jake having so much swag but also balding…. JUDE LAW MENTIONED
my favorite guy is gus who is ultimately WOKE. newt is way too altruistic in a way that bodes badly for death etc. this is something i don’t care for because…
i want them to hang around and do nothing FOREVER. just when you think you’ve heard about all the guys here comes SOUPY and JULY (a preview for next week for those of you who aren’t ahead). i am annoyed they are going to montana because i could sit with these guys for the rest of my life
"Boseman is washed" - you, presumably. I think even on the road they will be doing mostly nothing but bicker and hang out. I agree that Bol's cooking seems good. I could probably eat beans for the rest of my life and feel fine.
100% with you on wanting them to hang out forever. why are we doing anything!!! just keep digging wells and arguing forever and i will be content!!! me shaking them
Immediately clear that this one is for the fellas. This is for the guys, the boys. Regarding McMurty's skillful introduction of guys I think he is following the Dickens school of character: give everyone one weird idiom or trait right off the bat that makes them funny. You've got yappers, guys who love hitting a pan with a crowbar for some reason, a guy with a REALLY dirty hat... so many yet they're all unforgettable.
My other favorite thing from the start is the vernacular. Sex is ONLY ever "a poke." Hilarious. Also "sporting woman" for whore is so perfect and funny. It all just lends itself perfectly to the hang out vibes and naturalistic dialogue. Fantastic
GUY WITH A REALLY DIRTY HAT!!! i literally had to pause and read the introduction of the saloon and its peoples to my boyfriend bc i was laughing soooo hard
I love the moment where Dish sees Jake chatting up Lorena and finds “his whole conception of woman changed; it was as if lightning had struck, burning his old notions to a crisp in one instant. Nothing was going to be as he had imagined it-maybe nothing ever would again.”. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and ridiculous. You’ll meet other women, Dish! McMurtry is so good at writing epiphanies and then subverting them as characters just keep living their lives regardless.
Dish's heartbreak is so potent - he is so flop I can't help but root for him. Jake is fun and I always love a cad, but Dish has potential to grow and grow. I'm hoping he can prove himself BRAVE. I get the sense in this book that a lot of these guys have jobs because they are not good at getting wives :(
Dish watching Lorena and Jake casually share a glass of whiskey!! "The sight embarrassed Dish profoundly -- it went to the pit of his stomach, like the sound of the creaking bed when he first heard it. He had never seen his ma and pa drink from the same glass, and they had been married people."
I love this book. I love how every mustache gets a full sentence to itself. I love the word "chaparral" and I learned what the word "shoat" means. I love the place names (Pickles Gap! Hat Creek!) and the atmosphere. Despite the onslaught of names and characters it does not feel crowded. The floating narration works so well, and I love that there's no rigidness to it.
I love the sign. "It galled Augustus severely that no one appreciated the fact that he had thought to write a Latin motto on a sign that all visitors could see as they rode in, though in fact those riding in took as little note of it as those already in, perhaps because getting to Lonesome Dove was such a hot, exhausting business. The few people who accomplished it were in no mood to stop and study erudite signs." Regrettably relatable.
I would hate to work with Gus and would love to know him. I would be terrified of both working with and knowing Call.
The sign of it all reminded me of the very very silly ending to Tombstone - which I am so glad we watched a few weeks back - where you're briefly reminded that outside of all this, it's like, fully the Gilded Age in New York. Of course there's someone who cares about Latin! But comparatively he is so stuck in another time and place.
The sign! That whole passage was such a delight, especially the bits about pea eye and deets getting their names on it. I know the Latin doesn’t make sense but in a way, thematically for the book, it’s perfect. A grape by living among other grapes is changed. I love all these grapes at lonesome dove.
I like that Lorena has more depth than what could easily be a super tropey character. She's not quite a "hooker with a heart of gold". She's not quite a helpless victim that needs saving. McMurtry gives her some contradictions and depth even if she gets a lot less screentime than the boys. I'm curious where her story goes and if it devolves into something less interesting.
