Also I love the guy with the bones that Gus meets when he’s trying to find Lorena. It felt like a segment from another novel entirely, heightened and almost dreamlike in a way. This world feels so full and so empty at the same time.
This guy lives in the same little side world as the bug guy in my mind - two dudes who went west and are doing their own weird little thing. Bug guy seemed to have a stronger connection to the rest of the world, though, while bone guy seems to have gotten stuck there and is poking bones because he doesn’t have many other options.
Bol going back to Lonesome Dove to “beat the bell a few more times” 🥺
July’s letter to Elmira 🥺🥺🥺
When you realize Gus is about to link up with July/Roscoe/Joe/Janey 🤠
8 pages later 😳
Strongest underline: “Does it ever occur to you that everything we done was probably a mistake?… Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with.” Standout passage of this book so far to me.
The depiction of Lorena processing her trauma really took my breath away at times, especially when Gus seems to understand it so well—“she won’t forget it, but she might outlive it” will stick with me.
Yes - I had highlighted that quote too about not forgetting/outliving - Gus really seems to have a pretty astute understanding of what she went thru and how it has impacted her, no lick of callousness or denial in the brutality, but the aged optimism to know that she is capable of moving along. Ah!
Idk about anyone else, but as a card-carrying Geography Head, I've been lurking on my iphone maps and it reeeeeally does give you a sense of expanse. Do you know how far it is between Fort Worth and Ogallala, for example? Like, a billion miles. (Additional geography note, the Canadian river is at no point in Canada. It starts in the Colorado Rockies and eventually connects to the Mississippi. That was confusing to me for a minute.) Trying to wrap your head around the space truly makes it feel extra lonely. Especially as people are dying left and right. Will there be any people left??
Relatedly, to echo another commenter, it's wild in light of this expanse how many people know each other. Can you imagine meeting a stranger and you both just happen to know the same person in Arkansas or wherever the fuck? It's like there is only one person with any given first name. Not one time do they ever say "Gus who? I knew a Gus Brown, but that's a different guy." No. There are like fifty people in the entire United States and I think 20% of them have died this week. (Additional question. Passage of time. How much time has passed? What time of year did they leave Hat Creek and what time of year is it now? I'm worried about winter coming and everyone freezing to death in like Wyoming.)
Wait I'm so glad you looked on a map - I have just been trying to puzzle it out in my head the way I do when ultramarathonners I follow on IG do one of their crazy races. Going to Texas for the first time this past spring was a real exercise is understanding the depth and scope of the landscape - how truly NOT close anything is to each other. I'm spoiled by the comparatively narrow east coast and even the casually snug midwest, in that regard.
The power of the elements is really horrifying here - I did a quick googling and it seems like this journey (like all my Oregon trail jaunts) started in May, so hopefully they're okay for a bit weather-wise. Or at least... winter-wise.
Following along on a map really makes the story come alive and gives us perspective of how monumental this journey really is - sort of like flying to the moon or Ulysses 10-year journey back home in The Odyssey.
Oh one more thing: Gus is SO badass holy shit. He has been talking talking talking the talk but man can WALK. I was so impressed and surprised and kind of in love that there is a genuine hero behind his words. Stabbing the horse in the neck to create the blood screen is obviously brutal and awful but like... it's pretty metal.
And the way he is so patient and compassionate with Lorie in contrast to that was amazing. "Augustus was so pleased to hear her talk that tears came to his eyes. We're just playing for buttons, honey." " (475)
literally…mcmurtry spends so much of the beginning of the book like. showing us how much gus talks himself up, how much other people are annoyed by him, how he endears himself to people, and it’s almost like he’s trying to show us how gus could have Talked his way into his own legend. but then shit hits the fan and gus very casually starts ripping and tearing and hero-ing left and right and it’s like oh no he was not ever lying and the people who see him as a legendary figure were not “influenced” to do so. he just is.
I love this! I also love how Gus is so even-keeled, chill, just hanging around and then BAM goes into hardass mode in an instant. The rescue of Lorie obviously, but even the scene in the bar where he goes from talking to smashing the bartenders face. such whiplash!
On the part of the book that made me go wait... you're telling me the Wild West is... Wild!?!?!?
