Customer Reviews

Lonesome Dove

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3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I have never been a fan of the literary western genre and confess that I read this book solely because I watched the movie based upon this book. Incredibly, the book supercedes the movie and McMurtry's characterization of Woodrow and Gus are truly stunning. It's the characters that turn this book into a compelling classic, rarely does the reader encounter such deftly-drawn and intriguing men as McCall and McCrae. You feel as if you are in Lonesome Dove with these men, and with them every step of the way from Texas to Montana. It's a magnificent journey and McMurtry is a superlative writer.

Even if you've never read a western book in your life, this is a literary masterpiece, the Shakespeare of the range, so to speak.

Stay with me here. I'm serious. I think Lonesome Dove can standcomparison to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Of course, I've only read Tolstoy in translation, so chances are I've missed alot, but there is no question that McMurtry creates something here very close to that impossible dream: The Great American Novel. I dont know that any other American writer has ever suceeded on this scale, which is why I go to Tolstoy.

McMurtry uses the Western as a starting point, but there is a little of everything here. Surely there has never been another American Western with so many varied characters, both men and and women. McMurtry juggles many different points of view, but manages to give each of his characters a unique voice. Most remarkable of all, I think, are the women in the book, who manage to escape the usual stereotypes of madonna or whore, even though many of them are, quite literally, prostitutes.

Lonesome Dove is written in a deceptively simple, unpretentious style. I've just finished reading it for the second time. Despite its length it is really a fast read, since it is one of those books that demands to be taken with you where ever you go until you are done.

Lonesome Dove is a modern classic. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the popularity of this book, the acclaim it has received and the cult status it has achieved with readers has tended to overshadow some of Larry McMurtry's other work and the attention to this one book has even become tiresome to the curmudgeonly Texas author. However, as a frequent reader of the prolific writer's fiction, I can attest to the fact that it is McMurtry's finest book and the one that gave readers his most memorable characters - the talkative, colorful Gus McCrae and the taciturn, deliberate Woodrow Call - aging former Texas Rangers who run a down-at-the-heels ranch near the Mexican border that they subsidize with cattle stolen on nocturnal raids across the border. The novel is about an epic cattle drive all the way from southern Texas to Montana. This famous "long drive" was actually a rare occurrence in the historic west as the expansion of the railroad system made long cattle drives unnecessary. While most cowboys who lived in the era of the cattle drives - which were driven by economic necessity in the years following the Civil War when there was a large market for beef in the north than could only be filled by the millions of head of cattle that had been left to breed on Texas pastures during the long years of conflict - went on a drive or two from Texas to Kansas as a rite of passage, a drive from the southern border of the country to its northern extreme would have been truly epic. In Lonesome Dove the drovers experience and overcome rainstorms and stampedes, treacherous crossings of swollen rivers, disloyal comrades, raiding Indians and a deviant, sadistic half-breed killer who stalks the cowboys and their retinue. While the leading characters, cantankerous old comrades, are the center of the story, the secondary figures in the drama are also beautifully written - Newt, Call's young son who is struggling to become a man, Lorena, the tenderhearted and beautiful young "soiled dove" and Jake, the charming former Ranger undone by his appetites. In contrast to some of McMurtry's other works, while death is always an uninvited guest, the drama is also leavened by a good dose of humor, much of it coming from a pair of snake eating Blue Pigs who become the novel's comic relief. And, there are plenty of violent ends as the author does not mind sacrificing his men and women to the needs of the fast-advancing plot and giving his readers an emotional tug. While cowboy work was hot, dirty and low paying work, revisionists forget that there was a romantic beauty to life on horseback, long nights of comradeship and a pride that cowhands took in doing a difficult job well. Larry McMurtry understands the incredible history of the American West and with its desolate beauty, unabashed romanticism and moments of stark terror, Lonesome Dove is an elegy to the waning days of the open range when bold men and strong women tried to settle the Great Plains.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry has been knocking around for more than a decade and is recognized by many as a classic of American Western literature. And no wonder. If you like a good cowboy story; if you're an aficionado of the West, in love with its history and geography; if you want your heart torn out and kicked from Texas to the Teton, then Lonesome Dove is the book you're looking for.

Augustus McRae, Woodrow Call, and Jake Spoon, three has-been Texas Rangers, hatch a half-baked scheme to abandon their dusty lives in the un-town of Lonesome Dove on the Rio Grande, and embark on a cattle drive to the upper reaches of Montana. They depart with two thousand head of re-stolen cattle along with a misbegotten crew of sometime ranch hands, lost and found Irish brothers, green local kids, a Mexican cook who can't, and the town whore Lorena -- with hair of gold even though her heart isn't.

They struggle north to untamed country none of them but Jake has ever seen -- and him a liar. They cross the Neuces, the Colorado, the Red, the Canadian, the Arkansas and up and up, fighting desperados, Comanches, sandstorms, water moccasins, bad food, bad water, bad luck and bad news. Multiple plots weave and braid and separate and double back upon you again like all the streams and rivers descending from the High Plains.

