Book Review - Lonesome Dove

Synopsis:  This epic, Pulitzer Prize winning novel depicts fun-loving Gus MacRae and taciturn Captain Woodrow Call, a pair of longtime friends and former Texas Rangers who crave one last adventure before they bow to their advancing years. Convinced that animals will thrive on the lush grasslands of Montana, Captain Woodrow persuades Gus to undertake the arduous, 3,000-mile cattle drive there.

Rounding up over a thousand head from Mexican rustlers south of the border, the men recruit a diverse crew of hands to help them. Among the party are Woodrow's illegitimate son Newt Dobbs, local prostitute Lorena Wood, and old compatriots Joshua Deets, Jake Spoon, and Pea Eye Parker.

Storms, hostile natives, poisonous snakes, and rustlers take their toll on the company before Montana is reached in an adventure that is equal parts Greek tragedy and classic, John Ford-style.

First Line:  "When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one."

Random Quote:  "Sitting on the low bluff watching the moon climb the dark sky, he felt the old sadness again.  He felt, almost, that he didn't belong with the very men he was leading, and that he ought to just leave:  ride west, let the herd go, let Montana go, be done with the whole business of leading men."

Review:  When I was a little girl my father was in art school in Memphis, Tennessee.  We lived in an old duplex in midtown Memphis and my father shared a studio there with his best friend, Peter Painter (not to be confused with Peter Potter).  Peter Painter got up earlier than my folks did so on the weekends he used to come over and make me breakfast.  We'd eat cereal together and watch the Lone Ranger cartoon.  I loved Tonto - that was my start of loving Westerns.  Later my father and I used to watch all the old classics on television on weekend afternoons or during the Dialing for Dollars movies.  I loved all of those, too.  I never really got deep into Gunsmoke, but I liked The Big Valley (it had Barbara Stanwyck, for pete's sake) and I absolutely loved The Wild, Wild West (steampunk before there ever was steampunk).  My folks used to take me to the drive-in to see the Clint Eastwood movies and I remember my first viewing of Yojimbo absolutely vividly.  As a movie and TV genre, Westerns rock.

Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo - Image by thecreatrus via Flickr

I haven't really read a lot of westerns, though.  I know Zane Grey is the classic author, but I've never read him.  My western reading consists of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, Cattle Annie and Little Britches by Robert Ward, Little Big Man by Thomas Berger, and The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols.  I sort of doubt that any of these would make anyone's list of classic Westerns - the perspective is a bit skewed for one thing.

In any event, Rose City Reader's Battle of the Prizes - American version - inspired me to choose Lonesome Dove for my Pulitzer Prize winner.  I figured it would be good to read a classic Western.


I know I'm supposed to love this book.  It's an epic, like The Odyssey or Moby Dick, but with cows!  If you listen carefully you can hear the orchestra on a crescendo as the sun rises over the dusty plains!  It won the Pulitzer Prize!

I just can't get on board with this one.  I read all 945 pages and it was a slog in ill-fitting hip waders through waste-deep mud all the way through.

First problem - it stretches my credulity that everyone from Fort Smith, Arkansas through Texas, Northern Mexico, Nebraska, and on into Montana knows each other and run into each other on a regular basis.  I don't know why, but this made me bang my head on the table.  I've done three cross-country moves in my adult life and I am here to tell you that this is a great big country.  The notion that you would wander randomly through Texas and meet up with people MULTIPLE TIMES is just a bit much.

Second problem - I think Larry McMurtry isn't terribly fond of women.  Every single female character in this book has a Texas Instruments scientific calculator where their heart should be.  I will grant that a certain amount of pragmatism is healthy, but not everyone has it and there's something hostile about the way the it's written here that I just couldn't love.

Third problem - Deets is a classic example of what Spike Lee and others refer to as the "magical Negro."  He might as well be Little Black Sambo because he sure isn't a person.  He exists purely as a plot device, is impossibly good, and uses his magical tracking and scouting powers to move the white men forward.

I wanted to like this.  I know I'm supposed to, especially since the whole rest of the planet seems to, but I just couldn't get there.  Oh well.

Reading Challenges:  Battle of the Prizes - American Version, Book Awards Reading Challenge, Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2010, 2010 Chunkster Challenge, 2010 100+ Reading Challenge,