1. The letter from July to Elmira broke my heart; his situation just went from bad to so SO bad. He was already one of my favorite characters and now that he survived the Blue Duck ordeal (the first one so far anyway) and come out alive but basically proven useless in battle, I'm interested to see if there is a character arc for him out there - the green sheriff returning hardened by his experiences. Multiple people including Gus commented on how surprisingly young July is, easy to forget given his situation.
2. Related, the death of Janey (and the rest of his party but especially Janey) gave me a real "game of thrones" moment, where I realized that main character death is ON the menu. The fact that McMurty introduced a character like Janey, who was so different and interested and added so much to the dynamic, only to have her die quickly and brutally genuinely shocked me. I feel that basically besides Gus and Call, no one is safe.
3. On the "life is cheap" theme: "Son, this is a sad thing... Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good... If I ever run into Blue Duck, I'll kill him. But if I don't, somebody else will... or a snake will bite him or a horse will fall on him, or he'll get hung, or one of his renegades will shoot him in the back. Or he'll just get old and die." (464) and from an earlier passage that came back to me now, from the bug man "it's a great mistake to hurry... the grave's our destination" (309).
July is just a kid!! Having him grapple with what he's really doing out there broke my heart - he doesn't want to be doing his job at all, especially not now. The letter was especially brutal. I am not really rooting for him and Elmira to be together, but I'm starting to find myself wishing and hoping they get some kind of closure for all that they can't promise each other.
I'll see you on Tuesday May 27th btw so we can all have a nice Monday off. Ideally we (MYSELF ESPECIALLY) will have read up thru Chapter 91!!! The days are just getting longer - that just means more time to read!
I too am behind, but will give my thoughts regardless. Bo’s exit is such a great moment— we spend comparatively no time in his POV, but as we slowly slip into it as he makes up his mind to go back to Lonesome Dove, we’re treated to a great recap of everything that has occurred from a fresh perspective, turning this grouchy comic relief guy into a full-fledged human being so that, when it ends with him talking about ‘ringing the bell a few more times— captains orders’ I’m overcome with emotion for someone I previously didn’t care much at all about one way or the other.
McMurtry is like Dostoyevsky a little in that he just can’t bring himself to hate a character, to think of them as evil. He’s forced this person into existence and set them on a path of death and treachery, and thusly he owes them sympathy and understanding and at least one gorgeously written paragraph that tells the world how they feel. It’s so holistic, which is what I think sets Lonesome Dove so far apart from its revisionist/anti western contemporaries which are usually steeped in cynicism.
I wonder about this as well; I feel like as cruel as he is, I don't hate him either because his cruelty and evil were obviously created by the actions of the Rangers et al pushing his people over the edge. Hard to say at this point how much of that is McMurtry and how much is just my perception as a modern reader but it's hard to ignore the circle of violence of it all, especially when we have passages like the "maybe we shouldn't have killed everyone one" (quote by Blair)
Yes!! Cannot bring himself to hate anyone, and by extension neither can we. There are bad and brutal people in this book, but the minute we go into their POV we’re like “well, got to admit I see where they’re coming from.”
Even as things get more serious and brutal (agree about the prose in Roscoe's death, haunting stuff), I'm glad that the dry humor is still just as consistent. This bit from when the gang first meets Po Campo made me snicker out loud on a packed Brown Line train:
"The cook's got a donkey, only he don't ride it," Pea Eye remarked. "He says it ain't civilized to ride animals."
"Why, the man's a philosopher," Augustus said.
"That's right—I just hired him to talk to you," Call said. "It would free the rest of us so maybe we could work."
loooving Po's presence so much, and how easily he wins the boys over just by feeding them molasses! the image of Newt sucking on a hail lollipop... I die.
The moment where Blue Duck kills Joe and Janey made me so upset and sad I threw my book across the room, something I have literally never done before in my life. My husband was very alarmed! The way you get attached to these characters without even really knowing how. It’s like sorcery.
I don't know why but the violence against Lorena was disturbing but I was still able to hang. and then the casual death of Janey and Joey just obliterated me! I don't know why it got me so bad, but it really messed with me. I had such hope for Janey as a character and it was so fleeting :( She escapes horror to just die in an instant.