Idk why but Jake Spoon gives me the ick. Gus's sourdough starter that he's been cultivating for a decade endeared him to me. I do kinda relate to Call just being like, I'm bored, let's go to Montana for the hell of it and everyone just going along with it bc Call is the serious one and not normally prone to flights of fancy.
I'm curious where he's going with Lorena, who definitely dances between tropes and isn't quite mommy to all these guys but there's something there. I have to assume we're going to get Clara in the mix who may provide a good foil to her. I'd like to see her storyline be more than which guy will she wind up with and I'm curious about the San Francisco of it all... I have been to the Lewis and Clark museum in St. Louis so many times that big journeys west (as she might embark on) move me on concept alone.
Strong agree that Jake Spoon is not to be trusted. Clearly he's a decent lay, but he's also playing with Lorena's heart -- promising to take her to SF one minute, calling it pillow talk the next. Also, everyone's suspicious that he's got a thing for wearing clean clothes and dental hygiene and, look, generally speaking these are things that I like in my friends here in the year of our lord 2025, but if I were living in Lonesome Dove with all these guys I might put these concerns on the backburner for a little while. Do as the Romans do. I have a feeling that there's more to the dead dentist story.
Also, I feel really bad for Newt, who's just desperate for this guy's attention now that he's back in town. Instead, he has to watch one of his father figures rizz up his crush? Tough break, kid.
I am also surprised by how readable this is. I do like Westerns for movies but usually less so with novels. This one has gripped me though, I can't put it down, which I did not expect!
it is so pleasant to read (but I really mean ‘listen to’!) these guys chit chatting all day and night because there is really nothing better to do other than sex and gambling and drinking. getting the same feeling from this that I get reading Austen or Dickens and I’m struck by how clever everyone is—talk is more than a tool it’s a sport unto itself. when dish is hungover and Gus says “Aw, he’s all right…he just wanted to see how fast he could drink two bottles of whiskey” it made me laugh and laugh.
my thoughts on chapters 1-10 before I catch up tonight:
dude can write. we get a great perspective of each character and how they perceive the others, like the origins of Dish's name making him out to be a dummy while Newt views him as a classic cowboy hero. he has even more intense worship of Jake Spoon (good name), meanwhile the wiser old-timers think of Jake as someone who “just dreamed his way through life and somehow got by with it”. (goals, IMHO) The legend of Jake’s lucky shot is a great example of this phenomenon.
it's funny too! The Irishman finishing a bottle, throwing it off into the darkness, and announcing they’re all packed, the bit about "they're liable to shoot a Mexican just to be safe" in the first few pages, the whole saga of Gus' sign “I’d risk a few nags for the opportunity to shoot at an educated man for a change”. lots of comedy coming from those differences in perspective.
Newt's naivete reminds me of Jimmy Blevins from All the Pretty Horses; I hope he doesn't have a similar fate. I haven’t read much Western novels, but McMurtry certainly reads smoother than McCarthy based on these two examples.
praying that there is more than one female character with interiority...so far we really just have Lorena...
how do y'all pronounce "I'god"? Been struggling with that particular exclamation.
Favorite passages:
“Looking at her was like looking at the hills. The hills stayed as they were. You could go to them, if you had the means, but they extended no greeting.” Brother if that aint EXACTLY what it’s like to fail to talk to a hot girl…
“Gus loved to live and had no intention of letting anyone do him out of any of his pleasures” also goals
It's interesting that all these guys have built mythologies out around each other as well - they exist both in story form to us but story form to each other as well - Spoon being the big example of that.
oh forgot maybe the funniest recurring bit: characters casually hoping for someone else's death while feeling a lil bad about it. everyone's glad Therese dies, Dish is hoping Jake gets it on their trip to Mexico, Gus is hoping Clara Allen's husband has died.
