Pretty Boy Floyd [Mass Market Paperback]

Larry McMurtry (Author), Diana Ossana (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1995

The time is 1925. The place, St. Louis, Missouri. Charley Floyd, a good-looking, sweet-smiling country boy from Oklahoma working as a baker's helper at the Kroger Bakery, has just taken the big step that will make him, very shortly, a legend in his own lifetime: he has just robbed his first armored car. Charley is an irresistible invention, as American as Huck Finn, a young man so charming that it's hard not to like him, even as he's robbing you at gunpoint. The women in his life - his tough-talking mentor and lover, Ma Ash (an older woman who recognizes just where Charley is headed, but can't stop him), his long-suffering, loyal wife, Ruby, his equally loyal girlfriend, Beulah, his mother, Mamie, and a good many more - are as charmed by him as the hill people of the Ozarks, who hide him out when he's on the run from the law. The only people who aren't charmed by Charley are the federal agents tracking him down, particularly his nemesis, J. Edgar Hoover, who sees in Pretty Boy Floyd a way of making his Bureau of Investigation famous. Written in collaboration by Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove, and his screen-writing partner, Diana Ossana, Pretty Boy Floyd, soon to be a major motion picture, is as fast-paced as Charley Floyd's own career, which takes him from small-time robbery to national notoriety in a roller-coaster ride of bank heists, love affairs, shootings, and newspaper headlines that exemplifies both the celebrity hunger of the Depression era and the glamour that surrounded - and inevitably destroyed - young men like Charley Floyd, who chose, for the most part out of boredom with rural life, the outlaw trail. Set in the heart of America, PrettyBoy Floyd is at once a richly comic masterpiece and a kind of American tragedy about the price of fame the corruption of innocence, and the fatal consequences of becoming, however unwittingly, a hero. A major work of fiction, as profoundly American in its own way as McMurtry's o

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

McMurtry (The Evening Star, LJ 6/1/92) and screenwriter Ossana initially wrote a screenplay based on the life of Pretty Boy Floyd and then decided to expand the story into a novel. The novel retains the tone of a script: it's heavy on dialog and has little character development. Pretty Boy Floyd took on the status of a folk hero in the 1920s, but here he comes across as a cartoon. He's a petty criminal out of control, surrounded by women who can't resist him and stupid accomplices. The women are mostly whores with hearts of gold or long-suffering wives, eager for a few special moments with their man. While this is certainly not McMurtry's best work, his reputation should elicit demand for this novel in public libraries. [Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.]-Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., N.C.
--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., N.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (July 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671891677
• ISBN-13: 978-0671891671
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,504,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award. His most recent novel, When the Light Goes, is available from Simon & Schuster. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FUNNY AND SAD...AND HIGHLY ENTERTAINING READ!!!, August 8, 2005

By 

mwyrick (omaha, nebraska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pretty Boy Floyd (Mass Market Paperback)

I don't understand the review by the (supposed) professor...because I don't think he understood this is a work of FICTION. Though it's loosely based upon an historical outlaw, it is a story told by FICTION WRITERS. It was funny, sad, full of colorful, clever, original dialogue, that made me feel as if I knew these characters inside and out. Pretty Boy was considered a folk hero in the late twenties and thirties, professor sir. Read the novel in that context. I think that was the point of the authors--that this was a time and place they wanted to capture with their imaginations, to bring to life for those of us who weren't alive then (and to entertain those who were). It was a rough time, people were poor, hungry, the banks were the enemy because they put entire families out on the streets, with nothing. There was no welfare, no homeless shelters. It was a wild, rough time. I gave this book to my grandpa (a fine, upstanding man if there ever was one), who remembered Pretty Boy Floyd from his own childhood, and he LOVED it!!! If anything, this novel, by the end, shows us how a wrong turn in the road of life can change the course of our entire future...and how hard it is to ever go back...give it a chance, I don't think you'll be disappointed!!!!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks, Diana and Larry, July 10, 2006

By 

Robert Reardon (Colorado Springs, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pretty Boy Floyd (Mass Market Paperback)

What a breath of fresh air. From the opening scene I was back in McMurtry country (language-wise) - an easy flowing style that is comforting and hypnotic.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sorry, Larry....you're much better as a solo act, February 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Pretty Boy Floyd (Mass Market Paperback)

Since Larry McMurtry was listed as one of the authors of this book, I picked it up and thought I would enjoy it. Boy, was I ever wrong. "Lonesome Dove" was a masterpiece, and so are the other McMurtry books I've read - but this, by comparison, is amateur night. The writing is stiff and reads like something McMurtry might have written when he was just starting out - and then threw in the trash.

Forgive me, Mr. McMurtry, but you're much better as a solo act, and I'm only sorry that you're not going to write any more novels about that wonderful pair, Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call.