one...barks at the cb static on the radio...or watches it, expecting things
*julie moore, twin, 11-yr-old
*jack moore, twin brother of julie, 11-yr-old
*nellie, 19-yr-old, on her 3rd husband
*little mike, her 2-yr-old
*barbette, the two-month-old baby of nellie
*dickie moore, 21-yr-old son
*doctor deckert, young general practioner
*sonny crawford...had been married to jacy farrow...for an hour...serves on the city council...his mind slips...he owns property...drives a '72 plymouth...he is mayor of thalia...set to play lincoln in the centennial pageant
*ruth popper, duane's secretary for 15 years, she is 72 yrs old, & she left sonny nearly 20 years ago, lives in a trailer home
*janine wells, duane's girlfriend, was elected county tax collector, her parents killed in a car wreck...married briefly to joe bob blanton, a local minister's son
*minerva hooks, duane's maid of 10 years, 83-yr-old...married to a hal
*jimbo jackson...dead oilman
*a truckful of his own roughnecks, who ran him over
*a young mex boyfriend, temp, of nellie's
*a little old woman on the plane...jack drops ice down her dress
*the stewardess
*bobby lee...duane's #1 tool pusher, has worked for duane 20 years, is married...had a 1-night stand w/karla, is 5-yrs younger than duane...to be santa anna in the pageant
*billie anne, dickie moore's girlfriend, works at the savings & loan, has an apt lakeside city...spent her 1st 2 marriages in benson, arizona...she is also nellie's girlfriend
*a dead midland oilman
*minerva's father, fortune in oil boom/lost it
*several boyfriends or minerva, met at the bad driver's school
*ruth popper's husband, who tried to kill her, 27 years prior, he'd been coach popper, and ruth & sonny crawford had a thing...coach shot three times, hit sonny's elbow, killed another, 3rd a stray shot...he died from cancer awaiting trial
*joe coombs, nellie's boyfriend, works at a well service company in jacksboro, lives in a trailer in thalia...by p99...engaged to nellie
*lester marlow, president of local bank and recently indicted on 73 counts...he and his wife jenny have 2 daughters, missy & sissy, teens
*eddie belt
*junior nolan, ranch cowboy, made some money...etc...hired a ranch hand
*mitch mott
*janine wells's girlfriends at the dairy queen
*suzie nolan and kids...junior's family...suzie is having a thing w/dickie, duane's son
*luthie sawyer, owns small drilling company
*the thalia thistles...football team
*ennis lyons...shot dead by coach popper 27 years earlier
*gene farrow, an oilman who found ennis
*his wife, lois...both died in a plane crash
(suzie, duane, and sonny were in the same high school class)
*jacy farrow, only child of gene & lois...a movie star in italy...inherited the family oil business that still pumps some oil...the family house, although she don't live in it...she lives in italy and in a house 20 miles outside town in the country, her friend danny deck owns it...plays "jungla" in italian movies, a kind of jane to tarzan...also jacy d'olonne...married name i take it
*danny deck, owns it
*she had a child, benny, who was electrocuted on a set
*richie hill, the carpenter that karla had an affair with...after reading about "open marriages" in cosmo magazine...one of those 30-round magazines...
*roughnecks & truck drivers...who stop at the kwik-sack...listen to dr. ruth, turned up on the radio, talking about the benefits of anal intercourse and avoiding nasty drips when kissing
*charlene duggs & lavelle bates...at the d-q...w/janine, fellow courthouse employees
*a psychologist in wichita falls...that janine visited
*therapy in fort worth...that sonny did
*karla, too...therapy...twice
*charlene...had been married 3 times...all dead
*the d-q cook, female, louise
*buster lickle, a city council member, owner of the dairy queen, on centennial committee
*an old boyfriend of billie anne who sent flowers, prompting dickie to buy a machine gun
*jacy's sorority sisters from s.m.u.
