Student Wallace

Mrs. Biancosino-Walker

CP English 11-A/ 5

24 February 2007

Larry McMurtry’s Texan Style Writing

Larry McMurtry was born June 3, 1936 in Wichita Falls, Texas.  McMurty was the grandson of a pioneer cattleman in north Texas and is one of four children.  He attended one semester at Rice University and then transferred to North Texas State University where he completed a Bachelors Arts degree and graduated in 1958 (Muste).  Events throughout McMurtry’s life gave him the ambition to become a writer.  After attending college, he met a Josephine Ballard and they married in 1959.  Larry and Josephine had one child, but divorced after seven years of marriage (Muste).  This had a tremendous impact on his life.

McMurtry then began writing novels, which were set mainly in Texas; he had a tremendous pension for writing about life in the Southwest. His novels always depicted the Southwest as a place of hardships and challenges.  His novels also portrayed young boys growing up with little or no direction in life.  McMurtry’s life was reflected in the setting of dying small towns in Texas, which were like his own hometown, Archer.  When he left Archer and moved to the fast growing cities like Houston, his writing also reflected this.  Other themes in his novels involved older characters who struggled with family problems and relationships (Muste).  Larry McMurtry uses his experience as a Texan to depict the conflicts of small town life for young and old, the way of life for cowboys and ranching, and relationships of urban families.   

Lonesome Dove is a novel about a cattle drive in the late 19^th century that begins in Texas and ends in Montana (Baird).  The novel entwines the typical western story of love, lovers, betrayal, and as always death.  The characters conflicts revolve around their quest for new frontiers, old lovers, and love relationships that will never have the chance to exist. 

The two main characters Augustus and Woodrow are two physically strong men.  Augustus is the stronger of the two; his need for a strong loving relationship is in part the reason he can never be with his only love Clara Allen (Baird).  The men have many obstacles to overcome including death on the cattle drive.  The story describes Jake becoming an outcast and the betrayal of Elmira and July Johnson, who recently had their marriage annulled.  July is a sheriff in the town of Fort Smith and his wife is beginning to fall out of love with him and wants her former lover back in her life. However, fate steps in and Elmira’s lover, Dee, is hung. Elmira finds her way to Clara Allen’s were all characters ironically meet.  Relationships at this point change for almost everyone, and Elmira leaves her baby with Clara.  After leaving Clara’s house, Elmira then gets killed by rootless and hostile Indians.  Lorena stays with Clara, and Augustus returns to the herd.  Major events lend to Augustus’s death (Baird).  Death seems to be what each character has to deal with and endure.  Woodrow emerges as the survivor (Baird).  This novel is certainly about characters learning to adjust to events in new places and handling difficult situations. 

McMurtry clearly writes about life as a cattle rancher.  He brings out the tragedy, struggles, and frustration of each character along the way of the trail.  Could the conflict of Augustus and Woodrow merely be because they are men?  In Lonesome Dove, “most of the characters remain frustrated, suggests that the root of the problem may lie not in historical changes but in the male psyche, since Clara, with her self-reliance and her happiness in her involvement in the lives of those around her, is the most fully developed and fulfilled character (Baird).”  In Lonesome Dove, the male characters seemed to be the most dominant and appeared to be the characters in control.  But in reality, the most fulfilled character who had her life totally together was Clara. 

McMurtry’s next novel, Terms of Endearment, is based on human and love relationships which end in failure and lead to loneliness (Daubs).  McMurtry depicts his characters relationships by their love being unfulfilled and discontented. 

His characters suffer from lack of self-criticism. Aurora Greenway and her daughter, Emma Horton, are the main characters in this novel and to some extent unpleased with their love relationships. Aurora is a forty-nine year old, who is very good looking and self-centered and this prevents her from becoming too close to anyone.   Emma, on the other hand, has been married for two years to “Flap” Horton, who her mother thinks of him as an unsuitable choice for a husband, and has found that their love for each other is fading.  Emma and Flap have found that their marriage is unsatisfying in every way, and they are expecting their first child.  During the novel, Aurora turns into a very attractive character when all of her personalities emerge (Pemberton).  McMurtry’s male characters are often drawn to the kind of personalities of Aurora and most of her so called “suitors” are not as suitable as she desires. 

Later, in the  novel, Aurora is forced to choose one suitor for herself.  So, instead of picking one man she decides to solve her problem by not choosing.  She admits that no one man is fit to deal with her needs, but decides that more then one suitor is just enough.  The second part of the novel focuses on Emma’s life in Des Moines, Iowa, and Kearney, Nebraska.  Emma now has three children and her relationship with her husband has fallen apart.  Emma and Flap decide to have more then one affair to fill their discontented love life.  Towards the end of the novel, Emma discovers that she has terminal cancer.  Emma’s mother and some of her close friends help her deal with the fact that her life is coming to an end.   At the end of the funeral, Aurora and her housekeeper leave the cemetery together to take care of Emma’s three children as their full time guardians (Pemberton).  McMurtry’s characters in Terms of Endearment deal with relationships that are burdened by many heart breaking situations.  His characters have many of the same struggles that Texan urban families would have.  At the end of this novel, Aurora describes her feelings toward her daughter, “She often made me feel I was faintly ridiculous. . . . Somehow she just had that effect.  Perhaps that was why I remained so unremittingly critical of her (Daubs).”  This quote reveals Aurora recognition that if she hadn’t been so critical, she may have had a better and more fulfilling relationship with her daughter.

