Customer Reviews

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen

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Here is Larry McMurtry's take on modern life as he reads the collected essays of Walter Benjamin at the local Dairy Queen in rural Texas. The point: he examines the 'reproduction in the mechanical age' around him, namely, the Dairy Queen itself, the loss of gathering places to tell stories face to face where orality once ruled over typography; the local legends and arguments that held the locals in argument for decades, for example, why would a rancher milk his cow first and then blow his own head off? To save the Misses extra work? To keep the cow content? Hmm...you could argue the matter for years, and the men of McMurtry's father's generation did just that. He recounts stories from his youth, his grandparent's move to a Texas where there was still "Indian Activity." He recounts his early love of reading; his realization he'd make a lousy cowboy but maybe a good author to write about cowboys; about becoming academically enlightened at Rice U., then publishing his first novel before completing his doctoral dissertation--what do you think he did next: complete the dissertation or write a second novel. It's a meandering memoir that befits a man with many roots and tributaries, who tries to write about life as it is lived, and while he may have strong political views, it's obvious he isn't dumb enough to inject them into his novels. A novelist/bookseller, his stock includes 300,000 volumes. I wonder if he sells on Amazon. If you want to sit back and read someone who's intelligent and writes intelligently, you could do a lot worse.