I think the wasted potential is what packs such a punch. You feel like McMurtry has all these plans for a character, there’s so many directions they can go - then he just kills them.
Janey also feels written to be one of those characters who can survive literally anything... she has no shoes, beats two guys with guns just by throwing rocks at them, saves Roscoe's starving ass, all just to die mercilessly at the hands of Blue Duck. Absolutely brutal. And don't even get me started on the death of Joe, my god.
Silly me thought that poor bumbling Roscoe would end up making it out of this trip just fine, especially once he started traveling with Janey. He seemed to be roaming through a different world and a different book from the others, and I really did not see their deaths coming. There was a lot of storytelling potential for Joe and Janey (and life potential, they were both quite young), but death is random and brutal in this world and McMurtry keeps us on our toes.
it’s becoming clearer that Call is going north to a new “wild country” because he doesn’t know how to function in a settled place. Gus sees that Call doesn’t really want to be a rancher, he’s attracted to the more dangerous life that they’ve essentially eradicated in Texas. Do we think there’s any chance he will actually stay and homestead?
If anything else bad happens to Lorie I will riot. She’s been through enough.
It’s hard not to laugh at Jake Spoon’s continued bafflement that he has an effect on the world around him. I’m quite curious where that will lead, because the consequences of his actions seem to grow every day. And I think his attitude is emblematic of the sort of individualism necessary to be a part of the vanguard of the settler process. Gus, in contrast, is constantly thinking about and being confronted by his not-so-minor participation in the mass depopulation (people + animals) of the West that makes settling possible. And while Call wants to regain some of what’s lost by finding newer land in Montana, Gus knows that it’s all going in the same direction. The point being, I can’t really imagine Jake surrounded by pyramids of skulls. He probably wouldn’t even think to notice them because they aren’t attributable to people he knows.
In a lot of ways, Jake would be right at home in Rio Bravo (thanks for the rec, Fran!). There isn’t much for him to be confused by, as nothing there exists beyond the individual. It’s a real bootstraps fantasy! I loved when Dean Martin overcame alcoholism (beer excluded, of course) through the power of music. Jake would have much less trouble understanding his problems in a town like that.
Jake's inability to gauge who or where he is in space and time is both hugely relatable and so painful to read - we see him through so many other people that we've come to lose any and all respect for him, especially as he sinks so low in Newt's eyes (and Newt gets a real kick out of him!). I am starting to feel that Jake is doomed - but maybe there's hope yet as there was for Dean in Rio Bravo.
My biggest worry is that the trip just keeps getting harder and more dangerous. And I don’t know if we’ve just left anyone behind yet. But one can hope…
that scene of Call and Gus in the saloon - the photograph of the two of them with Jake and Jake is the only one grinning, "whereas he and Gus looked solemn."
Culture has sort of moved on from the "himbo," but Jake really is one. Very dumb and affable guy whose only real skill is getting women to like him. I've read ahead a bit, and it appears that he will continue flopping, at least for the short term.
In plot terms the book shows its hand here, but it also describes the emotional ideas that carry it through to the end — that people need each other, that in the West you really can die of loneliness. July is horribly lonesome now. i hope it doesn’t get him too.
Something about the book’s very memorable final lines clicked for me when reading this section again, ideally I’ll remember to come back to this.
I really like your notes about these people dying out. McMurtry is also careful to note that the desolation of the West is a place that the rangers played a part in creating. Blue Duck is a kind of problematic archetype, a brutal savage, but he is also a predator of the sort that this new West invites.
I was very grateful for Wilbarger’s manners when he made his reappearance.
I like that there's a dual implication that yes, this is the largest landscape of all time, and yet yes, you can also run into the same person over and over again - it's giving New York City... maybe the sixth borough is Lonesome Dove, etc. I'm sort of fascinated by Blue Duck's antiquated role here and to see where (if anywhere) he goes with that - feels truly surprising (not necessarily in a great way) even if it doesn't work for me.
Wilbarger's reappearance is a delight, especially his thing about reading Milton in the morning.
