The literature and the reality of the American West collide in these 12 brilliant and wide-ranging essays, originally published in the New York Review of Books.
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Part western, part satire of the English class system contrasted with rugged frontier society, the first volume of this proposed tetralogy gets off to a shaky start as McMurtry introduces the Continue reading »
"I'll see him in anything, " said Bob Dylan of Gregory Peck. After listening to McMurtry's latest, many listeners will say the same about hearing any audiobook read by screen and Continue reading »
This is the second volume in McMurtry's four-book series the Berrybender Narratives, following last year's Sin Killer. Set in 1833 along the banks of the Continue reading »
HFans of Molina's reading of Sin Killer, the first volume in McMurtry's over-the-top Berrybender Narratives, will be pleased to find that he has lent his Continue reading »
In this third volume of McMurtry's Berrybender Narratives, Lord Berrybender and his obnoxious, sniveling brood are, surprisingly, still alive on the dangerous Great Plains of Wyoming and Continue reading »
Audio reviews reflect PW
's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version.
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This is the fourth and final volume in McMurtry's Berrybender Narratives (following By Sorrow's River
), a frontier epic of lusty and bloody proportions, Continue reading »
In his 28th novel, Pulitzer-winner McMurtry again displays his knack for compelling characters and plots, this time as two women of a certain age take a road trip through Texas. Sixty-year-old Continue reading »
In this somewhat scattered narrative, 60-year-old Maggie Clary wonders if she will ever truly feel like herself again, now that she's had a hysterectomy. True, she still runs a successful Continue reading »
The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America
Larry McMurtry
As is McMurtry's wont in works of nonfiction (e.g., Crazy Horse
), this dual bio reads more like an extended elegy than biography. Buffalo Bill Cody and Continue reading »
Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846?1890
Larry McMurtry
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist McMurtry (Lonesome Dove
) recounts six Western frontier massacres in this meandering mixture of memoir, literary criticism, Continue reading »
McMurtry's latest skips through western lore with a wry smile. Marie Antoinette "Nellie" Courtright and her brother, Jackson, bereft of family after their Virginia clan dies off one by Continue reading »
With less than happy results, McMurtry picks up the story of Duane Moore (Duane's Depressed
) two years after he left him alone in a remote Texas cabin, Continue reading »
McMurtry ends the west Texas saga of Duane Moore, begun in 1966 with The Last Picture Show
, with a top-shelf blend of wit and insight, sharply defined Continue reading »
In this, the second of three planned memoirs, McMurtry takes a laconic look back over a life in letters that now includes some 40 books and an equal number of screenplays. Best known for the Continue reading »
Here old age and death catch up with some beloved McMurtry characters familiar to readers since Terms of Endearment . Willful, tart-tongued Aurora Greenway and her outspoken maid and confidante, Rose Continue reading »
Those who have been waiting, through several comparatively disappointing novels, for an appropriate sequel to the memorable and Pulitzer-winning Lonesome Dove can take heart. Streets of Laredo Continue reading »
Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, the heroes of Lonesome Dove, return in a rousing if slightly contrived yarn set decades before the events of that Pulitzer Prize-winning novel--and earlier still than the Continue reading »
Prolific novelist and screenwriter McMurtry shares his history with the movies via breezy anecdotes and insightful reflections on a writer's fluctuating currency in Hollywood. McMurtry muses on the Continue reading »
Pulitzer Prize winner McMurtry and screenwriter Ossana recreate the life of a charming St. Louis country boy who becomes a notorious bank robber during the Depression. Continue reading »
This sequel to The Desert Rose finds McMurtry's protagonist, a Vegas showgirl, at middle age and mourning the death of her daughter. Continue reading »
Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond
Larry McMurtry
After reading an essay by Walter Benjamin in a Dairy Queen during his hometown's centennial celebration, McMurtry set out to ponder how Benjamin's conclusions about the death of the oral tradition Continue reading »
