Spoiler-free warning: the snakes are really nothing in the violence department compared to what is to come. I highly recommend sensitive readers check content warnings before going much further because I had a genuine nightmare after some of this shit.
That said I'm overall still rocking with this book. I love both July and Elmira individually and their whole deal deeply amuses me. July trying so hard to be a good and normal husband and accidentally infuriating Elmira by doing nothing at all really made me laugh.
I guess my greater point about this is that i find McMurty a surprisingly empathetic writer of women in the way that they are all so ambivalent about men. Lorena, Louisa (queen), and Elmira are all merely tolerating them with varying degrees of success. Even though Lorena was starstruck by Jake at first she quickly sees him for who he is once he's put to the test and that pleasantly surprised me. She has shown no signs of being "in love" with him, Gus, or anyone else. Louisa will settle for bozo Roscoe because she's horny. Elmira felt like getting married was her only option but quickly realized it was awful when she saw July drink milk; I actually don't even think she really loves Dee Boot so much as finds him a convenient guy to have around. The wild west is these fellas and you can't live with em, can't live with out em, am I right ladies?
I totally agree with your description of the way the women are written. it has continued to surprise me in how they just dgaf about the men at all. Any time one of the men feels like they are getting a little overhyped, McMurtry writes a woman's perspective and she's like completely unimpressed or bored or rolling her eyes. It also feels realistic that these women wouldnt have the time or even the freedom to fall in love, they are only thinking of their own survival and getting ahead in life.
Yeah, I think July+Elmira are exactly how Dish+Lorena would end up if she relented for some reason and they got married, except that at least Dish knows that Lorie's a sportin woman. July knows literally nothing about his wife except that she hates him.
I don't know that Lorena fully understands how useless Jake Spoon is yet, but hopefully she gets there soon. Or maybe it hasn't quite hit her how dangerous this world is... I don't know, but she needs to find a better protector if she's going to make it to San Francisco.
These young guys have met so few women in their lives, many of them just see Lorena or Elmira as a beautiful object and expect that the things that impress other young men (competence with livestock, I guess?) will impress the women too.
Yeah it doesn't seem like Lorie fully understands that Jake is NOT trying to get her to San Francisco... Hope seems like it's in rare supply, I imagine she'll hang on til she can't.
This last point is so true - I think what bugs me about Dish is that his infatuation with her is totally from a distance... he doesn't know anything about her interior world and yet he pines over her like they're soulmates. It is very much like July and Elmira.
Something that comes up over and over in McMurtry novels are male characters who are fascinated by the idea and appearance of a woman but have no desire to actually get to know them, understand them, appreciate them as people, etc. It's a nuanced critique on a certain type of "nice guy" masculinity (if you're not reading carefully, it's easy for Dish to come off as endearing, earnest, sympathetic etc.) but it's a critique nonetheless.
Fair distinction, he's certainly a notch above the Jake Spoons of this world, I just appreciate that McMurtry is subtly interrogating ostensibly nice and sweet men who obsess over women for superficial reasons without showing the least amount of interest in such women as people!
Dish seriously gives me the ick, his behavior reminds me so much of the "nice guy" entitlement we know all too well in the current day. It really is impressive to see that critique made in a Western.
I have a couple Dish passages in mind I'll share when we get to them.
I've been shocked by how compelled I've been by this book. I can't put it down, I'm reading it in all my free time. The way McMurtry writes is like the cattle drive youre reading - everything is smooth and it kinda lulls you as you go along for the ride, and then BAM you have the snake incident and it shocks you to your core (like youre being thrown from your horse!). He also just throws in funny little lines throughout that are fun to stumble into. I also appreciate that all the horses have names and are characters in their own rights.