That passage with July walking the plains on his own is one of the most haunting sections of the book I've read so far. Even Gus can handle a few days by himself as long as he's got something to focus on (in this case, rescuing Lorie) -- though the little interaction he has with the guy collecting buffalo bones sustains him (marvelous scene). July is more or less just wandering through purgatory, having survived what would have been his certain death just by watching Gus kill all of Blue Duck's men. And now his wife is paired off with Big Zwey? Dude cannot catch a break. He's a decent man!
I am going to ignore how sad I am about poor Janey and Joe to bring up two things:
1. Have we discussed how this book is dedicated to magazine journalism legendista MAUREEN ORTH? Because it is, even though (as Google informed me) Orth and McMurty are not current or former spouses but simply *good buds.* Wonder which one is Call and which one is Gus....
omg wow.... and to think I was mere blocks above at Foster Beach, not knowing I was so close...
Wait and NO re: Maureen Orth.... this is crazy....... need to ponder who is who here... to me McMurtry is so obviously Gus.... maybe Maureen Orth is Pea-Eye.
This section is where the book really starts to cook for me: the narrative (so much as it exists) is moving along, we know these characters well enough to really feel their joys/woes/losses, and Ol' Larry starts dropping in so many funny little guys. Highlights:
- Maybe my favorite thing about this story is the way it paints the west as basically an endless expanse with only rivers for frontiers, and yet they keep running into the same people over and over: Wilbarger, July, Blue Duck, etc. It gives the whole landscape an almost mythical feel: vast and abyssal, but also small and communal
- Po Campo is up there with the most affable characters ever... who also remorselessly killed their wives. It's him and Cliff Booth, I guess
- There isn't a lot of action in the book, but it's written so elegantly -- from the barfight you highlighted above to Gus's fight against Blue Duck's men, which reminded me of the nighttime shootout in Fury Road in its snipery sparseness.
- Gus on Lorie: "She's had an ordeal but she's young. She won't forget it, but she might outlive it."
I like how seamlessly the action drifts in and out. The book never really feels as though it's amounting to a set piece - people fighting suddenly and then it ends suddenly, like the violence at the bar that culminates in a broken nose and little else. McMurtry does a great job with action but I like how relatively unshowy he is about it.
‘I god, was I surprised by what befell Roscoe, Janey, and Joe! A few pages before one of the Kiowas says how cheap life is after blue duck murders the youngest of their group for refusing to gamble his stake in lorie, and that sure rang true. July’s realization that he ain’t half the cowboy Gus is was brutal but necessary. Poor newt at losing lorie but also what was Gus thinking?!
When we first bought our home, my husband rented 40 goats to clear the acre of poison oak and rubbish in the back half of the property. On the last day we had them, they busted out of their fencing and scattered all over the neighbor’s yard, and he and I had to run around like human border collies for a good 45 minutes to get them penned again. Every time they describe the hundreds of cows running wild in a lightning storm or whatever I think about the chaos of those goats in a much smaller area and how much harder it would be to wrangle the cows in the middle of the great blue yonder!
I said this last week I think but when I think about having to move thousands of cows across the country it simply boggles the mind - I don't understand how or why this was ever a sustainable or even doable way of life and living!! It's crazy!!
Wait also 40 goats to clear the acre of poison oak.... I'm :) I love goats yay.. there used to be local goats at a cemetery and park by my old apartment who would do landscaping. They were SO friendly.
Newt - I'd like to see him learn something for once...
Also I love the guy with the bones that Gus meets when he’s trying to find Lorena. It felt like a segment from another novel entirely, heightened and almost dreamlike in a way. This world feels so full and so empty at the same time.
This guy lives in the same little side world as the bug guy in my mind - two dudes who went west and are doing their own weird little thing. Bug guy seemed to have a stronger connection to the rest of the world, though, while bone guy seems to have gotten stuck there and is poking bones because he doesn’t have many other options.
Yes I had the same thought... and both belong in Disco Elysium
very Mad Max Wasteland vibe
Bol going back to Lonesome Dove to “beat the bell a few more times” 🥺
July’s letter to Elmira 🥺🥺🥺
When you realize Gus is about to link up with July/Roscoe/Joe/Janey 🤠
8 pages later 😳
Strongest underline: “Does it ever occur to you that everything we done was probably a mistake?… Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with.” Standout passage of this book so far to me.
