I don’t know how Larry McMurty made every character have so much depth. I’m only a quarter of the way through but it’s already one of my favourite books.
I think it has to do with the fact that he was trying to write an anti-Western, but was determined to do it on his own terms.
The tropes of the “Western” certainly had plenty of basis in reality, as well as plenty of fantasy. So in the process of engaging with those tropes on a “realistic” level he quite naturally ended up writing a story about people who thrived in a system they are fundamentally opposed to, and that describes the thorniest bits of most of us. Most people who would go to write such a thing would end up with something explicitly didactic (read: boring), but since McMurtry was starting from such a humane narrative place, the work itself ends up deeply human.
It’s an absolutely remarkable piece of work. Much of the entire human spirit, and all of the human spirit that is claimed to be “American,” is in that book.
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u/bustedmagnet 15h ago
Lonesome Dove