Conspirator
- Brian
- I went out there in search of experience To taste and to touch and to feel as much As a man can before he repents.
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Review: Lonesome Dove
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The first 50 or 60 pages were kind of slow, but they weren't uninteresting either--that's my only complaint for the book.
The story centers on Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, two retired Texas Rangers (the most famous of the Texas Rangers), and their cattle drive of roughly 3000 head from the Rio Grande in south Texas to just north of the Yellowstone river in Montana. Along the way, they experience adventure and tragic loss as they contemplate what it means to live. While Lonesome Dove offers the classic tropes of Western Literature--gun fights, hangings, glamorization of the cowboy lifestyle, prostitutes with hearts of gold, minorities so in-tune with the earth they can accurately predict the behavior of weather and wildlife--this in no way diminishes the force of storytelling McMurty has created. In fact, he holds a healthy reliance upon the cliches and tropes in order to tell the story he wants and not only does it work splendidly well, it is even refreshing. McMurty still includes the realities of the cattle drive. For example, when the cattle drive first begins, it is not the hope for new prosperity that overwhelms the cowboys (the men never sing out in four-part harmony!) but the dust and dirt kicked up from the earth by the cattle. Dirt, incidentally, is a theme throughout the novel as well as the desire to feel clean. While Lonesome Dove still carries with it a romanticism, the realities of life are never far away. (In fact, I wonder if the romanticism is there at all and the Oklahoma boy in me just reads romanticism into the narrative.)
I recommend this book to anyone, not just those who enjoy the Western genre. In fact, I feel much more comfortable categorizing Lonesome Dove as literary fiction that happens to use the traditional Western settings and characters. It is not overwrought with graduate school language, which means anyone can enjoy this book, but it nonetheless offers a great speculation into what it means to live life, to have a full life. I'm looking forward to reading other books in the Lonesome Dove series as soon as I can.
