Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry has developed a rather mixed literary reputation over the years. On the one hand, he has written a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, and Lonesome Dove. The latter was even awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize. These books were also commercially successful, and each was adapted for film or television. McMurtry also shared an Oscar for co-writing the Brokeback Mountain screenplay adapted from Annie Proulx's short story.

Yet on the other hand, both times that I have picked up a McMurtry novel I have received raised eyebrows and skeptical queries from those accustomed to my "high brow" literary tastes. Perhaps this is because McMurtry is so prolific he defies the model of a serious author (and among his many books, there are plenty of reputed duds). Perhaps it is because his best novels were successful commercially. Maybe it is a result of his penchant for writing lesser sequels of his best novels (three sequels to Lonesome Dove, three to The Last Picture Show, one to Terms of Endearment). And it might be because his most famous book is a western, a genre which receives (and perhaps deserves) little respect.

While Lonesome Dove is undoubtedly a western, it surely stands at the pinnacle of the genre. A mammoth book, weighing it at over 800 pages, it tells the story of old cowboys Augustus "Gus" McRae and Woodrow Call. The book opens with the former Texas Rangers running a stable and occasional cattle-selling business on the Texas-Mexico border, in a small town called Lonesome Dove. They make quite the odd couple, with Gus a loquacious rambler content to pass his days on the porch with some conversation and whiskey, and Captain Call (as he is universally dubbed) the quiet workaholic who pauses reluctantly for meals and sleep:

The funny thing about Woodrow Call was how hard he was to keep in scale. He wasn't a big man--in fact, was barely middle-sized--but when you walked up and looked him in the eye it didn't seem that way. Augustus was four inches taller than his partner, and Pea Eye three inches taller yet, but there was no way you could have convinced Pea Eye that Captain Call was the short man. Call had him buffaloed, and in that respect Pea had plenty of company. If a man meant to hold his own with Call it was necessary to keep in mind that Call wasn't as big as he seemed. Augustus was the one man in south Texas who could usually keep him in scale, and he built on his advantage whenever he could. He started many a day by pitching Call a hot biscuit and remarking point-blank, "You know, Call, you ain't really no giant."

The relative calm of Lonesome Dove is interrupted by the arrival of Jake Spoon, a cowboy that rangered with Gus and Call back in the day but has since parted company. A known ladies' man, Spoon recently departed Arkansas under a cloud after the accidental shooting of a sheriff's brother. Spoon's arrival marks two significant developments: he quickly co-opts Lorena, the town prostitute, who gives up her trade for his attentions; and an off-hand comment about the potential profits of a cattle drive to frontier Montana quickly burrows into Call's mind. Call decides to lead the drive from Texas to Montana, and his word is practically law amongst his crew:

It was that they had roved too long, August concluded, when his mind turned to such matters. They were people of the horse, not of the town; in that they were more like the Comanches than Call would ever have admitted. They had been in Lonesome Dove nearly ten years, and yet what little property they had acquired was so worthless that neither of them would have felt bad about just saddling up and riding off from it.

Indeed, it seemed to August that was what both of them had always expected would happen. They were not of the settled fraternity, he and Call. From time to time they talked of going west of the Pecos, perhaps rangering out out there; but so far only the rare settler had cared to challenge the Apache, so there was no need for Rangers.

August had not expected that Call would be satisifed just to rustle Mexican cattle forever, but neither had he expected him to suddenly decide to strike out for Montana. Yet it was obvious the idea had taken hold of the man.

The long journey to the North occupies the bulk of the novel. Some might criticize McMurtry for co-opting many of the cliches of the western (both literary and cinematic), but this misses the point. For McMurtry takes these cliches, the stoic cowboy, the redeemed prostitute, the bandit Indian, and elevates them to another level; he perfects them. Particularly notable are the roles he carves for the novel's women, who normally serve as little more than decoration in the average western. Lorena suffers some of the worst the world has to offer, but survives with a strength most of the novel's male characters could not muster. The object of Gus' unrequited ambitions, Clara, proves to be more than a match for him when the novel finally reaches her Nebraska doorstep, and it is quickly apparent why Gus could not let go of his feelings even after more than a decade has past.

This is not difficult reading. The prose is simple, the plot straightforward if not always predictable. It is not a romantic novel; McMurtry does not gloss over or glorify the roughness of life in that time and place. All of the characters suffer, many of them die, and death often comes in the most sudden and arbitrary of fashions. By the novel's end, I was sufficiently invested in the characters that I was even tempted to read the three sequels/prequels that McMurtry wrote a decade later, just to postpone the farewell.