Putting to rest the notion that with Duane's Depressed he had written his last novel, Pulitzer Prize-winner McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) launches a new series with this whimsical adventure set between Continue reading »
At 51, fat, lonely and rich Danny Deck (from All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers ) is contacted by his 22-year-old daughter, whom he last saw on the night of her birth. PW was disappointed with Continue reading »
In this arresting, funny-sad sequel to The Last Picture Show, McMurtry's small Texas town of Thalia has gone from boom to bust practically overnight, a victim of the mid-'80s oil glut. Under the Continue reading »
Perhaps timed to piggyback on acclaim for McMurtry's latest novel Texasville, this stale collection of magazine pieces is a scam, all right, but it falls short of its titular pun only because the Continue reading »
Anything for Billy is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's affectionate ode to dime novels, Billy the Kid, and the wild, wild West. Benjamin Sippy is a successful but unfulfilled pulp fiction writer Continue reading »
Picking up the life of Danny Deck, the memorable protagonist of All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers , McMurtry's latest novel is another dark comedy about the difficulty of maintaining intimate Continue reading »
This fictional memoir of Billy the Kid is told through the eyes of an alien trite simile?gs Eastern writer who just happened to be along for the ride, saw it all and aims to set the record straight. Continue reading »
Yearning for the excitement and good hunting of the pk Wild West, two mountain men and an old Indian scout dejectedly roam the prairie; an aging Calamity Jane composes brooding letters to her Continue reading »
McMurtry's ( Anything for Billy ) meandering, gentle-humored threnody for the passing of the old Wild West, assembles an eclectic crew of aging friends, both fictional and historic. In the late Continue reading »
As plain and affecting as a Woody Guthrie ballad, this re-creation of the crooked career of the Depression-era desperado/folk hero is Pulitzer Prize-winner McMurtry's (Lonesome Dove) first Continue reading »
Old age and death catch up with characters familiar to readers since from Terms of Endearment in this often tedious sequel, a two-week PW bestseller and a Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club featured Continue reading »
McMurtry's bittersweet 19th novel marks the welcome return of Harmony, the naively optimistic showgirl from The Desert Rose (1983). Now 47, Harmony is working in a Las Vegas recycling plant, retired Continue reading »
At first glance, McMurtry (Dead Man's Walk) and Ossana (his screenwriting partner, and collaborator on Pretty Boy Floyd) appear to be spinning a merely folksy tall tale about a battle for a woman Continue reading »
Deceptively brief and seemingly lightweight, this wonderful work effectively cuts through decades of hyperbole. McMurtry illuminates the enigma and the myth of Crazy Horse to present him as a man--no Continue reading »
Pulitzer Prize-winning author McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) offers the final volume in the trilogy that includes the memorable The Last Picture Show (1966) and Texasville (1987). Drawing inspiration from Continue reading »
McMurtry's historical biography of Crazy Horse, the Sioux warrior who was a leader at the Battle of Little Big Horn, is one of two initial audio releases in the new Penguin Lives series. (The other Continue reading »
McMurtry of Lonesome Dove fame returns to fiction (after Custer) with this uneven portrayal of the frontier friendship between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. McMurtry is a master of colorful character Continue reading »
Atxaga (Nevada Days) offers a remarkable and sprawling story of a friendship over five decades in the Basque country. During a sexual assault at age 14 by Elías’s school warden, Continue reading »
Stanfill (Wakefield Hall) reimagines in her sharp latest medieval abbeys, aristocrats, and Lady Isabelle, the spirited confidante of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Set in France and Continue reading »
DeWitt (Some Trick) delivers an explosive rebuke to sensationalistic American publishing in this smart and multilayered story. The precocious 17-year-old narrator, Marguerite, Continue reading »
In this devastating and gut-wrenching debut, Watkins explores the generational trauma and violence endured by a Black Texas family. The story begins in the 1950s with Continue reading »