I love the horse names so much... you really can call a horse anything, as evidenced by the three hours a year that people pretend to care about the Kentucky Derby. When I briefly went to horse camp thru Girl Scouts as a kid I was obsessed with a horse named Sprinkles :')
can anyone who knows horses explain what makes Call's horse so great (besides her name of course)? I feel like two characters discuss this in the first book of the novel but it still just went right over my head.
as will become maybe more apparent later on in the book, she can ride and ride and ride and ride for endless hours without tiring - this seems to be her main (mane) appeal. but i also think the cowboys just admire her for having such a big personality, and Call for vibing with her so perfectly!
the cattle drive is such a good metaphor for/manifestation of the whole gang — there’s a sort of herd mentality/groupthink thing going on, with certain standouts: Newt’s stubborn cow, the bull, etc. All the cattle descriptions also make me think of this tweet: https://x.com/buitengebieden/status/1912221700906971316?s=46&t=gaC6vq4hdk2mGQBqmo3Ziw
The introduction of July, Elmira, and Roscoe distills much of McMurtry’s genius into a few scenes. He is a conventionally funny writer with a grasp of instantly recognizable genre tropes — the ineffective deputy, the henpecked husband, the domineering wife. Yet the context in which we meet these characters fills in the dangling threads of Jake’s own narrative. Mysterious strangers are always coming and going in the west, but the places they come from are real, as are the consequences of their past actions. Life on McMurtry’s frontier is desolate, violent, and often random, but it is not absurd. Sean’s death seems meaningless, no one expected to encounter snakes in that river, but we learn where they came from: “The storm got ‘em stirred up.”
“It seemed the world was full of outspoken women.” This is also the section where we meet Clara, in an unusual flashback, although it seems meaningful that the memory belongs to Gus, who alone among the characters seems to give the past equal weight to the present. Clara has been a symbol up to this point of the value of home and family that Gus rejected, but I think McMurtry is very good at resisting essentialist tropes about the sexes, and hence decides to make Clara real to us. He also makes Elmira, the shrewish wife and discontented runaway mother, quickly into a sympathetic figure. Like Lorena, she has a quest in mind, though whether Dee Boot is more or less a mirage than Lorena’s fantasy of San Francisco has yet to be seen.
Complicating Jake's narrative beyond the sort of punchline detail of having shot a dentist/mayor (the original actress/model) felt so genuinely unexpected and rich with memory. All these grudges and yearnings cross state lines and time and space. Eager to meet Clara whenever they / we get there.
I read the snake scene NEXT TO A BODY OF WATER and it was sooo harrowing.
other random things I dog-eared:
"Sean said the grass [in Ireland] was thick as a carpet there. The description didn't help much for Newt had never seen a carpet."
"Deets liked his work, liked being part of the outfit and having his name on the sign; yet he often felt sad. His main happiness consisted of sitting with his back against the water tank at night, watching the sky and the changing moon. He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men."
when Lorena shows up in PANTS!!! and all the guys lose their mind.
when the lighting catches onto the HORNS OF THE COWS... I lost my mind!
I also loved Clara telling Gus to wait ten years to visit so he won't ruin her marriage (cannot wait for Gus to ruin her marriage), and Elmira hating July so much, and Louisa proposing to Roscoe after mayyybe 20 minutes because he's skinny and would be easier to bury if he dies. for how much this book is by the boys for the boys, the social commentary and marriage politics are fascinating(ly bleak).
"for how much this book is by the boys for the boys, the social commentary and marriage politics are fascinating(ly bleak)."
And now that you've observed this in Lonesome Dove, you're contractually obligated to read McMurtry's further exploration of this theme in Streets of Laredo (which is only ~650 pages - light reading after you finish LD!)
omg i had heard of St. Elmo’s Fire before but only in passing and out of context so i didn’t actually know what it was…so when i googled the lightning thing and found out that’s what people have been talking about i was BLOWN AWAY. the world is such an amazing place!!!
also i’m obsessed with july johnson. if i ever come to a point in my journey with my own non-binary identity that i choose to change my name im going with july bffr!! enby name of all time! AND he’s a reluctant sheriff, reluctant father, questionable husband? king of my heart!
amazing how efficiently jake spoon and dish have switched places. jake spoon is now a flop and dish has transitioned to just being a girlfail…flop behavior occasionally but he’s proving that everyone who says he’s a great cowhand is telling the truth and that rules!!