*those crooks in oklahoma
*jenny marlow, wife of lester marlow, bank president...great at softball, pitches, on centennial committee...having a thing w/dickie, duane's oldest son, & centennial pageant director
*two years ago...promoters...investors
*the cat, leon, of the moore family
*the drive-in teller...&....lester's secretary at the bank
*duane's drilling crews...one headed up by bobby lee, the other by eddie belt...4 roughnecks in each crew
*turkey clay, a 60-yr-old roughneck, duane's employee
*a spindly lad of about 19...one of the roughnecks
*a group of indians from new mexico
*wanda hawkins, wife of the town's lone insurance agent
*randy royt, helicopter pilot...hired by karla to buzz jacy's place...which is danny's home in the valley called "the sorrows"
*an articulate young architect, arthur...for the moore home
*a little playmate
*120,000 washed into the sea...india
*aunt jimmie...of the bar/roadhouse
*the waitress gone to the beauty parlor help yourself
*p.l jolly, the local hwy patrolman, a mournful widower
*a n-word in a coma in jail
*the doorman at the cozuma hotel
*old man balt...almost 100 yrs old, on centennial committee
*beulah balt, only surviving child of the old man, late 70s
*a blacksmith...from the past
*local churchmen
*reverend g.g. rawley...on centennial committee, head of the byelo-baptists
*ralph rolfe, local rancher...centennial committee
*an outside person to direct the pageant of the centennial...has a 3-man crew...sally balducci
*joe brown, ed brown, speculators, started "texasville"
*comanches, settlers, homesteaders...shady ladies...cowboys & drummers...all associated w/texasville
*belle...one of the shady ladies, married ed...
*3 nephews who fought over the estate of ed/belle
*pipeline crew
*editor...past
*hoyce howell, editor, thalia times
*toots burns, sheriff, hardtop county
*buddy, the ambulance driver
*may, the night nurse
*3 roughnecks and a runaway girl...e.r. of hospital
*sam and billy, both dead 30 years...sam the lion
*billie anne's mother, mention...nervous breakdown
*6th grader from nocona
*jerri, eddie belt's wife
*an elderly couple
*two large teenaged boys...watching the twins till pickup
*john cecil, token gay man...has one of thalia's two groceries
*jacy's daughters...2 of them
*few elderly patrons...plane w/sally balducci
*neurologist...that sonny sees in dallas
*seven coyotes...& shorty...
*old woman who owned the picture show
*"luke"...another name for sonny
*genevieve morgan...works the morning shift at sonny's store
*her husband, who drowned
*carolyn, bobby lee's wife, works as a dispatcher for a trucking company in wichita falls
*2 carpenters in dallas
*c.l sime, a legendary wildcatter
*reporters
*scouts...hired to track c.l. sime
*a decrepit and depressed-looking waitress
*a plump young couple
*briscoe, a roadrunner that hangs out around thalia...duane's office, a bird that plays tennis, of sorts
*abilene, an old driller in charge of duane's 4th rig, fired, sent packing, had been in love w/jacy's mother, yay ago
*a young girl abilene goes to the d-q with
*a human fly from megargel...for the centennial pageant
*pinky, a name on a calendar
*casey...karla's mother's long-suffering boyfriend
*buddy, driller from duncan oklahoma
*turkey clay, a tall brawling roughneck
*jeanette burr, duane's mother-in-law
*four of g.g.'s deacons
*a fat kid...1st baseman...2nd...opposing manager...mothers...jack's manager...umpire
*the governor, unnamed, alas...mark white in '86
*the wind
*numerous tumbleweeds
*tiny tv crew
*minister yamani, saudi aradia...the persian glut
*cowboys, cowgirls
*karla's appaloosa, willie nelson
*willie nelson...possibly...he didn't stay, alas
*mossy white
*turkey clay (earlier? too?) & squirrel, a roustabout
*joe bob clanton, rancher's son...1st love of janine, big into pedophilia, woo woo
*dobbs...the pony old man dalt rode during the pageant
*a child carrying a sno-cone
*a band
*charlie eugene sears, a man duane knew a short time, died in viet nam
*ed & josie stauffer and 2 little girls...where sonny parks his car
*shiny miller
*bud ward...owns the local filling station
*old lady collins...bait shop at the lake
*daughter cindy w/3 young ones
*nelda, eddie's wife
*monroe, eddie's bird dog, pointer
*a crop duster
*car dealer in fort worth
*the human fly, earlier...is jerry cooper
*guy driving the egg truck
update
yeah...and so i'm reading another story same time i'm reading this one...