Having too much fun reading everybody’s comments to think of any smart shit to say! I’ll just add that given the remoteness of the setting I enjoy thinking about what these characters actually look like. Everyone falls head over heels for Lorena but she is also strongly implied to be the only single woman of marrying age for several days’ ride. Same goes with Jake, whom I suspect may not be that handsome but does seem to have a bit of emotional intelligence and experience with women that the other men lack. Maybe by the end of this I’ll come up with a fantasy casting for the 1950s film adaptation.
I think a lot about the ages, imagining that Dish and Jake are probably our age(ish) whereas Call and Gus are maybe in their 50s? I always tend to age everyone up when I read, but I think there are more or less three generations at play here all about 15 years apart from each other. There exists a possibility that Dish is hotter but has less swag :(
McMurty May is already a true delight. I didn't expect to laugh so much but the lengthy description of Lippy's biohazard hat brought me to a full LOL when he revealed it was "also Lippy's pillow."
Jake Spoon daydreaming his way through life and developing an undeserved reputation as a sharp shooter for accidentally hitting a guy in the Adam's apple a million years ago while also being the One Hot Guy was really giving Jon Hamm's 30 Rock doctor. I don't think he's Newt's dad although I do think he's dumb enough to convince himself he's Newt's dad.
The whole Montana plan is giving me strong whiffs of an MLM recruitment scheme. What was the Wild West equivalent of Lularoe?
I do love when guys in the wild west make a 1 in a million shot and it ruins their lives... that ONLY happens in the wild west, nowhere else.
When I read a book about the Donner party a few years back there was all this stuff on the MLM-adjacent travel companies that promised safe passage across the country but most of those guys didn't know wtf they were doing. Praying it does not come to this with our friends in Lonesome Dove.
i read LD last year and it was immediately top 5 all time for me, i'm really excited to follow McMurtry May and maybe make my little comments here or there. I'm a Gus, I'm not really participating but I have thoughts.
My friend then you are not actually a Gus - if Gus were in this book club there'd be 15 comments in here before I even finished my first cup of coffee (which, speaking of, i find it funny that the only things Gus knows how to make are biscuits and coffee, and everyone hates his coffee).
The first 15 chapters have been a real pleasure, and I'm looking forward to the next 80+ over the next few weeks! What's really struck me is how there's this strong current of deadly violence that touches the fellas and the lady of Lonesome Dove every day. Life seems very, very cheap. There's not many people who are missed now that they're gone, named or not. That violence all drifting towards the West being "won" felt most succinctly summarized by Newt when he thinks "Evidently if you crossed the river to do it [steal horses], it stopped being a crime and became a game." He goes on to wonder if horse stealing is a capital offense in Mexico too, which it very well might be. Gus has his own summary of the process that's occurred and will continue to occur until today.(the "I wanted a look at it before the bankers and lawyers get it.” stuff), but I prefer Newt's. His is more specific to the way actual people navigate these totally arbitrary and abstract systems that nonetheless carry very real and serious consequences.
You can really tell they're all kind of an endangered species, which is the inherent romantic tragedy of the western to me - we had this time, we lost this time, it's good it's not still happening but man, what a time!! There's a great book called White Flights by Jess Row about expansionism in literature and the notion of "space" - highly rec, have been thinking about a lot in context of LD.
Ty for the recommendation! I'll add it to my list. And "endangered species" is a great descriptor for who these people are, because this is really their twilight
McMurtry's got y'all raving about them biscuits, hasn't he? All it took was a lil bit of prose... You lot are sure gonna be easy buyers of his molasses-dipped roasted grasshoppers
i’m genuinely kind of blown away by the different father-ish archetypes. i have a feeling that’s going to be the big thematic push of the novel for me, all of these men who are distinct and flawed archetypes trying to figure out if they can be a dad to this kid (Newt) who just wants a dad and can’t figure out what’s going on. ofc if i wrote the book they would all end up in a “Let’s-Raise-Newt” polycule but this is a western and so they will probably all refuse to take responsibility until Newt does something stupid to try and be a man like the rest of them and tragedy ensues. or something. and it will make me upset!! literally cant wait.