The depiction of Lorena processing her trauma really took my breath away at times, especially when Gus seems to understand it so well—“she won’t forget it, but she might outlive it” will stick with me.
Yes - I had highlighted that quote too about not forgetting/outliving - Gus really seems to have a pretty astute understanding of what she went thru and how it has impacted her, no lick of callousness or denial in the brutality, but the aged optimism to know that she is capable of moving along. Ah!
Idk about anyone else, but as a card-carrying Geography Head, I've been lurking on my iphone maps and it reeeeeally does give you a sense of expanse. Do you know how far it is between Fort Worth and Ogallala, for example? Like, a billion miles. (Additional geography note, the Canadian river is at no point in Canada. It starts in the Colorado Rockies and eventually connects to the Mississippi. That was confusing to me for a minute.) Trying to wrap your head around the space truly makes it feel extra lonely. Especially as people are dying left and right. Will there be any people left??
Relatedly, to echo another commenter, it's wild in light of this expanse how many people know each other. Can you imagine meeting a stranger and you both just happen to know the same person in Arkansas or wherever the fuck? It's like there is only one person with any given first name. Not one time do they ever say "Gus who? I knew a Gus Brown, but that's a different guy." No. There are like fifty people in the entire United States and I think 20% of them have died this week. (Additional question. Passage of time. How much time has passed? What time of year did they leave Hat Creek and what time of year is it now? I'm worried about winter coming and everyone freezing to death in like Wyoming.)
Wait I'm so glad you looked on a map - I have just been trying to puzzle it out in my head the way I do when ultramarathonners I follow on IG do one of their crazy races. Going to Texas for the first time this past spring was a real exercise is understanding the depth and scope of the landscape - how truly NOT close anything is to each other. I'm spoiled by the comparatively narrow east coast and even the casually snug midwest, in that regard.
The power of the elements is really horrifying here - I did a quick googling and it seems like this journey (like all my Oregon trail jaunts) started in May, so hopefully they're okay for a bit weather-wise. Or at least... winter-wise.
even when they set out, a couple people made comments about how it was practically too late in the season for them to start a drive…ominous
Don't forget Po Campo's comments about water the and the lack thereof.
I love this book fr
I, too, am deeply worried about the weather.
Following along on a map really makes the story come alive and gives us perspective of how monumental this journey really is - sort of like flying to the moon or Ulysses 10-year journey back home in The Odyssey.
Oh one more thing: Gus is SO badass holy shit. He has been talking talking talking the talk but man can WALK. I was so impressed and surprised and kind of in love that there is a genuine hero behind his words. Stabbing the horse in the neck to create the blood screen is obviously brutal and awful but like... it's pretty metal.
And the way he is so patient and compassionate with Lorie in contrast to that was amazing. "Augustus was so pleased to hear her talk that tears came to his eyes. We're just playing for buttons, honey." " (475)
literally…mcmurtry spends so much of the beginning of the book like. showing us how much gus talks himself up, how much other people are annoyed by him, how he endears himself to people, and it’s almost like he’s trying to show us how gus could have Talked his way into his own legend. but then shit hits the fan and gus very casually starts ripping and tearing and hero-ing left and right and it’s like oh no he was not ever lying and the people who see him as a legendary figure were not “influenced” to do so. he just is.
I love this! I also love how Gus is so even-keeled, chill, just hanging around and then BAM goes into hardass mode in an instant. The rescue of Lorie obviously, but even the scene in the bar where he goes from talking to smashing the bartenders face. such whiplash!
great contrast between him and Jake in that way
I'm gagged by you being like "what he did to the horse is metal"
Look it's terrible and I obviously don't endorse horse violence but that horse was donezo anyway if the Indians got him and like you gotta survive
On the part of the book that made me go wait... you're telling me the Wild West is... Wild!?!?!?
1. The letter from July to Elmira broke my heart; his situation just went from bad to so SO bad. He was already one of my favorite characters and now that he survived the Blue Duck ordeal (the first one so far anyway) and come out alive but basically proven useless in battle, I'm interested to see if there is a character arc for him out there - the green sheriff returning hardened by his experiences. Multiple people including Gus commented on how surprisingly young July is, easy to forget given his situation.