But it is into the strange landscape of the human heart which the reader has been lured. For while this story concerns a pilgrimage to Montana, it is, on another level, a journey in understanding what human life amounts to, balanced as it is between hope and hopelessness, and in the words of Gus McRae, "rich with hardship." It is McMurtry's characters, as much as the route they take, which define this journey. With all their quirkiness, these characters are mind-stickers, all. We're talking Dickens 'n dogies, here. Hamlet on horseback. From the raping, torturing Comanche renegade Blue Duck, so evil as to be devoid of humanity, to the feisty widow who has her way with the the deputy sheriff, a man who finds her "almost as scary as wild pigs", to the tragic young whore Maggie, who asks only to hear her name spoken once by the man she loves, it is a haunting group we travel with.

Snake attack on the Neuces to sneak attack on the Musselshell, Lonesome Dove ropes the reader, drags him through hell and high water, and leaves him feeling that the one certain thing is love, the existence of which is proven only by the size of the hole it blasts in the human heart.

I've lately been irritated with myself for not reading faster and more frequently and, almost to set a marathon for myself, I decided to tackle "Lonesome Dove," the Pulitzer Prize-winning, 942 page epic about a cattle drive from Texas to Montana in the years following the Civil War.

I'd read "Streets of Laredo" and "Commanche Moon" but for some reason -- maybe because I'd seen the miniseries -- I'd never read "Dove." But for three weeks, over Christmas and New Year's, I carried the book everywhere. The task undertaken in the novel, and the slow but steady progress of the characters, seemed to reflect my own endeavors.

It's quite a satisfying experience. The great McMurtry takes what could've been a closetful of cliches and turns them on end. Heroine Lorena isn't some Grace Kelly figure but a pragmatic manipulator who's likeable because McMurtry paints her honestly; the same goes for Clara, Jake, Dish, Po, Newt (though, admittedly, he winds up separated from the group a couple times too many) and even Blue Duck.

In terms of iconic characters, Gus and Call are basically the cut-up and the straight man, but they're also remarkably complex and I enjoyed the fact that, although the old Rangers didn't have a name for it then, the cattle drive is basically the result of their mid-life crises.

Ironically, the engine that drives "Dove" is the way the actions of men and women in an underpopulated land affect one another: Jake's actions affect July; July's affect Elmira and, in turn, Roscoe; and, most importantly, Call's decision to move the herd North affects everybody in the story. "I guess in New York there are so many people you don't notice the dying so much," says Clara. "Out here it shows more when people go...."

Of course, characters affect each other in every story but here the reactions are as clearly drawn as falling dominos, particularly in light of the novel's oft-repeated refrain, "Things would've been a lot better if we'd stayed in Texas."

"Dove" doesn't have the jolting brutality and arresting darkness of "Streets" or "Moon" (both of which I thought were great and beautifully downbeat) but it's brilliant and has some excellent moments (the fight between the bull and the bear; Gus' tussle with Blue Duck's thugs; a hanging and, much later, a funeral for one of my favorite characters that moved me more than anything I read all year. "Lonesome Dove" also has the wit and lyricism and episodic brilliance of a true classic.

Lonesome Dove is that rare thing, a serious novel that is, inall its parts, fabuloulsy entertaining. Larry McMurtry sets himselfthe seemingly impossible task of summing up the entire western genre in one book, and succeeds brilliantly. This novel has every stock western character and plot device: cattle drives, rattlesnakes, Mexican bandits, Texas Rangers, renegade Indians, gamblers, whores (with hearts of gold), riverboat men, wagon trains, sod busters, gun fights, fist fights, hangin', burnin' and much, much more. The book is brilliantly written with both humor and intelligence, causing the reader to care deeply about the fate of the main characters even while laughing out loud at the dialogue.

This is the masterpiece of McMurtry's long and distinguished career. No one, not even him, is going to top this as the ultimate western. For those who haven't read it, I can't recommend it highly enough.

I recently reread this book after 24 years and it still holds up, in fact I consider it to be one of the five best novels I have ever read. I can add nothing to the glowing reviews you'll see here, I envy those who are about to read this book for the first time. I would only add one caveat; if you wish to continue to cherish the characters you will come to know in this story, please avoid the sequels and prequels to this fine book. The largely unlikely and often unsavory exploits of Gus and Call in "The Streets of Laredo", "Comanche Moon" and "Dead Man's Walk" only detract from a unique experience. I wish I was half the writer Larry McMurtry is but when it comes to the legend he created with "Lonesome Dove" I wish he'd written half as much. I humbly suggest you enjoy the first book and leave it at that.