It does seem kind of like a Full House situation - "my seven dads" - though immediately upon introduction I assumed Jake Spoon was Newt's dad (I think not the case... not correct ages... but also trying to keep track of age is proving more difficult than telling guys apart).
i think it’s Call and i’m almost 100% sure but i will happily be proven wrong (it’s actually just some rando but the guys feel some sort of responsibility bc they loved Newt’s mom or something etc)
Call makes the most sense, I just love when guys who are kind of like unrelenting playboys are forced to be fathers...... but I have 2000s romcoms if I need to visit that trope as opposed to a pulitzer prize winning western
I also kind of assumed for the first five chapters that we'd just be hanging out with these guys indefinitely--worse things could happen! I'm obviously coming at this from a place of (almost) exclusively reading a genre that is held together by plot beats in romance and had little idea of what to expect as far as plot goes for a genre defined by setting.
I'm also not sure how much to expect conventions from Western movies and TV to inform the goings on, though the boom of Westerns in the second half of the 20th century seem to suggest that the cause and effect is less clear cut that I would imagine. I think I generally assume that literature influences movies and TV, but with Westerns long history with cinema, my sense is that might be the other direction here, or at least a clearer back and forth exchange!
I also saw McMurtry (unfavorably) compare Lonesome Dove to Gone with the Wind, with the epic sentimentality, especially from its readers. At least in romance, there are a lot of reasons that readers now try to distance the genres history from GWTW, both politically and for genre conventions. But I think it is great example of a genre fiction node, kind of before the walls got so thick between things.
One of my big blindspots WRT Westerns is how often these guys are drawn from real guys - it's simply not a mythology I'm especially aware of. I'm a guy who had to google Wyatt Earp - literally thought he was just a crossword clue. Something to discuss later on is who is based on what, exactly, or who is an amalgam of whatever real kinds of guys we did used to have. GWTW is a huge blindspot for me!!
The line between lawman and entertainer in the West is so interesting with guys like Earp! Like I think of him as a "real Cowboy" and someone like Wild Bill Hickok as mostly an entertainer because of his association with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, but Earp died at 80 in LA and was friend with movie stars and Hickok died in a poker fight (as seen on Deadwood).
(I was Annie Oakley for Halloween when I was six--this did not lead to any major interest in Westerns after this one costume occasion!)
jake having so much swag but also balding…. JUDE LAW MENTIONED
my favorite guy is gus who is ultimately WOKE. newt is way too altruistic in a way that bodes badly for death etc. this is something i don’t care for because…
i want them to hang around and do nothing FOREVER. just when you think you’ve heard about all the guys here comes SOUPY and JULY (a preview for next week for those of you who aren’t ahead). i am annoyed they are going to montana because i could sit with these guys for the rest of my life
"Boseman is washed" - you, presumably. I think even on the road they will be doing mostly nothing but bicker and hang out. I agree that Bol's cooking seems good. I could probably eat beans for the rest of my life and feel fine.
i would never say that about montana - that’s where yellowstone is
Right
100% with you on wanting them to hang out forever. why are we doing anything!!! just keep digging wells and arguing forever and i will be content!!! me shaking them
- gus
July is topping my man tier list currently no spoilers
he’s def up there. i want him to get annoyed tho
Immediately clear that this one is for the fellas. This is for the guys, the boys. Regarding McMurty's skillful introduction of guys I think he is following the Dickens school of character: give everyone one weird idiom or trait right off the bat that makes them funny. You've got yappers, guys who love hitting a pan with a crowbar for some reason, a guy with a REALLY dirty hat... so many yet they're all unforgettable.