I still think Dish is a simping loser and i like seeing him fail with Lorena, but you have to admit he's at least a decent guy and good at his job which puts him in like the 90th percentile of this crew
As someone who recently read LD before the book club announcement, it's so hard for me to read these comments and not reply "OH JUST YOU WAIT!!!" on every one. Suffice to say, some great observations by you all so far, and there's some really fun/depressing/hilarious/violent/romantic/silly adventures still to come. I will try and not spoil.
Wish there was more love for Deets in the comments :( I will hear no arguments as to who the best ranger is in our story thus far and that man is Deets, the man who thinks Native Americans control the moon and is thus especially spooked during a full moon. Deets the man who helps Lorie cross the river cuz Jake Spoon's thumb is too fucked up (seriously how useless is Jake Spoon).
Deets is perfect - that passage where he sits and looks at the Moon is beautiful, and he is one of the few people in this book who seems generally content with his life even though none of these guys give him the recognition he deserves. Like, didn't Jake Spoon ranger with him for years, and he has nothing really to say to him? Ugh Jake Spoon. The world's child.
I really appreciate that Deets being #3 (only behind Gus and Call themselves) is basically canon - Call consistently thinks to himself "I need Deets" "I wish Deets was here" "I don't want to do this part without Deets." Never forget he is ON the sign!
I, too, rock with Elmira. Her story feels twinned with Lorena's, but her situation feels a bit more dangerous -- she can't just ride away on a horse at any time, and I got the feeling that the guys who defended her might start to develop expectations as their journey continues. I appreciate that McMurtry isn't really going out of his way to foster sympathy for the character, either. She's terrible to two of the most innocent characters in the book so far, and still I can't help but like her. I'm not terribly optimistic she'll have any luck finding Dee Boot, but maybe I'll be proven wrong. Oh! How about that little side note that she, too, has slept with Jake Spoon?! Poor July.
Been thinking a lot about the dynamic between Gus and Call. Basically, you've got one guy who's incredibly clever and likable, tossing off one bon mot after another, and then you've got the other guy who is also clever in his way but most of what he has to say boils down to "I wish I could strangle you." A dynamic I will never tire of!
Lots of time and space devoted to the difficulties and impracticalities of cattle-driving (mud mouth, poison thorns, horse-swimming, etc.) in this week's section. It's hard to get my head around the actual number of cattle they're trying to move north. Even though they've got a whole bunch of guys on this trip, they're all individually responsible for, what, a few hundred cows? And there's an understanding that some cattle aren't going to make it -- some will die, some will just get lost -- though its sounds like the herd is doing okay so far? Don't expect that to hold.
Really important, I think, that we hold space for the guy Needle, who has to get back on his horse mid-wizz to stave off a bull charge. Also I think it's funny that everyone hates that one multicolored bull so much.
Gus and Call work in the same way as Ebert and Siskel - need to figure out their star signs stat.
I think they say it's like 2500 cows? Am I making that up? The notion of cattle-driving has always felt completely insane to me in terms of both scale and practicality - I cannot believe that this was a viable occupation for so many years.
I felt that The Warriors (1979), The Stand (read in 1979), and Lonesome Dove (read in 1986), were my holy trinity of epic journeys that colored and shaped my young adulthood. And to some extent, my entire life.
the miniseries casts a young Chris Cooper as July Johnson and when i tell you he's way too cutie patootie to be playing such a total drip... he still crushes it though, love Coop 💛
ok sorry also more importantly in the miniseries they only ever exclusively pronounce it "JOO-Lie," which made me smile bc that's how i always pronounced it in my head while reading too
Elmira sitting up above July and Joe at dinner with her feet hanging down - what a detail! They are literally not on the same level.