2. Related, the death of Janey (and the rest of his party but especially Janey) gave me a real "game of thrones" moment, where I realized that main character death is ON the menu. The fact that McMurty introduced a character like Janey, who was so different and interested and added so much to the dynamic, only to have her die quickly and brutally genuinely shocked me. I feel that basically besides Gus and Call, no one is safe.
3. On the "life is cheap" theme: "Son, this is a sad thing... Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good... If I ever run into Blue Duck, I'll kill him. But if I don't, somebody else will... or a snake will bite him or a horse will fall on him, or he'll get hung, or one of his renegades will shoot him in the back. Or he'll just get old and die." (464) and from an earlier passage that came back to me now, from the bug man "it's a great mistake to hurry... the grave's our destination" (309).
July is just a kid!! Having him grapple with what he's really doing out there broke my heart - he doesn't want to be doing his job at all, especially not now. The letter was especially brutal. I am not really rooting for him and Elmira to be together, but I'm starting to find myself wishing and hoping they get some kind of closure for all that they can't promise each other.
She lives in hell where I sent her is literally a quote I have quoted to multiple people since reading this book
I'll see you on Tuesday May 27th btw so we can all have a nice Monday off. Ideally we (MYSELF ESPECIALLY) will have read up thru Chapter 91!!! The days are just getting longer - that just means more time to read!
I too am behind, but will give my thoughts regardless. Bo’s exit is such a great moment— we spend comparatively no time in his POV, but as we slowly slip into it as he makes up his mind to go back to Lonesome Dove, we’re treated to a great recap of everything that has occurred from a fresh perspective, turning this grouchy comic relief guy into a full-fledged human being so that, when it ends with him talking about ‘ringing the bell a few more times— captains orders’ I’m overcome with emotion for someone I previously didn’t care much at all about one way or the other.
McMurtry is like Dostoyevsky a little in that he just can’t bring himself to hate a character, to think of them as evil. He’s forced this person into existence and set them on a path of death and treachery, and thusly he owes them sympathy and understanding and at least one gorgeously written paragraph that tells the world how they feel. It’s so holistic, which is what I think sets Lonesome Dove so far apart from its revisionist/anti western contemporaries which are usually steeped in cynicism.
That latter point is why I'm so compelled by the late(ish) entry of someone like Blue Duck... what's he plotting...
I wonder about this as well; I feel like as cruel as he is, I don't hate him either because his cruelty and evil were obviously created by the actions of the Rangers et al pushing his people over the edge. Hard to say at this point how much of that is McMurtry and how much is just my perception as a modern reader but it's hard to ignore the circle of violence of it all, especially when we have passages like the "maybe we shouldn't have killed everyone one" (quote by Blair)
Yes!! Cannot bring himself to hate anyone, and by extension neither can we. There are bad and brutal people in this book, but the minute we go into their POV we’re like “well, got to admit I see where they’re coming from.”
Even as things get more serious and brutal (agree about the prose in Roscoe's death, haunting stuff), I'm glad that the dry humor is still just as consistent. This bit from when the gang first meets Po Campo made me snicker out loud on a packed Brown Line train:
"The cook's got a donkey, only he don't ride it," Pea Eye remarked. "He says it ain't civilized to ride animals."
"Why, the man's a philosopher," Augustus said.
"That's right—I just hired him to talk to you," Call said. "It would free the rest of us so maybe we could work."
I burst out laughing at the riding animals bit too: "How would you like it if somebody rode you?
Such a question was too much for Pea." Really glad the boys are eating good!!
loooving Po's presence so much, and how easily he wins the boys over just by feeding them molasses! the image of Newt sucking on a hail lollipop... I die.
As someone of candied cricket eating experience… he’s right! They’re kinda good!
The moment where Blue Duck kills Joe and Janey made me so upset and sad I threw my book across the room, something I have literally never done before in my life. My husband was very alarmed! The way you get attached to these characters without even really knowing how. It’s like sorcery.
That Janey/Joe don't really even get a farewell scene feels especially brutal - they're there, and then they're not.
I don't know why but the violence against Lorena was disturbing but I was still able to hang. and then the casual death of Janey and Joey just obliterated me! I don't know why it got me so bad, but it really messed with me. I had such hope for Janey as a character and it was so fleeting :( She escapes horror to just die in an instant.