My other favorite thing from the start is the vernacular. Sex is ONLY ever "a poke." Hilarious. Also "sporting woman" for whore is so perfect and funny. It all just lends itself perfectly to the hang out vibes and naturalistic dialogue. Fantastic
I like when they say PIZZLE
yeah we need to get more of a LIPPY chat going
say lippy keep it going
LIPPY
lippy......... is so nasty sorry
lippy !!!!!!!!!!!! excited to watch the miniseries specifically for lippy
lippy spin off limited series in 2025 - i’m the show runner
Lippy reminds me of the guy who sings and plays the piano at Famous Sammy’s Roumanian on the LES.
Lippy's the Nick Nightingale of the Old West
I love Lippy and I immediately forgot what happened to his lip :( It's hard to live in the Old West I guess.
dicks being a carrot is the worst thing about this book IMO!!!
counterpoint: dicks being a carrot is good, actually
It's "tool" also sometimes. What kills me is that it's so universal like every man and woman just says carrot
GUY WITH A REALLY DIRTY HAT!!! i literally had to pause and read the introduction of the saloon and its peoples to my boyfriend bc i was laughing soooo hard
When Jake Spoon comes back to town and he's like "Lippy still got that hat?" LMAO
lol
When Therese's tragic accidental death comes up and then it becomes clear everyone's glad she's dead
I love the moment where Dish sees Jake chatting up Lorena and finds “his whole conception of woman changed; it was as if lightning had struck, burning his old notions to a crisp in one instant. Nothing was going to be as he had imagined it-maybe nothing ever would again.”. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and ridiculous. You’ll meet other women, Dish! McMurtry is so good at writing epiphanies and then subverting them as characters just keep living their lives regardless.
Dish's heartbreak is so potent - he is so flop I can't help but root for him. Jake is fun and I always love a cad, but Dish has potential to grow and grow. I'm hoping he can prove himself BRAVE. I get the sense in this book that a lot of these guys have jobs because they are not good at getting wives :(
i honestly didn't feel bad for Dish at all when it switched to Lorena's POV and she just does not care about him whatsoever. I thought it was so funny
I'm an empath!!!!!!!!
dish is the flop of the CENTURY!!!
this
Dish watching Lorena and Jake casually share a glass of whiskey!! "The sight embarrassed Dish profoundly -- it went to the pit of his stomach, like the sound of the creaking bed when he first heard it. He had never seen his ma and pa drink from the same glass, and they had been married people."
Dish taking third wheeling to a whole new level in that moment
I love this book. I love how every mustache gets a full sentence to itself. I love the word "chaparral" and I learned what the word "shoat" means. I love the place names (Pickles Gap! Hat Creek!) and the atmosphere. Despite the onslaught of names and characters it does not feel crowded. The floating narration works so well, and I love that there's no rigidness to it.
I love the sign. "It galled Augustus severely that no one appreciated the fact that he had thought to write a Latin motto on a sign that all visitors could see as they rode in, though in fact those riding in took as little note of it as those already in, perhaps because getting to Lonesome Dove was such a hot, exhausting business. The few people who accomplished it were in no mood to stop and study erudite signs." Regrettably relatable.
I would hate to work with Gus and would love to know him. I would be terrified of both working with and knowing Call.
The sign of it all reminded me of the very very silly ending to Tombstone - which I am so glad we watched a few weeks back - where you're briefly reminded that outside of all this, it's like, fully the Gilded Age in New York. Of course there's someone who cares about Latin! But comparatively he is so stuck in another time and place.
The sign! That whole passage was such a delight, especially the bits about pea eye and deets getting their names on it. I know the Latin doesn’t make sense but in a way, thematically for the book, it’s perfect. A grape by living among other grapes is changed. I love all these grapes at lonesome dove.