The way Gus insists that talking about death together is the only way to make it boring and tire it out as a subject - lowkey brilliant, but there’s a lot more to come in that department I’m sure.
Deets and the moon 🌕 yes and yes and yes.
Bolivar’s internal tug of war when leaving the band was fascinating. I love how McMurtry shows us the internal tension of decisions made, for good or ill, and how lingering sadness and regret pops up no matter which direction you go.
Louisa, my cornbread eating queen. Roscoe, again feeling dim regret as he rides off, but also hating hard labor and seeing the field of stumps 😆
The celebrity of Gus and Call was amazing to witness - and the sharpshooting, too! I love that the sheriff was like “I’m not doing anything to these two, they’re my heroes.” The perks of being renowned in the Wild West!
I'm hoping to get more of Joe... now THAT'S an interesting guy, wonder if he'll wind up being a foil to Newt (the other son of a working woman we know about). The cornbread honestly sounded better than the biscuits to me this time around.
McMurtry’s worldbuilding is sensational. The way he uses this big cast of characters to do it is so smart: what do the more experienced cowboys tell the younger cowboys to prepare them for the drive? What are even they shocked by? Such a natural, smooth way to signal to a reader what the expected danger level of this world is. Poor Sean’s death is all the more shocking when we see the effect it has on the whole crew.
I think part of what feels more remarkable about Sean's death is that this isn't a character we are really all that fond of or know that much about up until he's gone - he can do retroactive world-building by making us consider the nostalgia of weightier characters. Right on.
what a relief to get some more female characters this week, and good ones too! Roscoe's a fool for hitting the road again IMO.
"most women will never back up an inch their whole lives" Gus says this about Lorie, but it's true of Emelia and Louisa too - gadabouts like Jake Spoon might live by the seat of their pants, but the women have to be decisive! I do think Emelia is an interesting foil to Gus, in the way they are both set on checking up on old lovers years later, seemingly quite confident that the lover's ready to see them. Is that just how people were in the 1800s?
"Where do you reckon Jake will end up?" "In a hole in the ground, like you and me." cue the last frame of Barry Lyndon.
"she had spent too much time in hot little rooms, looking at ceilings." Lorie has become my favorite character. you can feel her coming alive on the trail.
Spoiler-free warning: the snakes are really nothing in the violence department compared to what is to come. I highly recommend sensitive readers check content warnings before going much further because I had a genuine nightmare after some of this shit.
That said I'm overall still rocking with this book. I love both July and Elmira individually and their whole deal deeply amuses me. July trying so hard to be a good and normal husband and accidentally infuriating Elmira by doing nothing at all really made me laugh.
I guess my greater point about this is that i find McMurty a surprisingly empathetic writer of women in the way that they are all so ambivalent about men. Lorena, Louisa (queen), and Elmira are all merely tolerating them with varying degrees of success. Even though Lorena was starstruck by Jake at first she quickly sees him for who he is once he's put to the test and that pleasantly surprised me. She has shown no signs of being "in love" with him, Gus, or anyone else. Louisa will settle for bozo Roscoe because she's horny. Elmira felt like getting married was her only option but quickly realized it was awful when she saw July drink milk; I actually don't even think she really loves Dee Boot so much as finds him a convenient guy to have around. The wild west is these fellas and you can't live with em, can't live with out em, am I right ladies?
I totally agree with your description of the way the women are written. it has continued to surprise me in how they just dgaf about the men at all. Any time one of the men feels like they are getting a little overhyped, McMurtry writes a woman's perspective and she's like completely unimpressed or bored or rolling her eyes. It also feels realistic that these women wouldnt have the time or even the freedom to fall in love, they are only thinking of their own survival and getting ahead in life.
Yeah, I think July+Elmira are exactly how Dish+Lorena would end up if she relented for some reason and they got married, except that at least Dish knows that Lorie's a sportin woman. July knows literally nothing about his wife except that she hates him.