An Adultery...both stories a treatment of adultery among other things...this one more of a may as well have sex w/him/her as all hope is lost...even though i'm married w/children...& the other goes along w/that scenario...whereas the other, there's the sense--so far--that the cheated/cuckolded party isn't made aware that there's the need to begin wearing tee-shirts w/a saying printed on them to express some flat-texas wisdom...nuke the unborn gay whales...or something.
the other...hoot...is that in both stories, a woman character is provided opportunity to make animal sounds. heh! in this one, t'would appear there's an actual texas place where the patrons all howl...called howlers...someone starts howling, moon or no moon, and all there join in...trophies are awarded...best howler.
in the other, farol colorado, formerly farol sprat, howls like an ape...there's the italicized words signifying such. what are the odds? this is obviously evidence of misogyny...although here in texas...the men do howl, as well.
update, finished, 12 feb 13, tuesday evening, 9:45 p.m. e.s.t.
yeah, so i finished this one...was reading two of them...don't see how anyone can read two at the same time, or want to read two. so...this one is read. and to go along w/the paragraphs above to do w/
An Adultery...the other i was reading and that i can now finish...there's a scene in this one, during the centennial, where duane gets to judge the artwork...
...not only do the residents of texasville sleep w/their neighbor's wives...sharing time w/their eldest son...many of them also paint...a subject in the other story, painting, high-brow stuff...and...not only do they paint in this one but their neighbors are somehow unaware that they do...paint...though everyone knows who is sleeping w/whom...they paint well...a bit hard to take. the ole willing suspension of disbelief took a kick in the seat of the pants.
as it did when 60,000 eggs were thrown at the closure of the centennial. yeah. right. that would have happened. (the number, not the event) 3-stars is being generous. there's a number of other incidents in this one that the reader is asked to believe...and...i dunno...maybe the satirical content is such that belief should be possible...but the story is real-enough that the satire might be lost on me. if it is satire. or...satire of one degree that launches into the outer realms of disbelief. meh.
maybe this is the message...if there is one, duane's thoughts: but he knew almost everyone in thalia--indeed, knew more than he wanted to know about most of them--and it was clear from what he knew that the old model had been shattered. the arrival of money had cracked the model; its departure shattered it. irrationality now flowered as prolifically as broom weeds in a wet year.
or...as jacy says later, what we can't expect anymore is the point...we can't expect most of the things we once could have had, if we'd just been smarter, or had more guts.
and the ole geographic cure don't work, neither...as jacy left for years...you can take the girl out of texas, but you can't take texas out of the girl...seems like...as her behavior is at times just as irrational as the residents of texasville...if only a bit less so.
the other thingie i thought about trying to bring this one to a conclusion--the reader could have stopped halfway and have "gotten it"...but i persevered...whoopee...and i meant to look at some more reviews to see if anyone had used the dreaded dysfunctional word to describe the encounters herein.
i suspect not...could be wrong, but the word usually is used in some of the first reviews listed, if it is used at all...saw a number that said this wasn't his best...readers of mcmurtry...but yeah, why isn't that word used on this one? i meant to look...did i just say that?...and perhaps i'll do a look-see after i hit save...but if the word should be applied anywhere, it should be applied here. (saw one, short & brief)
oh well...still, an interesting read--i wanted to see what would happen w/sonny--duane wasn't completely unsympathetic, either...none of them were, really...so...
a final note
time-passages...this time applies to sonny...whose mind is slipping...and...at one point, he's in the balcony, imagining a movie playing out on the screen that is no more...a nice touch, it's personal, for me...and too, later, an event like this happens. none of these time-passages are long in the telling-scheme of things...but it is interesting...to me...it matters...to me. -
There was a point, maybe 70% into Texasville, where everything came together for me. The themes all slid neatly into place, and I found myself thinking, "Is this rambling and overlong novel actually a great work of art?"
The thing is, that for all the novel does offer (some nice scenes, fun dialogue, and a few memorable characters), it gives far more bad stuff. Many of the female characters are completely interchangeable, I'm not fully convinced that anyone had much in the way of a character arc, and those few characters that do return from The Last Picture Show rarely feel like natural outgrowths of that novel. Jacy is perhaps the exception; it seem that McMurtry has a lot of fun writing her. If The Last Picture Show was a novel about trying to see the wider world outside your small hometown, then Texasville is a novel about how the rise of globalism has caused that wider world to become a threat to the small hometown. As McMurtry writes towards the end of the novel:
But the new figure had no bright side for those throughout the oil patch who lived off small oil. Duane imagined the tens of thousands of pumps across the vast plain, from the Permian Basin east to the swamps of Louisiana, that worked the little three-and-four-barrel-a-day stripper wells. He had seen the pumps working all his life, like patient, domesticated insects, bringing up their three or four barrels everyday: not enough to make anyone rich, but enough to give the old folks a little edge on their social security, or to keep the kids in school. As long as they kept pumping, pumpers would be hired to pump them, well-service crews to clean out the wells, truckers to haul the oil and equipment, welders to fix what broke down.