I like that Lorena has more depth than what could easily be a super tropey character. She's not quite a "hooker with a heart of gold". She's not quite a helpless victim that needs saving. McMurtry gives her some contradictions and depth even if she gets a lot less screentime than the boys. I'm curious where her story goes and if it devolves into something less interesting.
Idk why but Jake Spoon gives me the ick. Gus's sourdough starter that he's been cultivating for a decade endeared him to me. I do kinda relate to Call just being like, I'm bored, let's go to Montana for the hell of it and everyone just going along with it bc Call is the serious one and not normally prone to flights of fancy.
I'm curious where he's going with Lorena, who definitely dances between tropes and isn't quite mommy to all these guys but there's something there. I have to assume we're going to get Clara in the mix who may provide a good foil to her. I'd like to see her storyline be more than which guy will she wind up with and I'm curious about the San Francisco of it all... I have been to the Lewis and Clark museum in St. Louis so many times that big journeys west (as she might embark on) move me on concept alone.
agreed, if her story just becomes who does she marry, that's lame. so we'll see!
Strong agree that Jake Spoon is not to be trusted. Clearly he's a decent lay, but he's also playing with Lorena's heart -- promising to take her to SF one minute, calling it pillow talk the next. Also, everyone's suspicious that he's got a thing for wearing clean clothes and dental hygiene and, look, generally speaking these are things that I like in my friends here in the year of our lord 2025, but if I were living in Lonesome Dove with all these guys I might put these concerns on the backburner for a little while. Do as the Romans do. I have a feeling that there's more to the dead dentist story.
Also, I feel really bad for Newt, who's just desperate for this guy's attention now that he's back in town. Instead, he has to watch one of his father figures rizz up his crush? Tough break, kid.
I am also surprised by how readable this is. I do like Westerns for movies but usually less so with novels. This one has gripped me though, I can't put it down, which I did not expect!
I'm in catch up mode but just wanted to say that misty instead of tipsy is really fun
it’s soooo nice
it is so pleasant to read (but I really mean ‘listen to’!) these guys chit chatting all day and night because there is really nothing better to do other than sex and gambling and drinking. getting the same feeling from this that I get reading Austen or Dickens and I’m struck by how clever everyone is—talk is more than a tool it’s a sport unto itself. when dish is hungover and Gus says “Aw, he’s all right…he just wanted to see how fast he could drink two bottles of whiskey” it made me laugh and laugh.
Yapping used to mean something in this world...
my thoughts on chapters 1-10 before I catch up tonight:
dude can write. we get a great perspective of each character and how they perceive the others, like the origins of Dish's name making him out to be a dummy while Newt views him as a classic cowboy hero. he has even more intense worship of Jake Spoon (good name), meanwhile the wiser old-timers think of Jake as someone who “just dreamed his way through life and somehow got by with it”. (goals, IMHO) The legend of Jake’s lucky shot is a great example of this phenomenon.
it's funny too! The Irishman finishing a bottle, throwing it off into the darkness, and announcing they’re all packed, the bit about "they're liable to shoot a Mexican just to be safe" in the first few pages, the whole saga of Gus' sign “I’d risk a few nags for the opportunity to shoot at an educated man for a change”. lots of comedy coming from those differences in perspective.
Newt's naivete reminds me of Jimmy Blevins from All the Pretty Horses; I hope he doesn't have a similar fate. I haven’t read much Western novels, but McMurtry certainly reads smoother than McCarthy based on these two examples.
praying that there is more than one female character with interiority...so far we really just have Lorena...
how do y'all pronounce "I'god"? Been struggling with that particular exclamation.
Favorite passages:
“Looking at her was like looking at the hills. The hills stayed as they were. You could go to them, if you had the means, but they extended no greeting.” Brother if that aint EXACTLY what it’s like to fail to talk to a hot girl…
“Gus loved to live and had no intention of letting anyone do him out of any of his pleasures” also goals
It's interesting that all these guys have built mythologies out around each other as well - they exist both in story form to us but story form to each other as well - Spoon being the big example of that.
and don't we all exist as characters in our friends' (and enemies') stories?
oh forgot maybe the funniest recurring bit: characters casually hoping for someone else's death while feeling a lil bad about it. everyone's glad Therese dies, Dish is hoping Jake gets it on their trip to Mexico, Gus is hoping Clara Allen's husband has died.