I don't know that Lorena fully understands how useless Jake Spoon is yet, but hopefully she gets there soon. Or maybe it hasn't quite hit her how dangerous this world is... I don't know, but she needs to find a better protector if she's going to make it to San Francisco.
These young guys have met so few women in their lives, many of them just see Lorena or Elmira as a beautiful object and expect that the things that impress other young men (competence with livestock, I guess?) will impress the women too.
Yeah it doesn't seem like Lorie fully understands that Jake is NOT trying to get her to San Francisco... Hope seems like it's in rare supply, I imagine she'll hang on til she can't.
This last point is so true - I think what bugs me about Dish is that his infatuation with her is totally from a distance... he doesn't know anything about her interior world and yet he pines over her like they're soulmates. It is very much like July and Elmira.
Something that comes up over and over in McMurtry novels are male characters who are fascinated by the idea and appearance of a woman but have no desire to actually get to know them, understand them, appreciate them as people, etc. It's a nuanced critique on a certain type of "nice guy" masculinity (if you're not reading carefully, it's easy for Dish to come off as endearing, earnest, sympathetic etc.) but it's a critique nonetheless.
I find Dish quite sympathetic though not at all a worthwhile match for Lorie!
Fair distinction, he's certainly a notch above the Jake Spoons of this world, I just appreciate that McMurtry is subtly interrogating ostensibly nice and sweet men who obsess over women for superficial reasons without showing the least amount of interest in such women as people!
Dish seriously gives me the ick, his behavior reminds me so much of the "nice guy" entitlement we know all too well in the current day. It really is impressive to see that critique made in a Western.
I have a couple Dish passages in mind I'll share when we get to them.
totally agree
I've been shocked by how compelled I've been by this book. I can't put it down, I'm reading it in all my free time. The way McMurtry writes is like the cattle drive youre reading - everything is smooth and it kinda lulls you as you go along for the ride, and then BAM you have the snake incident and it shocks you to your core (like youre being thrown from your horse!). He also just throws in funny little lines throughout that are fun to stumble into. I also appreciate that all the horses have names and are characters in their own rights.
I love the horse names so much... you really can call a horse anything, as evidenced by the three hours a year that people pretend to care about the Kentucky Derby. When I briefly went to horse camp thru Girl Scouts as a kid I was obsessed with a horse named Sprinkles :')
I loooove that Newt's horse is called Mouse, gets me everytime 🥹
Mouse is the MVP for sure
how very Tina Belcher of you
Seriously considering a Hell Bitch tattoo.
i am also considering one very seriously 😭
can anyone who knows horses explain what makes Call's horse so great (besides her name of course)? I feel like two characters discuss this in the first book of the novel but it still just went right over my head.
as will become maybe more apparent later on in the book, she can ride and ride and ride and ride for endless hours without tiring - this seems to be her main (mane) appeal. but i also think the cowboys just admire her for having such a big personality, and Call for vibing with her so perfectly!
just reading this made me tear up, i love hell bitch so much.
I'm not sure we do know this... he seems to just have a fondness but she otherwise seems poorly behaved.
wait this is genius!
same lol!
would you get like a horse head or an entire horse or does it just say Hell Bitch
the one in my head is a horse head with Hell Bitch emblazoned below, almost like a portrait
please get it
the cattle drive is such a good metaphor for/manifestation of the whole gang — there’s a sort of herd mentality/groupthink thing going on, with certain standouts: Newt’s stubborn cow, the bull, etc. All the cattle descriptions also make me think of this tweet: https://x.com/buitengebieden/status/1912221700906971316?s=46&t=gaC6vq4hdk2mGQBqmo3Ziw
Never seen this... it's so beautiful. I love to watch cows on TikTok though...
