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Subject: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Wesley S Date: 17 Jan 08 - 04:01 PM After watching Comanche Moon on TV the last few nights I was wondering if anyone had managed to read all four of the books in Larry McMurtrys Lonesome Dove series? I've read the original but now I'm tempted to read the other three books. I doubt that anyone else has attempted as far reaching and massive a western series as this one before. Most westerns tend to be short affairs – at least the ones I've run into. And it can be argued that McMurtry elevated the western somewhat. Like it or not it's a step above what we usually see on the western book shelves. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Amos Date: 17 Jan 08 - 04:23 PM Read the firast two and enjoyed them both. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Bobert Date: 17 Jan 08 - 04:29 PM Didn't read any of 'um but his son, James, is one fine singer/song writer... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 17 Jan 08 - 04:34 PM I read the first one, saw the tv series, watched the sequel on tv and that was it. Without Gus and Coll it just wasn't Lonesome Dove. The original was the best western I have ever seen. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Wesley S Date: 17 Jan 08 - 04:49 PM If I recall the sequel "Return to Lonesome Dove" was done without McMurtrys help or input. I'll have to look that up to make sure. But agreed - the original was the best western I've seen too. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: John O'L Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:13 PM I used to see various bits & pieces of various episodes from Lonesome Dove The Series and Lonesome Dove The Outlaw Years on TV, (featuring Scott Bairstow as Newt Call), but due to my work roster (aka "lifestyle"), I was unable to give the show the attention it deserved. I have since tried to get either or both on DVD but they are unavailable for region 4. While I appreciate that this regional exclusivity is a service provided by the global corporation for my convenience, and is of enormous benefit to countless millions in third world countries, all I really wanted was to watch a few TV shows. Too much to ask, I guess. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:23 PM I just enjoyed the "Comanche Moon" series. I had read the book some years ago. I found this last effort to be much better and more faithful to the story and the characters than the "Return to Lonesome Dove" film. Having spent a lot of time in Texas with relatives there and having read a good deal of Texas history, including revisionist versions, McMurtry nails character, place and language as well as any writer of the western genre. The lead characters in this series were eerily similar to the Gus and Woodrow characters as portrayed by the great Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in the original. You could almost smell the dirt and the "roadapples" in this one. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: DougR Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:48 PM I agree that Lonesome Dove was the best western series ever. I've read all four of the books and the only one to disappoint was the one about the long walk into New Mexico and darned if I can remember the name of the book ...oops, I remember it now, "Dead Man's Walk." DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Midchuck Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:52 PM If you consider all of Louis L'Amour's books about the Sackett family as one series, it dwarfs McMurtry's. Not that I'd knock McMurtry. Peter. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: katlaughing Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:58 PM That's kind of what I was thinking, Peter, though not the latter as I have not read any of McMurtry. Something put me off him and the original movie, many years ago and I've not been interested since. Maybe I'll try both, again, some day. kat |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 17 Jan 08 - 08:23 PM Larry McMurtry's books are all exceedingly well written, I think, and they are among the finest works of western fiction ever...but they are ultimately quite depressing also. That bothers me, and it kind of spoiled the experience of reading them for me. I don't believe in a defeatist philosophy of life that ends in the final death and collapse of everyone's best hopes and dreams...in the final defeat of their best potential. I realize that life sometimes IS like that for a lot of people, but I see little use in composing a brilliant work of fiction that leads to such nihilistic conclusions. (I would have to assume that Larry McMurtry has no belief in anything beyond this physical life...in which case, of course, every life would finally end in complete defeat and dissolution. I don't see it that way at all. Not for a moment.) Fiction might better serve to inspire people with what is possible and what is noble and triumphant, then to simply depress them with the presumed ultimate futility of our mortal existence. Larry McMurtry's stories are spectacularly well told, but they leave a really bad taste in my mouth when they end...the taste of death, disillusionment, and ashes. I don't need it. Louis L'Amour's books are brilliant in a quite different way, and they don't leave that bad taste in my mouth when the story ends. Elmore Leonard's books likewise. If a story is a true life story that ends in someone's defeat and tragedy...great...I appreciate hearing what really happened in any true life story....but I don't particularly long for fictional stories that make me feel like slitting my own wrists when I finally reach the words: "The End". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: katlaughing Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:06 PM Maybe that's what put me off, LH. I can't remember; only that I was just not interested from looking them over. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Art Thieme Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:35 PM To me, the original L.D. was just about the best western film I've ever seen. I'm looking forward to seeing this prequil. Art |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Uncle Phil Date: 17 Jan 08 - 11:22 PM I enjoyed reading all four books, though it's been a long time since I read them. Comanche Moon was the last one published and it came out in 1997. Michelle and I were talking last night about rereading them in chronological order instead of the order they were published. That means starting with Dead Man's Walk, my least favorite of the four. I don't recall the books as being depressing – realistic and unsentimental but not depressing. It should be interesting if I feel differently rereading them after more than a decade. I can't speak too much about the TV. I saw bits of Streets of Laredo and it looked pretty good. I watched most of Comanche Moon and thought it was well done. - Phil |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 17 Jan 08 - 11:30 PM There were opportunities in Lonesome Dove for various important characters in the story (particularly Augustus McCrae, who was a man of really great possibility) to overcome their key weaknesses, to get past their blind spots in life and turn their whole destiny around...to triumph over their limitations and their long-accustomed habits and make a profound breakthrough. Not one of them did. They all held doggedly to their established attitudes, whatever the heck those were, until it finally destroyed them and those they loved the best. They threw their lives away frivolously and uselessly, despite showing great heroism in the struggle. Call was the worst. The man was an utter disaster. McCrae could have saved himself, he had the character and intelligence to do it, but he ran away instead from the one woman he truly loved to die a pointless and foolish death in Montana. It makes me sick reading something like that. It's the utter defeat of the human Spirit. Real life is tough enough already without composing fictional stories like that which make you feel even worse about it than you already did. That's my objection to Larry McMurtry. I cannot believe what he seems to believe about human existence, and I cannot fathom why he would want to write the kind of stories he does...although he writes them quite brilliantly, no doubt. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Art Thieme Date: 18 Jan 08 - 10:36 AM Yes, Little Hawk, you have a point there. But still, life being ultimately tragic for everyone when all is said and done, our free wills allow us that latitude to be admirable or not in the choices we've made. If any of the judgements of it matters at all, and I don't think they do, McMurtry's created picture of human nature is consistent with many machinations of human nature we all exhibit----and many will lead to our downfalls that friends, family and the media will analize 'til the cows come home in spite of it being as meaningless as my pronouncements here. Conversely, if life is tragic, comic relief is the other side of that coin. The yin for the yang of it. Tragedy and comedy sharply defined--and shades of gray as well to allow for enlightening irony. And if comedy is relief, as it is said to be, it is relief from that basic tragedy of life! All the characters are, as we all are to various extents, classic Aristotilian tragidians whose demises are preordained to be a result of their many human flaws----along with the numerous positive traits acting dynamically to create the entire Gestalt for the reader! Bottom line: Add on Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones and you have a GREAT TALE, and it's really well told. Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Amos Date: 18 Jan 08 - 11:18 AM Art, you never cease to surprise and delight me with your hidden talents. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: KB in Iowa Date: 18 Jan 08 - 11:38 AM Adding Robert Duvall to just about anything would make it better. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: katlaughing Date: 18 Jan 08 - 12:39 PM My Dear FineArt, I have just added to that my file of Art Thiemeisms for "that book" someday. Anybody ever told you how amazing, wise, inspiring you are? Heck, I'll even reconsider the movie because of you, my friend.:-) luvyakat |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 18 Jan 08 - 01:19 PM Well said, Art. ;-) Indeed, the humorous twist in the stories does, as you say, form the perfect counterpoint for the tragedy...and I'd say that that is the greatest strength of McMurtry's writing right there, the way he brings humor in, and it's what I like best about the books. McCrae, in particular, is just a delightfully witty character. I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Lonesome Dove" up to a certain point...and then it began to bother me how all the characters were, one way or another, being defeated by life (and by their weaknesses or blind spots). It bothered me more and more, but I perservered to the final end of the story....which I found totally, utterly depressing, as I've said. Being a person who is sometimes afflicted by depression anyway....I don't need that! There are ways to end a life which have grandeur, meaning, and great dignity, heroism and nobility. It isn't always just a sorry and miserable end, and it's never meaningless. Not in my opinion. Matter of fact, I don't think anything is meaningless that happens in life. I think it's all imbued with tremendous meaning. People just don't see that most of the time, because they are unaware of the part they play, and they're distracted by little things. Inspired people do see the meaning that's at the heart of life, and they are remembered for that long after they leave this world. Your pronouncements here may not be as meaningless as you assert, because they are part of your own sacred journey. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Art Thieme Date: 18 Jan 08 - 01:41 PM I too have a depressed side. Zoloft might be keeping me from being bummed out more by a downer read. But I think it's mainly our situational stuff going down here that takes me lower on occasion--and colors and inhibits my receptiveness. There are many films with gratuitous violence and horror that put me in a place I'd rather not go, and I've walked out on them. 3:10 To Yuma was too crammed with negatives, but another factor is that I simply don't like Russell Crowe. L.H., I enjoy reading your posts all the time. That goes for Amos and Kat and Mick and so many others here. Art |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 18 Jan 08 - 01:47 PM Thanks, Art. I enjoy reading your posts too. They are very well thought out. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 18 Jan 08 - 02:11 PM One Russell Crowe film that you might like is "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World". It's a stunningly fine adaptation of one of O'Brien's books about the days of fighting sail... It could hardly have been better done, in my opinion, and Russell Crowe plays the part of Captain Jack Aubrey very well. He hits just the right notes. The character Jack Aubrey was loosely based on a British naval commander named Cochrane, a man who had a simply extraordinary fighting career for the British Navy at that time when they were definitely the foremost naval power in the world, and were locked in a titanic struggle with France (and at times, Spain). Interestingly enough, I don't think Cochrane ever went up against the Americans, who had a small but extremely good navy of their own at that time. If he had, I'm betting he would have won...but who can say for sure? ;-) The Americans had a handful of the best designed frigates in the world in the early 1800s, and they used them to considerable effect. That is in fact touched on in the movie, as Aubrey is forced to take on a French-commanded frigate that has been built on contract in American shipyards, a vessel that considerably outclasses his own smaller British-built frigate in every regard. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 18 Jan 08 - 02:30 PM |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: deadfrett Date: 18 Jan 08 - 04:12 PM I've been a fan of McMurtry's since reading the Last Picture Show. His tales of Texas and his characters have all was seemed to ring true to life. After re-reading Commanche Moon and viewing the TV version I was disappointed. Pablum for the idiot box. It seems as though aleast two thirds of the story was removed or rewritten. If they did this to the L.D. series, I can't imagine what the Berrybender saga will be like if they get that into production. As for Master and Commander, great movie. I hope they do more of O'Brien's books. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: DougR Date: 18 Jan 08 - 04:14 PM "The Wisdom of Kendall?" DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Art Thieme Date: 18 Jan 08 - 04:42 PM ...but I did not care for the guy who played Blue Duck in the original either. A young Floyd Westerman type would've been better I thought. (But not Graham Greene either.) An actual Blue Duck was a lover of Belle Star's according to Woody's song. Any historical insights into that from somebody? And the real Charlie Goodnight took Oliver Loving's body back to Texas much like Call took Gus back to his grove of trees in the book. I've always loved Utah's song "The Goodnight-Loving Trail"---did it for many years. Art Thieme |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:09 PM Yeah, I also thought the actor they used for Blue Duck in the movie wasn't quite right for the part... Someone should do a fully fleshed out movie version of the Louis L'Amour story, "Jubal Sackett". It would make one hell of a good movie if they did it right. The guy who played David Crocket in the recent Alamo film would be great for the part of Jubal Sackett in his middle to later years... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: GUEST,Wesley S Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:55 PM I thought they HAD done a Jubal Sackett movie for TV.Perhaps with Tom Selleck? Maybe I'm wrong. LH - I know what you said about some of the characters in the McMurtry books being defeated in life - but I try to see those defeats as positives in the long run. I try to learn from the mistakes some of these folks made. It was the character of Call that helped me to open up a little to some of the choices I could make. He served as a negitive roll model for me. I didn't want to end up like him. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:58 PM Yes, I can understand looking at it that way, for sure, Wesley. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: GUEST,Wesley S Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:06 PM Sometimes the very besy way for me to make up my mind about an issue is to hear the opposing viewpoint. Call was that way for me. I was determined that I wasn't going to lock up my emotions like he did. We have a movie critic here in town that I almost always disagree with. If I'm on the cuff about seeing a film - and he hates it - I'll go check it out for sure. Sometimes the best examples don't have to be good examples. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Midchuck Date: 18 Jan 08 - 09:47 PM They did a TV miniseries about the Sackett brothers that the first books were about - Orin and Tyrell 'n them. Jubal was the first one over, a couple hundred years earlier, IIRC. Peter |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: GUEST Date: 19 Jan 08 - 02:25 AM About the "depressing" thing-- McMurtry has attempted classic tragedy in this series. In this (and other) such work, every choice by the characters is always the worst--except for all the other choices. Tragic heroes are true to themselves, persistent in their choices, and fearless in the face of consequences. They triumph heroicly, strive mightily and fail because of their humanity. McMurtry is pretty good at all this. I love "Lonesome Dove" and "Comanche Moon." Gus and Call and Buffalo Hump are the real deal when it comes to this sort of ambitious fiction. By the way, for fans-- McMurtry wrote a lesser known, much shorter, western called "Anything for Billy" that I like about as well. It is much more highly refined, and should be on any serious reader's list of great writing by great authors. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 19 Jan 08 - 09:11 AM Master and Commander was a very good book and film.However, I think O'Brien spends too much time on nomenclature. Who cares what a "Cross catharping" or a "Cunt splice" is? He is a good writer, but he won't replace C.S. Forrester and Horatio Hornblower. In Lonesome Dove, the obligitory rape scene I could have done without.I always have a problem with such violence. However, when Gus rode into their camp and evened the score, I cheered inwardly. McMurtry knows how to push my buttons. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 19 Jan 08 - 01:21 PM "In this (and other) such work, every choice by the characters is always the worst--except for all the other choices. Tragic heroes are true to themselves, persistent in their choices, and fearless in the face of consequences. They triumph heroicly, strive mightily and fail because of their humanity." Sounds like a description of George Bush's approach to foreign and domestic policy in a nutshell! ;-) (persist stubbornly in your unwise choices...brook no interference....never change your mind no matter what...raise a lot of ruckus...do a shitload of damage...fail tragically in the end, and be remembered as a damn fool by posterity) Maybe that is the unofficial credo of the American West! ;-) Bush, after all, seems to think of himself as a cowboy. kendall - I agree with your comments on O'Brien's writing. I think it's overly wordy and drawn-out, and I think that C.S. Forester's books (the Hornblower series) are much superior as adventure fiction, because they tell their story wonderfully and they stick mainly to the characters, who are quite interesting ones, and the action itself...rather than burying the reader in interminable volumes of minutiae. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Art Thieme Date: 19 Jan 08 - 02:49 PM Rather likle Melville |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 19 Jan 08 - 03:16 PM Melville is in a class by himself. " There will come a day at sea when you'll smell land where there be no land. And, on that day, Ahab will go to his grave; but he'll rise again and beckon, and all, all,save one, will follow." (Moby Dick) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 19 Jan 08 - 05:40 PM Yes, that's real drama...no doubt about it. Quite the tale. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 19 Jan 08 - 06:29 PM Who, in his right mind, would sail on the Pequod after that warning? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 19 Jan 08 - 06:38 PM A fatalist might. Or a man with a subliminal death wish. Or a man caught up in the irresistible pattern of his own destiny...like Ahab. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 20 Jan 08 - 07:50 AM I said, "In his right mind." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 20 Jan 08 - 12:15 PM Yes. (smile) Well, how many people are truly in their right mind? That's the question... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: DougR Date: 20 Jan 08 - 03:29 PM Folks got more than one mind, LH? Kendall: :>) DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 20 Jan 08 - 04:08 PM I've seen people that were of two minds... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Art Thieme Date: 20 Jan 08 - 05:44 PM folk lyric--trad: If I'd a-listened to my second mind, I'd be free and not doing this time! Art |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: fumblefingers Date: 20 Jan 08 - 10:05 PM Buffalo Hump (PO-CHA-N'A-QUAR-HIP) was a real Comanche War Chief. He, among other tribal chiefs and Sam Houston, signed the Treaty of Tehuacana Creek in 1844. But he broke it in 1845. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 21 Jan 08 - 08:16 AM Jacqui and I watched Commanche Moon yesterday. I simply couldn't connect with any of the characters at all. I saw it as a typical sequel not worth watching the first time, let alone a second. All those Star Trek wannabees are the same. No other characters can fill Spok's shoes, or McCoy's or Scotty's. You must have a good story line, but strong characters are what make or break the whole thing. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: Little Hawk Date: 21 Jan 08 - 11:31 AM Hey, man...nobody can fill Picard's or Data's shoes either! And they weren't in the first series. The original Star Trek was classic, no doubt...but the Next Generation show was actually a better drama with much superior acting and much superior storylines. Following that to the next lot of sequels after NG, however, I agree with your analogy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: DougR Date: 21 Jan 08 - 03:47 PM Gotta go with Kendall on this one. I tried the first episode of Commanche Moon over the weekend and couldn't get with the characters. Perhaps, if I had not read the book ...or seen Lonesome Dove. This production reminded me of a dime western movie in the mid to late 1930's. I didn't finish watching the first episode. DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series From: kendall Date: 21 Jan 08 - 04:36 PM That's what makes horse racing. I often get up to watch old Star Trek re runs at 6 am, but I wouldn't do that for any of the Johnnies come lately. Sorry, they just don't grab me. It's like HIGH NOON IN color. No thanks. |
