McMurtry May, Volume 2

I'm sorry but we have to talk about the snakes

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Welcome back to McMurtry May, the book club where we’re all reading Lonesome Dove. This is the second discussion post which will cover the events in the novel up through Chapter 40.

Quick poll

I’m not stressed about the possibility of McMurtry May going a little further into June if that’s what people want. For me, personally, I always start the week wondering how I’ll get through everything and then finding I’ve accidentally read a little ahead.

New guys in the mix

We’re now a small chunk of the way into Part II, and as we got there, a few new folks are in the mix:

• New cowhands for the journey from Texas to Montana

• July Johnson, the woebegone sheriff brother of the man that Jake Spoon killed, who is now going to kill try to kill Jake Spoon himself even though he doesn’t seem too keen on it

• Elmira, July’s wife who hates him and is depressed, and Joe, her son

• Roscoe, the deputy sheriff who was supposed to keep an eye on Elmira while July is gone but loses her basically immediately

• Louisa, random farmer woman who tries to get Roscoe to marry her

• Mr. Sedgwick, an entomologist who they have to fish out of the mud

  • Lowkey NEED a whole new part of a book about him and the bugs he’s looking into

I found the shift in point of view from our friends from Hat Creek over to July Johnson and co. looking for Jake Spoon to be a welcome broadening of the narrative events of the novel so far, especially as Jake Spoon in particular is proving himself especially worthless, running low on swag when forced to survive in the elements. Guy nearly succumbed to a THORN. Bffr!!!

The grim shift in Jake Spoon and Lorena’s relationship felt both inevitable and disappointing: the second these two get on the road it’s clear they are not going to have a good time with one another. While Lorena takes to the road with bumpy ease, Jake has a meltdown constantly: he doesn’t want to do anything or help anyone or get anything done. He wants to stop off in San Antonio and gamble. He wants to move to Denver. I fundamentally agree with both of these on instinct, but it’s not the time or place for either.

McMurtry is not so basic as to have this book be a story of heroes and villains, or the brave and the cowardly, but rather shows us who is valuable and worth rooting for based on their willingness to participate. Not to make this about me, but I played a great game of kickball this weekend with a few grad school friends, and part of what makes something like recreational sports actually fun is the willingness of each and every person to participate and buy in at the same level. What’s clear so early into this journey is that very few character in Lonesome Dove are on the same page about their journey, more than willing to drop the ball if the going gets not so good. Guys like Bolivar and Jake Spoon and even Roscoe become their own worst enemies, incapable of rallying around a common cause other than their own self-preservation, and these guys aren’t so much good at that as they are lucky.

That’s part of why Call and Augustus continue to prove themselves so likable: they are useful. For all that the men like to rag on Augustus for being lazy and chatty (who among us!), he’s made himself light and worthy entertainment, granting Lorena a few moments of human connection and coffee on their journey ahead.

Snakes vs. Irishman

I got a few messages over the course of the week that the violence in Lonesome Dove “gets intense” or “is traumatic” or “escalates quickly” or “is worse than expected.” I imagine there’s more gruesome imagery to come, but the mental image of poor Sean O’Brien getting swarmed by water moccasins and succumbing to multiple bite wounds certainly lingers in the mind’s eye.

The main thing I thought of when this happened is the scene in Peter Jackson’s King Kong when Andy Serkis gets eaten by centipedes — a scene so harrowing that I had to walk out of the theater at age 14.

Because McMurtry shows this scene from Newt’s point of view, the event feels especially upsetting — this is our youngest character and he’s witnessing something truly horrible. That life in the West is “cheap” is not an especially new idea to use — people who read books and watch movies and television — but it is new to him.

He kept feeling he ought to leave the cattle and go talk to Sean, even if it was too late for Sean to answer, but he was afraid to. He didn’t know what to do, and he sat on his horse and cried until he started vomiting. He had to leave over and vomit beneath his horse’s neck.

In his mind he began to wish for some way to undo what had happened — to make the days run backward, to the time when they were still in Lonesome Dove. He imagined Sean alive and well — and did what he had not done, told him to go off to Galveston and find a boat to take him home.

Newt’s denial and painful acceptance of circumstances makes this all the more horrible to read (twice, because I’ve just put it above here — sorry about that). I feel this won’t be the last of the Hat Creek crew to leave us, but getting this awful event through Newt shatters what’s left of the innocence of this landscape.

I had to finally Google what hobbling a horse is

Obviously I know what it means “to hobble” but I didn’t specifically know what this meant or looked like. It looks like this.

Free them!!!

I rock with Elmira

Last week in the comments, my dad compared this novel to The Odyssey.¹ I think that’s accurate and fair to do — there is something Greco-Roman about all of this, down to the names — and while most of the novel reads like guys on ships with their own individual crews and quirks, we now have an actual character on a (whiskey) boat and that’s July Johnson’s annoyed and depressed (soon-to-be ex?)wife Elmira who has left him in his absence. She abandons her empty home to hop on a boat and find her lost love Dee Boot.

Elmira gets my favorite line of this latest chunk we’ve read:

None of you are quite normal, Elmira thought, and I mut not be either, or I wouldn’t be here.

Same can be said of the Fran Magazine comments section!! KIDDING!

Dish redemption arc

Dish is still simping for Lorena, but he has not yet humiliated himself on the road yet. Could this spell redemption for Dish? Sound off below.

Turning it over to you

I am sorry to make you read about all these snakes and I am sorry if anyone is haunted by the idea of all those snakes on a guy. For what it’s worth, Fran Magazine is pro-snake (mostly they’re nice!) and pro-Irish, so this new portion brings me no joy to discuss. What are you thinking, responding to, enjoying, or stressed about? Is Jake Spoon flopping? Do you think Mr. Sedgwick comes back? Do you think conditions will improve once they hit Oklahoma or whatever state comes next? Would you have stopped off in San Antonio to gamble?

1. Stream Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey coming in 2026.