McMurtry May, Volume 1

'I god, it's hot

Welcome to the first Monday of McMurtry May — the month(ish) long bookclub where we’ll be reading Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.

Ideally, you’ll have read Chapters 1 through 15 — I have — and be down to discuss as much or as little of those pages as you like. I know quite a few of you have read ahead to accommodate your own schedules (or simply because you couldn’t put the book down), and though I myself am spoiler agnostic, I’d rather you not dig into events or turns that have yet to occur in this week’s reading.

If you’ve had any issues getting a copy — or are interested in a digital version for on-the-go reading — please reach out to me directly, and I can help!

Let’s remember some guys

Right off the bat, McMurtry throws a handful of guys at us: We have Augustus “Gus” McCrae¹. we have Captain Woodrow Call. We have Newt. We have Pea Eye. We have Bolivar, the cook. We have Deets. We have Dishwater Boggett. We have Jake Spoon, who may or may not be really hot. We have all these characters.

Gus and Call are retired Rangers who now run the Hat Creek Cattle Company in a small border town called — ready for it — Lonesome Dove. Pea Eye, Newt, Bol, Deets — these guys are functionally employees, but most of what these guys set out to do are menial household tasks, eat meals together, and get into little arguments with one another.

Gus and Call are dramatic foils to one another. Gus has “yapper’s mentality”: clearly he is intelligent and educated, but he is also annoying and philosophical and a bit of a rake. Call, by contrast, is stoic and serious. He is the real worker on the ranch, with everyone obeying his order and sensibilities rather than Gus, who is mostly there for company and really good sourdough biscuits.

There’s a gentle floating point of view that drifts around McMurtry’s prose, but I’m immediately impressed by the way in which he’s able to introduce so many characters towards the beginning of the novel and setting them all apart from one another. McMurtry begins the book by showing us a slow and steady 24 hours on the land — the men rise, they eat, they bicker, some work, some don’t (Gus), they eat, Call goes for a long walk, Newt wonders who his father is, the stars come out and so on. There are snakes and pigs and a horse named Hell Bitch that bit the hell out of Call’s shoulder.²

There is also Lorena — more or less the one woman in town. Newt loves her. Gus loves her. Dish loves her. She’s good at gambling!

The rhythms of the dialogue are especially appealing — you can really hear the musicality of speech as McMurtry writes it. As is mentioned in the post’s subhead, I love every time they say “‘I God” as opposed to “by god” or “my god.” These character names are all especially memorable, but I think they are most memorable in how McMurtry plays with vowels: Dish, Spoon, Lorena, Pea Eye. These are exercises in drawing out your mouth and pushing breath.

In having this floating third person POV, McMurtry can give his most lush passages of observation to Gus, who is prone to sentimentality and exposition, who observes the sky like so: “The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.” But then McMurtry also grants his most notable economy of language to Call, who late one night on a walk observes the sky like so: “Clouds were scarcer than cash money, and cash money was scarce enough.”

For the first chunk of the novel, I wondered the extent to which McMurtry was going to impose a plot onto things. That’s not to say I assumed Lonesome Dove was plotless, but rather than I instantly felt as though it did not need a big action through which we had to understand these characters. Like many great Westerns, I imagined that it would come together cumulatively. But if there is a catalyst in this first fifth of the novel so far, it’s the arrival of Jake Spoon — a former Ranger and pal of the gang — who has been traipsing about the country drinking and gambling. He is wanted for the murder of a dentist, and he keeps hyping up Montana. Suddenly, guys who have worked hard to not go very far are suddenly wondering: “Should we move to Montana?”

Part of what appeals about moving north is that these guys appear to have been play-acting post-Ranger life with one another. They steal and sell horses, they tend cattle, they keep a lookout for violence. They are all a little past their prime except Newt, who would like to be one of the fellas but is just a little too young. Montana allows for opportunity, for snow. Lonesome Dove is stuck in time — its population dwindling as the long 19th century wanes. These characters don’t seem motivated aggressively by money or profit — unless it’s to buy time with Lorena — but they do want feel constrained by the wide open life they’ve built for themselves.

A few highlighted passages

The one white barber in Lonesome Dove, a fellow Tennessean named Dillard Brawley, had to do his barbering on one leg because he had not been cautious enough about centipedes.

There are a lot of critters in the first part of this book: snakes, pigs, bugs. Not to brag but when I was in south Texas a month ago, I did also see fire ants. Scary!

After Newt and Deets are found laughing together:

“Look at ‘em,” Augustus said. “You’d think they just discovered teeth.”

The Irish guys they find in Mexico who are singing are kinda giving

A few things I looked up

• Bowie knife: I had heard of a Bowie knife but never had been curious enough to learn who Bowie was or what made it a Bowie knife as opposed to a regular knife. The Bowie knife was invented by this man, Rezin Pleasant (!) Bowie:

• Chaparral: From context clues it was clear to me that this was grass. WRONG: it’s shrubs. Here’s an awesome video you can watch about chaparral.

Turning it over to you

How are you liking Lonesome Dove? What has stood out to you so far? Are there any guys you’re mixing up? I briefly mixed up Dish and Jake, but it soon became clear to me that Dish is swagless and Jake is swagful. Could you cut it as a rancher? How about playing cards? Is it funny that Jake Spoon shot a dentist or should dentists be a protected class? How about those biscuits? I’m always worried I’m not writing enough here but I know we’ll be yapping it up in the comments.

1. Tate’s ancestor? Kidding… unless…

2. Bandit scratching my hand teas.