Therese's death had me jbol
"Therese got kilt, thank God." WOOF
re: ‘I God - i hear it like *thick southern accent* my god. just cut off the “m” and lean real hard into the “i”
long I!!!!
laughed out LOUD at "just discovered teeth"
Having too much fun reading everybody’s comments to think of any smart shit to say! I’ll just add that given the remoteness of the setting I enjoy thinking about what these characters actually look like. Everyone falls head over heels for Lorena but she is also strongly implied to be the only single woman of marrying age for several days’ ride. Same goes with Jake, whom I suspect may not be that handsome but does seem to have a bit of emotional intelligence and experience with women that the other men lack. Maybe by the end of this I’ll come up with a fantasy casting for the 1950s film adaptation.
I think a lot about the ages, imagining that Dish and Jake are probably our age(ish) whereas Call and Gus are maybe in their 50s? I always tend to age everyone up when I read, but I think there are more or less three generations at play here all about 15 years apart from each other. There exists a possibility that Dish is hotter but has less swag :(
no I think Dish is just the cousin Greg of the gang
Dish is in his early 20s. Maybe only 21. Jake is older, maybe even 40!
i think it's actively implied that jake ISN'T handsome, he's just the only guy with swag
McMurty May is already a true delight. I didn't expect to laugh so much but the lengthy description of Lippy's biohazard hat brought me to a full LOL when he revealed it was "also Lippy's pillow."
Jake Spoon daydreaming his way through life and developing an undeserved reputation as a sharp shooter for accidentally hitting a guy in the Adam's apple a million years ago while also being the One Hot Guy was really giving Jon Hamm's 30 Rock doctor. I don't think he's Newt's dad although I do think he's dumb enough to convince himself he's Newt's dad.
The whole Montana plan is giving me strong whiffs of an MLM recruitment scheme. What was the Wild West equivalent of Lularoe?
I do love when guys in the wild west make a 1 in a million shot and it ruins their lives... that ONLY happens in the wild west, nowhere else.
When I read a book about the Donner party a few years back there was all this stuff on the MLM-adjacent travel companies that promised safe passage across the country but most of those guys didn't know wtf they were doing. Praying it does not come to this with our friends in Lonesome Dove.
i read LD last year and it was immediately top 5 all time for me, i'm really excited to follow McMurtry May and maybe make my little comments here or there. I'm a Gus, I'm not really participating but I have thoughts.
My friend then you are not actually a Gus - if Gus were in this book club there'd be 15 comments in here before I even finished my first cup of coffee (which, speaking of, i find it funny that the only things Gus knows how to make are biscuits and coffee, and everyone hates his coffee).
The first 15 chapters have been a real pleasure, and I'm looking forward to the next 80+ over the next few weeks! What's really struck me is how there's this strong current of deadly violence that touches the fellas and the lady of Lonesome Dove every day. Life seems very, very cheap. There's not many people who are missed now that they're gone, named or not. That violence all drifting towards the West being "won" felt most succinctly summarized by Newt when he thinks "Evidently if you crossed the river to do it [steal horses], it stopped being a crime and became a game." He goes on to wonder if horse stealing is a capital offense in Mexico too, which it very well might be. Gus has his own summary of the process that's occurred and will continue to occur until today.(the "I wanted a look at it before the bankers and lawyers get it.” stuff), but I prefer Newt's. His is more specific to the way actual people navigate these totally arbitrary and abstract systems that nonetheless carry very real and serious consequences.