I love that we sometimes get a perspective shift to Mouse, complete with he pronouns, cuz he's just another one of the gang
The introduction of July, Elmira, and Roscoe distills much of McMurtry’s genius into a few scenes. He is a conventionally funny writer with a grasp of instantly recognizable genre tropes — the ineffective deputy, the henpecked husband, the domineering wife. Yet the context in which we meet these characters fills in the dangling threads of Jake’s own narrative. Mysterious strangers are always coming and going in the west, but the places they come from are real, as are the consequences of their past actions. Life on McMurtry’s frontier is desolate, violent, and often random, but it is not absurd. Sean’s death seems meaningless, no one expected to encounter snakes in that river, but we learn where they came from: “The storm got ‘em stirred up.”
“It seemed the world was full of outspoken women.” This is also the section where we meet Clara, in an unusual flashback, although it seems meaningful that the memory belongs to Gus, who alone among the characters seems to give the past equal weight to the present. Clara has been a symbol up to this point of the value of home and family that Gus rejected, but I think McMurtry is very good at resisting essentialist tropes about the sexes, and hence decides to make Clara real to us. He also makes Elmira, the shrewish wife and discontented runaway mother, quickly into a sympathetic figure. Like Lorena, she has a quest in mind, though whether Dee Boot is more or less a mirage than Lorena’s fantasy of San Francisco has yet to be seen.
Complicating Jake's narrative beyond the sort of punchline detail of having shot a dentist/mayor (the original actress/model) felt so genuinely unexpected and rich with memory. All these grudges and yearnings cross state lines and time and space. Eager to meet Clara whenever they / we get there.
I wonder if she'll still be aboveground...
i've been hired by A24 to write and direct a movie about the bug guy
yay!
I read the snake scene NEXT TO A BODY OF WATER and it was sooo harrowing.
other random things I dog-eared:
"Sean said the grass [in Ireland] was thick as a carpet there. The description didn't help much for Newt had never seen a carpet."
"Deets liked his work, liked being part of the outfit and having his name on the sign; yet he often felt sad. His main happiness consisted of sitting with his back against the water tank at night, watching the sky and the changing moon. He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men."
when Lorena shows up in PANTS!!! and all the guys lose their mind.
when the lighting catches onto the HORNS OF THE COWS... I lost my mind!
I also loved Clara telling Gus to wait ten years to visit so he won't ruin her marriage (cannot wait for Gus to ruin her marriage), and Elmira hating July so much, and Louisa proposing to Roscoe after mayyybe 20 minutes because he's skinny and would be easier to bury if he dies. for how much this book is by the boys for the boys, the social commentary and marriage politics are fascinating(ly bleak).
omg I also underlined Newt never having seen carpet... that was so crazy to me...
The lightning storm is almost scarier to me than the snakes, like a thunderstorm can really fuck me up if the timing is wrong.
I love that passage about Deets staring up at the moon! Poor dude must be so lonely (all of them are).
"for how much this book is by the boys for the boys, the social commentary and marriage politics are fascinating(ly bleak)."
And now that you've observed this in Lonesome Dove, you're contractually obligated to read McMurtry's further exploration of this theme in Streets of Laredo (which is only ~650 pages - light reading after you finish LD!)
omg i had heard of St. Elmo’s Fire before but only in passing and out of context so i didn’t actually know what it was…so when i googled the lightning thing and found out that’s what people have been talking about i was BLOWN AWAY. the world is such an amazing place!!!
I was tickled that sensible riding pants could really drive a cowboy wild in the late 19th century
also i’m obsessed with july johnson. if i ever come to a point in my journey with my own non-binary identity that i choose to change my name im going with july bffr!! enby name of all time! AND he’s a reluctant sheriff, reluctant father, questionable husband? king of my heart!
It is literally the name of a celeb, like, ok famous!
amazing how efficiently jake spoon and dish have switched places. jake spoon is now a flop and dish has transitioned to just being a girlfail…flop behavior occasionally but he’s proving that everyone who says he’s a great cowhand is telling the truth and that rules!!