I think the wasted potential is what packs such a punch. You feel like McMurtry has all these plans for a character, there’s so many directions they can go - then he just kills them.
Janey also feels written to be one of those characters who can survive literally anything... she has no shoes, beats two guys with guns just by throwing rocks at them, saves Roscoe's starving ass, all just to die mercilessly at the hands of Blue Duck. Absolutely brutal. And don't even get me started on the death of Joe, my god.
Yes!! I think that's right. She's a survivor but is no match for the worst the West has to offer. Just so so sad.
Yes I think that's exactly it - she's really brought in as one of the most capable characters yet, but there's a limit.
justice for Janey who, if she HAD to die, should have lived at least until McMurtry May volume 4!!
THIS
The violence against the kids & the younger Indian who has a crush on Lorena has haunted me since I first read the book. The casual cruelty.
It is just awful
Silly me thought that poor bumbling Roscoe would end up making it out of this trip just fine, especially once he started traveling with Janey. He seemed to be roaming through a different world and a different book from the others, and I really did not see their deaths coming. There was a lot of storytelling potential for Joe and Janey (and life potential, they were both quite young), but death is random and brutal in this world and McMurtry keeps us on our toes.
it’s becoming clearer that Call is going north to a new “wild country” because he doesn’t know how to function in a settled place. Gus sees that Call doesn’t really want to be a rancher, he’s attracted to the more dangerous life that they’ve essentially eradicated in Texas. Do we think there’s any chance he will actually stay and homestead?
If anything else bad happens to Lorie I will riot. She’s been through enough.
Agree so much re: Lorie...
Great observation re: Call, the only thing he understands is solitary life on the plains and he's constantly trying to get back to it
It’s hard not to laugh at Jake Spoon’s continued bafflement that he has an effect on the world around him. I’m quite curious where that will lead, because the consequences of his actions seem to grow every day. And I think his attitude is emblematic of the sort of individualism necessary to be a part of the vanguard of the settler process. Gus, in contrast, is constantly thinking about and being confronted by his not-so-minor participation in the mass depopulation (people + animals) of the West that makes settling possible. And while Call wants to regain some of what’s lost by finding newer land in Montana, Gus knows that it’s all going in the same direction. The point being, I can’t really imagine Jake surrounded by pyramids of skulls. He probably wouldn’t even think to notice them because they aren’t attributable to people he knows.
In a lot of ways, Jake would be right at home in Rio Bravo (thanks for the rec, Fran!). There isn’t much for him to be confused by, as nothing there exists beyond the individual. It’s a real bootstraps fantasy! I loved when Dean Martin overcame alcoholism (beer excluded, of course) through the power of music. Jake would have much less trouble understanding his problems in a town like that.
Jake's inability to gauge who or where he is in space and time is both hugely relatable and so painful to read - we see him through so many other people that we've come to lose any and all respect for him, especially as he sinks so low in Newt's eyes (and Newt gets a real kick out of him!). I am starting to feel that Jake is doomed - but maybe there's hope yet as there was for Dean in Rio Bravo.
My biggest worry is that the trip just keeps getting harder and more dangerous. And I don’t know if we’ve just left anyone behind yet. But one can hope…
that scene of Call and Gus in the saloon - the photograph of the two of them with Jake and Jake is the only one grinning, "whereas he and Gus looked solemn."
Culture has sort of moved on from the "himbo," but Jake really is one. Very dumb and affable guy whose only real skill is getting women to like him. I've read ahead a bit, and it appears that he will continue flopping, at least for the short term.
In plot terms the book shows its hand here, but it also describes the emotional ideas that carry it through to the end — that people need each other, that in the West you really can die of loneliness. July is horribly lonesome now. i hope it doesn’t get him too.
Something about the book’s very memorable final lines clicked for me when reading this section again, ideally I’ll remember to come back to this.
I really like your notes about these people dying out. McMurtry is also careful to note that the desolation of the West is a place that the rangers played a part in creating. Blue Duck is a kind of problematic archetype, a brutal savage, but he is also a predator of the sort that this new West invites.
I was very grateful for Wilbarger’s manners when he made his reappearance.
“None of us is such great judges of what to do.”