A handful of entertainment works (books, movies, music, TV shows) have connected with me in ways that I can barely describe. They move me emotionally, they provoke my imagination, and they make me want to experience them over and over again. They describe people and situations to which I can completely relate. Bruce Springsteen's music does that for me. Star Wars used to do that until the prequels came about. The TV show St. Elsewhere used to do it (haven't seen it in years, but I assume it holds up). And Lonesome Dove continues to do so. There are so many positive reviews here that it's hard not to be redunant. I agree with it all: believable characters that you feel like you know, not long enough even at 900 pages, brutal but realistic violence. This is simply the best book I have ever read, and the emotional impact still rings true after nearly 16 years. I haven't reread it in several years, but I'm certain that I remember nearly every scene and much of the dialogue.

Several warnings:

1) Nothing you read afterwards, for years to come, will compare. Lonesome Dove will spoil you and diminish everything else you read, no matter how good it may be.

2) It really is not long enough even at it's sizable bulk. You will not want this to end. It starts slowly, but like the cattle drive it depicts, it builds momentum.

3) You will have a difficult time convincing anyone else to read this fine book. You'll hear several standard excuses, especially "I don't like Westerns" and "It's too long" (refer people who say this to my #2 warning above). I know few people who have ever read the book, but those of us who have share the same feelings. It's frustrating to read something so wonderful yet have so few people with whom to share it.

4) McMurtry's sequel and prequels are inferior. You will want more after reading this book, but his other works in the series do not live up to the standards set here. They are good works by themselves, but are inconsistent with the facts and spirit established in the original book. I've heard him speak at several book signings, and for reasons unknown he seems to hold Lonesome Dove in contempt. It has always struck me that he must have intentionally sabotaged the other books as a way of "sticking it" to the fans who inundate him with their love for this book. Don't let that diminish your enjoyment of Lonesome Dove.

5) It is emotionally devastating. This is a sad, brutal, tragic book (bet that really sells you on it, doesn't it? well, sad and brutal have never been done so well). You will experience the characters' joys, but you will also share their considerable pain. Do not let anyone tell you how this book ends. I was not expecting the outcome, but it flowed naturally with the story. Given its realism and insight into life and human nature, the book ended in the only way it could if it were to remain true to itself. Life doesn't end happily, and neither does Lonesome Dove. These characters, their stories and their fates, will haunt you until the end of your days.

When you're finished with the book, watch the movie- looking forward to seeing it should be some consolation after the letdown of finishing the book. Don't fall into the mentality that "the movie is never as good as the book". In this case it is, and they offer a wonderful complement to one another.

I've always hated even the idea of western novels and only read Lonesome Dove because my uncle agreed to read Harry Potter. Our deal had a better outcome for me than him because he hated Harry Potter and I love Lonesome Dove! I never imagined that such a dirty, gritty, "manly" plot like a cattle drive could be not only a lot of fun but full of sensitivity as well. I was also impressed that McMurtry has an unbelievable understanding of his female characters. I was set to hate it and drudge my way through it and now it's one of my favorite books of all time. I really encourage people who never thought they would like "westerns" to read it. I'm a 20 year-old city girl and if I can love it, I'm sure everyone can!

This is a terrific book. I was daunted by it's length and actually had it hanging around my office for a month before deciding to wade in. Needless worry on my part. Larry McMurty's classic cowboy novel is one of the most delicious works of fiction I have ever read.

This is a book about the Old West. Cowboys, Texas Rangers, whores, gamblers, drinkin', cattle, indians, sheriffs, cattle drives, the Plains --- its all here. The main story revolves around a group of retired Texas Rangers, bored with running a minor ranch in the two-bit town of Lonesome Dove, who decide to take one of the last great adventures left in a West that is almost conquored. They decide to gather and drive a cattle herd from the Rio Grand to Montanna -- one of the last open areas where men could stake a claim and subjugate raw land.

What McMurty does so well is craft believable and highly entertaining characters. Gus and Call, the two Rangers are two of American literatures most memorable figures. The story revolves around their ambitions -- very different as are their personalities -- and the way they affect about twenty or so other characters who people the book.

This is a big book. It has several strong sub plots that could have been novels in themselves. The author ties each together in a manner that lends the unembarrassed moniker of epic to the whole.

The characters are each well developed and believable. Human to the last, there are no super heros here -- no Tom Clancy like Jack Clarks who can do no wrong. But several of the major characters are heroic in their struggles to survive and overcome the rough obstacles that frontier life often entailed. They are made more believable because of their flaws and mistakes and the less than direct paths they follow in following their souls. The villains and those in between are also memorably drawn and made full in the telling of this tale.

The West protrayed in Lonesome Dove is not the type found in Hollywood protrayals. McMurty's West is brutal, lonely and very tough. Living is hard, life often tragic and cheap. The joys are either hard earned or purchased in the form of liquor and/or women. Altogether a more realistic portrayal of life at the edge of law and civilization than the romanticized version often held forth in movies.

McMurty's dialogue is wonderful, creating a warmth that makes the characters stay with the reader. This is a book I could not put down and was sorry to finish. A treasure that any devote of good fiction will enjoy. "Dern good," as Gus Mcrae would say.