I still think Dish is a simping loser and i like seeing him fail with Lorena, but you have to admit he's at least a decent guy and good at his job which puts him in like the 90th percentile of this crew
The manosphere could learn from him.
he leads the cows and wears his hat and is proud of the work he does and i would be lying if that didn’t make me swoon a little bit…
Dish Boggett has emerged from Khia Asylum
As someone who recently read LD before the book club announcement, it's so hard for me to read these comments and not reply "OH JUST YOU WAIT!!!" on every one. Suffice to say, some great observations by you all so far, and there's some really fun/depressing/hilarious/violent/romantic/silly adventures still to come. I will try and not spoil.
Wish there was more love for Deets in the comments :( I will hear no arguments as to who the best ranger is in our story thus far and that man is Deets, the man who thinks Native Americans control the moon and is thus especially spooked during a full moon. Deets the man who helps Lorie cross the river cuz Jake Spoon's thumb is too fucked up (seriously how useless is Jake Spoon).
Deets is also so classical competent - his presence always a comfort!! When he showed up to help Lorie it was such a relief.
Deets who can’t help blaming himself a little bit for the Irish kid’s death (it’s not your fault!).
Deets is perfect - that passage where he sits and looks at the Moon is beautiful, and he is one of the few people in this book who seems generally content with his life even though none of these guys give him the recognition he deserves. Like, didn't Jake Spoon ranger with him for years, and he has nothing really to say to him? Ugh Jake Spoon. The world's child.
And when Deets tells everyone his name is Josh and no one believes him. Ugh.
I am Team Deets!
Deets is indeed the man
I really appreciate that Deets being #3 (only behind Gus and Call themselves) is basically canon - Call consistently thinks to himself "I need Deets" "I wish Deets was here" "I don't want to do this part without Deets." Never forget he is ON the sign!
The whole snake situation was, of course, gut-twisting nightmare fodder (RIP SEAN MY IRISH BRETHREN) but I will say this exchange made me chuckle:
"Captain, do you reckon them snakes are all gone?" he asked.
"Well, they're scattered," Call said.
Sometimes scattered is the best you can hope for.
Also we haven't yet discussed the second-most-harrowing passage of this section, when Peach randomly decapitates a rooster!!!! WHY!
She is literally scary
Also her name is PEACH!!!
SUCH a perfect way to introduce a character - that rooster murder told you everything you need to know about Peach.
That rooster murder really does come out of nowhere!
I, too, rock with Elmira. Her story feels twinned with Lorena's, but her situation feels a bit more dangerous -- she can't just ride away on a horse at any time, and I got the feeling that the guys who defended her might start to develop expectations as their journey continues. I appreciate that McMurtry isn't really going out of his way to foster sympathy for the character, either. She's terrible to two of the most innocent characters in the book so far, and still I can't help but like her. I'm not terribly optimistic she'll have any luck finding Dee Boot, but maybe I'll be proven wrong. Oh! How about that little side note that she, too, has slept with Jake Spoon?! Poor July.
Been thinking a lot about the dynamic between Gus and Call. Basically, you've got one guy who's incredibly clever and likable, tossing off one bon mot after another, and then you've got the other guy who is also clever in his way but most of what he has to say boils down to "I wish I could strangle you." A dynamic I will never tire of!
Lots of time and space devoted to the difficulties and impracticalities of cattle-driving (mud mouth, poison thorns, horse-swimming, etc.) in this week's section. It's hard to get my head around the actual number of cattle they're trying to move north. Even though they've got a whole bunch of guys on this trip, they're all individually responsible for, what, a few hundred cows? And there's an understanding that some cattle aren't going to make it -- some will die, some will just get lost -- though its sounds like the herd is doing okay so far? Don't expect that to hold.
Really important, I think, that we hold space for the guy Needle, who has to get back on his horse mid-wizz to stave off a bull charge. Also I think it's funny that everyone hates that one multicolored bull so much.