I like that there's a dual implication that yes, this is the largest landscape of all time, and yet yes, you can also run into the same person over and over again - it's giving New York City... maybe the sixth borough is Lonesome Dove, etc. I'm sort of fascinated by Blue Duck's antiquated role here and to see where (if anywhere) he goes with that - feels truly surprising (not necessarily in a great way) even if it doesn't work for me.
Wilbarger's reappearance is a delight, especially his thing about reading Milton in the morning.
That passage with July walking the plains on his own is one of the most haunting sections of the book I've read so far. Even Gus can handle a few days by himself as long as he's got something to focus on (in this case, rescuing Lorie) -- though the little interaction he has with the guy collecting buffalo bones sustains him (marvelous scene). July is more or less just wandering through purgatory, having survived what would have been his certain death just by watching Gus kill all of Blue Duck's men. And now his wife is paired off with Big Zwey? Dude cannot catch a break. He's a decent man!
I am going to ignore how sad I am about poor Janey and Joe to bring up two things:
1. Have we discussed how this book is dedicated to magazine journalism legendista MAUREEN ORTH? Because it is, even though (as Google informed me) Orth and McMurty are not current or former spouses but simply *good buds.* Wonder which one is Call and which one is Gus....
2. Piping plovers are actually a very big deal at Montrose Beach! Chicago protects plover eggs! https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/18/piping-plover-egg-spotted-at-montrose-beach/
omg wow.... and to think I was mere blocks above at Foster Beach, not knowing I was so close...
Wait and NO re: Maureen Orth.... this is crazy....... need to ponder who is who here... to me McMurtry is so obviously Gus.... maybe Maureen Orth is Pea-Eye.
This section is where the book really starts to cook for me: the narrative (so much as it exists) is moving along, we know these characters well enough to really feel their joys/woes/losses, and Ol' Larry starts dropping in so many funny little guys. Highlights:
- Maybe my favorite thing about this story is the way it paints the west as basically an endless expanse with only rivers for frontiers, and yet they keep running into the same people over and over: Wilbarger, July, Blue Duck, etc. It gives the whole landscape an almost mythical feel: vast and abyssal, but also small and communal
- Po Campo is up there with the most affable characters ever... who also remorselessly killed their wives. It's him and Cliff Booth, I guess
- There isn't a lot of action in the book, but it's written so elegantly -- from the barfight you highlighted above to Gus's fight against Blue Duck's men, which reminded me of the nighttime shootout in Fury Road in its snipery sparseness.
- Gus on Lorie: "She's had an ordeal but she's young. She won't forget it, but she might outlive it."
I like how seamlessly the action drifts in and out. The book never really feels as though it's amounting to a set piece - people fighting suddenly and then it ends suddenly, like the violence at the bar that culminates in a broken nose and little else. McMurtry does a great job with action but I like how relatively unshowy he is about it.
Oh totally, which feels aligned with these characters. Gus is a virtuosic fighter but you wouldn’t know it the 99% of the time when it’s not relevant
‘I god, was I surprised by what befell Roscoe, Janey, and Joe! A few pages before one of the Kiowas says how cheap life is after blue duck murders the youngest of their group for refusing to gamble his stake in lorie, and that sure rang true. July’s realization that he ain’t half the cowboy Gus is was brutal but necessary. Poor newt at losing lorie but also what was Gus thinking?!
When we first bought our home, my husband rented 40 goats to clear the acre of poison oak and rubbish in the back half of the property. On the last day we had them, they busted out of their fencing and scattered all over the neighbor’s yard, and he and I had to run around like human border collies for a good 45 minutes to get them penned again. Every time they describe the hundreds of cows running wild in a lightning storm or whatever I think about the chaos of those goats in a much smaller area and how much harder it would be to wrangle the cows in the middle of the great blue yonder!
I said this last week I think but when I think about having to move thousands of cows across the country it simply boggles the mind - I don't understand how or why this was ever a sustainable or even doable way of life and living!! It's crazy!!
Wait also 40 goats to clear the acre of poison oak.... I'm :) I love goats yay.. there used to be local goats at a cemetery and park by my old apartment who would do landscaping. They were SO friendly.
Newt - I'd like to see him learn something for once...