Forum / Larry McMurtry: "Duane's Depressed"

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    mxi wodd
    Jul 03, 08:10pm

    Just read this (found it on my bookshelf).
    Haven't read any of the others in the trilogy.

    Seemed to be a good time for me to read it.
    Think I'll read ten pages of Proust a night as suggested in the book.

    None of which, of course, matters, vis-a-vis the book, but it seemed serendipitous to find/read it now.

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    Seemed intentionally "poorly-written," written by a "non-writer," just a guy living just a life.

    But strangely and ultimately affecting. I DID want to know what happened next.

    And now I find myself wondering "What Would Duane Do?" as I go about my mid-life (i.e., "constant") life-crisis.

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    Gone
    Jul 04, 12:49am

    Larry McMurtry has, I think, a mostly undervalued but strangely seductive style. Fond of Texas and it's literature, I've read most of what he's written. His Duane character is a little like Updike's Rabbit, being a kind of reflection of McMurtry himself, a biography of 'what might have been' had he not pursued books over the cattle his family made their livelihood.

    McMurtry himself is extremely bookish, but no stranger to horses and the like. I would like to have met him.

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    mxi wodd
    Jul 04, 12:56am

    His author-photo on the books WAS extremely "bookish."

    Vaguely French.

    Did he write "Lonesome Dove"?

    Someone in the book I read mentions that book/series in a sort-of insulting way

    which might be an inside joke for an author ending a trilogy...

    ?

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    Gone
    Jul 04, 01:39am

    Yes, he wrote Lonesome Dove, one of many books of his that hit the screen. Last Picture Show was another, the beginning of the Duane series. The movie, Hud, was based on his first novel, Horseman Pass By. He was a good friend of Susan Sontag.

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    Gone
    Jul 04, 01:40am

    Also a great collector and dealer in books, owned several bookstores.

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    Gone
    Jul 04, 01:41am

    Bought some extensive collections.

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    Gone
    Jul 04, 01:43am

    I enjoyed Duane's Depressed. Duane was what folks back home would call 'a real catbird.'

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    mxi wodd
    Jul 04, 01:54am

    I watched "a lot" of "Last Picture Show" several times but never could make it through the whole thing (though I loved the B n' W aspect).

    "Hud" I have watched several/many times...truly impressed with that association...seems so long ago.

    Was he the owner/instigator of what I hear is a famous bookstore in Oxford, MS, "Square Books"?

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    mxi wodd
    Jul 04, 02:11am

    'a real catbird.'

    Never hear that one!

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    Strange thing about reading that book...made me slow down and look at the characters in the small MS town I inhabit (own/ing a house and all that BS).

    There ARE some characters....(!)

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    Barry Basden
    Jul 04, 02:30pm

    The Last Book Sale:

    http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/aug/17/larry-mcmurtry-last-book-sale/

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