Another great week in Lonesome Dove!
Gus and Call work in the same way as Ebert and Siskel - need to figure out their star signs stat.
I think they say it's like 2500 cows? Am I making that up? The notion of cattle-driving has always felt completely insane to me in terms of both scale and practicality - I cannot believe that this was a viable occupation for so many years.
Gus is a Gemini with a water moon
Shoutout to that one bull - prediction is that "Old Dog" dies and he has to lead the herd (symbolism)
I felt that The Warriors (1979), The Stand (read in 1979), and Lonesome Dove (read in 1986), were my holy trinity of epic journeys that colored and shaped my young adulthood. And to some extent, my entire life.
You should watch Paris, Texas.
Big Harry Dean fan. Can't believe I missed this in real time.
Happy Mother's Day Mrs. H!
Thank you, Jack. I had such a nice day! (and call me Laura)
the miniseries casts a young Chris Cooper as July Johnson and when i tell you he's way too cutie patootie to be playing such a total drip... he still crushes it though, love Coop 💛
omg...... honestly dream casting
😍😍 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5e/f6/0f/5ef60f403917bb81b41ed027ed9e6374.png
ok sorry also more importantly in the miniseries they only ever exclusively pronounce it "JOO-Lie," which made me smile bc that's how i always pronounced it in my head while reading too
cant wait til we can discuss the miniseries I have so many (mostly good!) thoughts
Elmira sitting up above July and Joe at dinner with her feet hanging down - what a detail! They are literally not on the same level.
The way Gus insists that talking about death together is the only way to make it boring and tire it out as a subject - lowkey brilliant, but there’s a lot more to come in that department I’m sure.
Deets and the moon 🌕 yes and yes and yes.
Bolivar’s internal tug of war when leaving the band was fascinating. I love how McMurtry shows us the internal tension of decisions made, for good or ill, and how lingering sadness and regret pops up no matter which direction you go.
Louisa, my cornbread eating queen. Roscoe, again feeling dim regret as he rides off, but also hating hard labor and seeing the field of stumps 😆
The celebrity of Gus and Call was amazing to witness - and the sharpshooting, too! I love that the sheriff was like “I’m not doing anything to these two, they’re my heroes.” The perks of being renowned in the Wild West!
I'm hoping to get more of Joe... now THAT'S an interesting guy, wonder if he'll wind up being a foil to Newt (the other son of a working woman we know about). The cornbread honestly sounded better than the biscuits to me this time around.
McMurtry’s worldbuilding is sensational. The way he uses this big cast of characters to do it is so smart: what do the more experienced cowboys tell the younger cowboys to prepare them for the drive? What are even they shocked by? Such a natural, smooth way to signal to a reader what the expected danger level of this world is. Poor Sean’s death is all the more shocking when we see the effect it has on the whole crew.
I think part of what feels more remarkable about Sean's death is that this isn't a character we are really all that fond of or know that much about up until he's gone - he can do retroactive world-building by making us consider the nostalgia of weightier characters. Right on.
the fellas stop saying "'I' God" and the snake attacks begin - coincidence?!!
SHIT!!!
what a relief to get some more female characters this week, and good ones too! Roscoe's a fool for hitting the road again IMO.
"most women will never back up an inch their whole lives" Gus says this about Lorie, but it's true of Emelia and Louisa too - gadabouts like Jake Spoon might live by the seat of their pants, but the women have to be decisive! I do think Emelia is an interesting foil to Gus, in the way they are both set on checking up on old lovers years later, seemingly quite confident that the lover's ready to see them. Is that just how people were in the 1800s?
"Where do you reckon Jake will end up?" "In a hole in the ground, like you and me." cue the last frame of Barry Lyndon.
"she had spent too much time in hot little rooms, looking at ceilings." Lorie has become my favorite character. you can feel her coming alive on the trail.
She is sort of like me when I went to Thailand and was randomly thriving even though there was a new scary bug every day...