Now much of that life would stop. The pumps would cease to peck at the stained plains. Little businesses would fold, and little lives.
In the end, though, Texasville is really just a middling novel. The moments of brilliance show up brightly against a lot of average stuff, but they're still there, and appreciated. Apparently there are three more sequels to this, and I'm not opposed to reading them. But this one doesn't live up to its predecessor. -
Along with
The Handmaid's Tale by
Margaret Atwood,
Larry McMurtry's
The Last Picture Show is one of the best books I've read all year. Similar to Handmaid, Picture Show suffers from a disappointing sequel in
Texasville. Initially I gave this book 3 stars, but now that a few weeks have gone by and I got over my initial disappointment, I have to revise it and give it 2 stars. My fondness for Picture Show made me want to give it a better rating, but it really doesn't deserve it.
Texasville would not have been a bad book if it had not been presented as a sequel to Picture Show. The town of Thalia and its residents are portrayed to be so silly and ridiculous, that it would make a fine comedy. The problem is that this book is presented with the context of Picture Show, a book that made good use of its comic relief but didn't overshadow the themes of loss, melancholy and loneliness, as presented through the POV of Sonny Crawford. In half the pages it took Texasville to wander aimlessly, Picture Show was able to beautifully develop the characters of Sonny, Duane, Jacy, Mrs. Farrow and Ruth Popper.
This book takes everything that was good from Picture Show and throws it out the window. At 544 pages, it takes it twice the number of pages as Picture Show to go in circles, talk a lot but say nothing. Instead of Sonny, the story is now told through Duane's POV. He is now middle aged and has a large family composed of unsympathetic degenerates. Duane's whole schtick in this book is that he became rich but is now quickly approaching bankruptcy and is therefore now depressed. His depression has mainly manifested itself in his inability to appreciate his family of degenerates and his ambivalence towards his wife. The rest of the characters we know and love barely show up and have absolutely no character development. Characters come in and out of scenes like a poorly written comedic stage play. Plot threads are introduced and unceremoniously forgotten.
Truly a disappointment. I don't think I'll be reading any more in this series. Next time I'll be reading Mr. Murtry will be in
Lonesome Dove, but I am done with Thalia. As done as Mr. Murtry ought to have been with it after Picture Show. -
Texasville, a sequel to The Last Picture Show, written roughly 20 years later (and taking place closer to 30 years later), is written by a far more mature and confident McMurtry. I’m not sure if it’s controversial to say, but I like Texasville a lot more. I mentioned the somewhat vague characterization in LPS, but there’s no such problem here; despite the large cast assembled to celebrate Thalia’s centennial, it’s always easy to keep them all straight. It’s laugh out loud funny, full of great dialogue and slapstick, an equal balance of madcap absurdity and character-based moments. Duane, the main character, is the often-obtuse would-be voice of reason amidst the chaos, and yet he’s the butt of many of the jokes, especially when his wife Karla and high school sweetheart Jacy gang up on him. Among other things, the book is a reflection on middle age as the Last Picture Show was a meditation on youth; Texasville finds its characters no more certain about life than they were as teenagers, but now their bones ache more while they try to figure it out. A fun, funny book, it didn’t have the strongest ending, but it’s still in the top half of the McMurtry novels I’ve read so far.
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Contrary to the opinion of the majority, I found Texasville even betten than the first book in the series. McMurtry can write characters that are almost living and breathing, and their problems are so engaging that they become your own for a short time. I enjoyed the lighter tone compared to the first book, and the humor was hilarious at times. A great example of a dialogue-heavy, situational humor-packed little novel that relies heavily on the atmosphere of the region it is set in. Also, at times, a nice insight into marriage and relationships as such.
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Texasville is the raunchy sequel to The Last Picture Show. The characters return as adults who have made and lost fortunes in Thalia short lived oil boom.