Many of McMurtry’s novels portray the constant struggles and changes of relationships in small towns and urbanized American West.  His next novel is based on life in a small town called Thalia.  In The Last Picture Show, McMurtry focuses on two main characters, Sonny Crawford and his friend Duane Moore.  These two characters are high school football players who are about to enter the world of responsibilities and that will change their lives. 

In this novel Sonny, Duane, and many other boys became friends with Sam “The Lion” who acts like a father figure.  Sam, who was once a rancher, owns the town’s movie theater, pool hall, and a café.  He also takes in and raises a mentally challenged boy named Billy.  As the novel begins, Sonny Crawford who is an innocent young man begins to experiment with women.  His manhood begins to spark when he meets Ruth Popper and they have an affair.  Ruth is the wife of the high school football coach, Herman Popper, who thinks a shotgun is more important than a woman (Pemberton).  McMurtry’s characters are involved in affairs because of feelings of desperation and loneliness.  Herman never pays attention to his wife and makes her feel neglected (Parsell).  Ruth’s affair with Sonny makes her feel much more satisfied with her love life and also makes her feel more attractive.  Duane, quite the reverse, dates the town’s rich girl, Jacy Farrow, whom he becomes attached to and doesn’t seem to realize that she is going to break up with him as soon as she can find someone who is richer and more pleasure-seeking then him (Parsell).  Many of McMurtry’s characters sooth their troubles and burdens by spending money, by drinking, and by having sexual affairs.  Towards the end of the novel, Duane leaves Thalia to begin work in the oil fields, and Jacy becomes very tricky and only cares for herself.  Sonny, who has matured further then any other male character, becomes seduced by Jacy.  When Duane returns to town from the oil field, he learns that Jacy and Sonny are having an affair.  This Sonny and Duane to fight and, as a result, Sonny is blind in one eye and Duane decides to enlist into the army (Parsell).  Soon after the fight, Jacy and Sonny decide to leave Thalia and as they are leaving Sonny realizes that he is mature, but not enough to leave his hometown.  So he returns to Thalia hoping that Ruth Popper with take him back and she does (Parsell).  McMurtry based The Last Picture Show on challenging problems which each character faced dealing with the insecurity of human relationship in a small town of the American West. 

He also depicts the psychological make up of each characters with vivid descriptions of their selfishness, and immaturity and how each evolves and develps in the novel.  This novel also reveals each character’s sadness because they have no family to guide them and no real love for long lasting intimacy.  “The closing of the movie house for want of customers, occurring near the end of the novel, serves also as the source of its title, announcing the irrevocable change as clearly as….. (Parsell).”  Parsell admits that the title The Last Picture Show is clearly what McMurtry’s novel is all about, the closing of the “Picture Show.”

            In conclusion, McMurtry’s themes in all three novels revolve around the conflicts in life, love, and death.  McMurtry utilizes his past experiences of small town Texas, knowledge of cattle ranching, and the fast growing large urban Texas towns to portray conflicts and growth of life.  Readers can clearly see how McMurtry’s life followed his novels.  Lonesome Dove shows how knowledge of the cattle ranching, The Last Picture Show recreates his knowledge of small town Texas, and Terms of Endearment finds the fast growing urban setting, again as a pattern in his life.

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Work Cited

Baird, Jim.  “Lonesome Dove.”  Masterplots II:  American Fiction Series.  Rev.  ed.  2000.  MagillonLiterature Plus.  Ebsco.  WTHS.  16 Jan.  2007.

Daubs, James D.  “Terms of Endearment.”  Masterplots II:  American Fiction Series.  Rev.  ed.  2000.  MagillonLiterature Plus.  Ebsco.  WTHS.  17 Jan.  2007.

Muste, John M.  “Larry McMurtry.”  Critical Survey of Long Fiction.  Rev. 2^nd ed.  2000.  MagillonLiterature Plus.  Ebsco.  WTHS.  16 Jan.  2007.

Parsell, David B.  “The Last Picture Show.”  Masterplots II: American Fiction Series.  Rev.  ed.  2000.  MagillonLiterature Plus.  Ebsco.  WTHS.  11 Feb. 2007.

Pemberton, William E.  “Larry McMurtry.”  Magill’s Survey of American Literature.  Vol.  4.  Ed.  Frank N. Magill.  North Bellmore:  Marshall Cavendish, 1991.  1250- 1264.