You can really tell they're all kind of an endangered species, which is the inherent romantic tragedy of the western to me - we had this time, we lost this time, it's good it's not still happening but man, what a time!! There's a great book called White Flights by Jess Row about expansionism in literature and the notion of "space" - highly rec, have been thinking about a lot in context of LD.
Ty for the recommendation! I'll add it to my list. And "endangered species" is a great descriptor for who these people are, because this is really their twilight
McMurtry's got y'all raving about them biscuits, hasn't he? All it took was a lil bit of prose... You lot are sure gonna be easy buyers of his molasses-dipped roasted grasshoppers
Fwiw I have always been a biscuit head.... though the sourdough of it all intrigues me
i’m genuinely kind of blown away by the different father-ish archetypes. i have a feeling that’s going to be the big thematic push of the novel for me, all of these men who are distinct and flawed archetypes trying to figure out if they can be a dad to this kid (Newt) who just wants a dad and can’t figure out what’s going on. ofc if i wrote the book they would all end up in a “Let’s-Raise-Newt” polycule but this is a western and so they will probably all refuse to take responsibility until Newt does something stupid to try and be a man like the rest of them and tragedy ensues. or something. and it will make me upset!! literally cant wait.
It does seem kind of like a Full House situation - "my seven dads" - though immediately upon introduction I assumed Jake Spoon was Newt's dad (I think not the case... not correct ages... but also trying to keep track of age is proving more difficult than telling guys apart).
i think it’s Call and i’m almost 100% sure but i will happily be proven wrong (it’s actually just some rando but the guys feel some sort of responsibility bc they loved Newt’s mom or something etc)
Call makes the most sense, I just love when guys who are kind of like unrelenting playboys are forced to be fathers...... but I have 2000s romcoms if I need to visit that trope as opposed to a pulitzer prize winning western
guys i love full house!! every where you look... there's a guy!
I want to eat a biscuit so bad.
I also kind of assumed for the first five chapters that we'd just be hanging out with these guys indefinitely--worse things could happen! I'm obviously coming at this from a place of (almost) exclusively reading a genre that is held together by plot beats in romance and had little idea of what to expect as far as plot goes for a genre defined by setting.
I'm also not sure how much to expect conventions from Western movies and TV to inform the goings on, though the boom of Westerns in the second half of the 20th century seem to suggest that the cause and effect is less clear cut that I would imagine. I think I generally assume that literature influences movies and TV, but with Westerns long history with cinema, my sense is that might be the other direction here, or at least a clearer back and forth exchange!
I also saw McMurtry (unfavorably) compare Lonesome Dove to Gone with the Wind, with the epic sentimentality, especially from its readers. At least in romance, there are a lot of reasons that readers now try to distance the genres history from GWTW, both politically and for genre conventions. But I think it is great example of a genre fiction node, kind of before the walls got so thick between things.
One of my big blindspots WRT Westerns is how often these guys are drawn from real guys - it's simply not a mythology I'm especially aware of. I'm a guy who had to google Wyatt Earp - literally thought he was just a crossword clue. Something to discuss later on is who is based on what, exactly, or who is an amalgam of whatever real kinds of guys we did used to have. GWTW is a huge blindspot for me!!
The line between lawman and entertainer in the West is so interesting with guys like Earp! Like I think of him as a "real Cowboy" and someone like Wild Bill Hickok as mostly an entertainer because of his association with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, but Earp died at 80 in LA and was friend with movie stars and Hickok died in a poker fight (as seen on Deadwood).
(I was Annie Oakley for Halloween when I was six--this did not lead to any major interest in Westerns after this one costume occasion!)
the ignorance of famous Old West guys makes Tombstone pretty inscrutable the first time.
this
my Texan friend Michael Walker suggested i read BLOOD AND THUNDER to fully understand Kit Carson, who gets made fun of by Gus at some point
I am baffled by how the coffee made the eggs so hard though.
Me too - baffled and grossed out.