Lonesome Dove perfectly balances its tone. It is, at times, a realistic western with a mythical overlay. In other moments, though, it is pure myth, proudly brimming with archetypal tropes. McMurtry’s west is filled with legends of almost supernatural ability; it is also populated by half-wits and losers and men of average ability. This is a big canvas; still, it is never so big that two characters can’t run into each other at the appropriate time. The world of Lonesome Dove can be violent and grim and dark. It can be nostalgic. It can be funny and sly. It can be farcical. It can be plaintive and mournful. There is a hint or two of magical realism. As with many of the great epics, it refuses to be pegged as one thing; instead, it is all these things, like the world is all these things. Since the rest of the book is the trek from Texas to Montana, we need to add to this picture a few other important characters: There are a lot of books I would never have read if it wasn't for my Goodreads friends, but the two most memorable and that have made it to my favorites list are: That was the day the Indians got away with their horses, which made Captain Call about as mad as Pea had ever seen him. It meant they had to walk down the Brazos for nearly two hundred miles, worrying constantly about what would happen if the Comanches discovered they were afoot. Pea Eye hadn’t noticed he was half deaf until they had walked most of the way out.

Almost everyone who participated felt that it was about the finest experience of their lives.'' Mr. McMurtry, who is 49 years old, once observed that Texans have retained something of the frontier spirit even though the frontier is lost, and If you think so much, why didn’t you think of that rain?” Call asked. Ever since, he had been throwing the turd-floater up to Augustus. Give Call a grievance, however silly, and he would save it like money. Call soon has started hiring men and stealing Mexican cattle for the drive. Gus says that Call is going to get them all killed just to have another adventure in a wild frontier, but he goes along to see his old sweetheart Clara who is living in Nebraska. Jake has taken up with Lorena and decides to travel along with the herd, much to Gus’s amusement and Call’s aggravation. The large cast of characters carry their hopes, fears and limitations with them out onto the vast plains of the American Midwest, and the drive turns out to be dangerous in ways they couldn’t even imagine. was based), his latest book was something of a departure. But this time he was intrigued by the myths themselves, by how they endured so powerfully even though the trail-drive era lasted 20 years. The scenes that best put the matter to rest are the most traditionally Western ones - the gunfights, stampedes, hangings and horse-stealings. Every one of these is thrilling and almost perfectly realized. In describing violence, Mr. McMurtry does notShe bit a hunk out of him, that’s why,” Pea said. “I don’t know why the Captain wants to keep her.” In tone, Lonesome Dove is elegiacal. It is set in the late 1870s, sometime after the death of Custer, but before the final slaughter of Wounded Knee. The west is still wild, but the writing is on the wall. The Indian tribes will soon be “pacified.” The open ranges will soon be platted and bound by wire fences. Civilization will out. An end of an era is coming. Larry McMurtry is an American novelist that has won Academy awards and Pulitzer prizes for his books and films. Born in 1936 in Archer City, Texas, Larry grew up on a ranch. He didn’t have access to as many books as he would have liked. But his family members loved to tell stories and that often left Larry just as satisfied. I loved Pea Eye, the Irishmen, the pigs, the horses, Bolivar, Po, Clara, July, Joe, Wilbarger and I'm sure I have left some out. As you know this is the enormous story of a big old cattle drive from Texas to Montana. That’s kind of it. Bits get added on here and there but the main idea is to get these thousands of cows across 3000 miles of dangerous territory, through sandstorms, blizzards, bandits, droughts, through Indian nations, across rivers, via grizzly bears and hardly a single town in sight the whole way.

I loved so many characters in this book and I feel like I have been on that journey with them. I kept wishing they would have stayed in Texas or at least stopped in Nebraska after so much they went through. And my emotions are still raw as I cry. Because people die and when you love characters you don't want that but that is life for real, life in books and life in movies and tv. The pair decides to follow through with this plan after some thought, bringing a number of curious characters along with them. None of them know just how drastically their lives will change along the way. of my sense of having heard my uncles talk about the extraordinary days when the range was open,'' he said by phone from Washington. ''In my boyhood I could talk to men who touched this experience and knew it, even This text is funny (hysterically so at times) heartbreaking, exciting, hold your breath tense…I could go on and on. I won’t. It took me forty years to read “Lonesome Dove”. Do not make that mistake.A television miniseries adaptation produced by Motown Productions was broadcast on CBS in 1989, starring Robert Duvall as Augustus McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow F. Call. The series was a commercial and critical success. [10] [11] [12] [13] Historical references [ edit ] If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.” I've always had a soft spot for western movies. In high school, I roped my friends into watching the ones starring this guy: I didn’t know this until I was looking up some stuff on the net for this review, but Lonesome Dove was virtually snubbed at the Emmy Awards. War & Remembrance beat it out for best mini-series. It only managed to take best director and a few other technical prizes. Worse yet, none of the actors nominated won. It’s a good thing I never got into any bar wagers about this, or I would have bet my house that Robert Duvall won best actor for a mini-series , and when I lost that, I would have bet my car that it had to be Tommy Lee Jones. Nope. Anjelica Huston and Diane Lane and Danny Glover all lost, too.

Overwhelmingly, my Goodreads friends recommended I read this book- and one wonderful friend gave me a special nudge to get started on it sooner, rather than later- and I really, really appreciated that!! Lonesome Dove is a 1985 Western novel by American writer Larry McMurtry. It is the first published book of the Lonesome Dove series and the third installment in the series chronologically. However, after reading a nonfictional book about Dodge City, I thought I might finally be ready to try a fictional western.

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Why, I had a job waiting tables once,” Augustus said, pretending he had meant to serve Call the beans. “On a riverboat. I wasn’t no older than Newt when I had that job. The cook even wore a white hat.” What most lingers in the memory though, are the people and their stories, the every day dramas and dreams of the Hat Creek outfit. He found that he could not easily forget a word Clara said... her words stinging in his heart and head," chapter 102. Oh , you don’t have to thank me for a washrag,” Clara said. “I’m not much of a nurse. It’s one of my failings. I’m too impatient. I’ll give a person a week or two, then if they don’t improve I’d just about as soon they’d die.” need to raise the stakes with labored prose - they are already high. When a young boy rides into a nest of poisonous snakes in a river and dies of the bites, or when McCrae single-handedly fights off a band of Indians on an open plain

Then Augustus saw the boy walking up from the lots, so tired he was barely moving. Pea Eye was half drunk by the time Newt finally made the wagons. I learned some new vocabulary, such as remuda, chaparral, bullbat, beeves (plural for beef - who knew?), llano, rowels and quirt! You're never too old to learn! Jake Spoon, another former Ranger, arrives in Lonesome Dove after an absence of more than 10 years, during which he has traveled widely across the United States. He reveals that he is on the run, having accidentally shot a dentist in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The dentist's brother happened to be the town's sheriff, July Johnson.

Dish, hopelessly in love with and devoted to Lorena, lost all sense of what life was about. He even lost the sense that he was a cowboy, the strongest sense he had to work with. He was just a fellow with a glass in his hand, who life had suddenly turned to mud. (p. 98)