I have somehow never heard of Larry McMurtry ever but lately I've been seeing him mentioned as one of the "great American authors" Any good? I love westerns
netflix is probably doing an show of one of his books and their getting him out there into the normie mind, prob pay a few influencers to do youtube slop about him, etc.
>>25266280Okay that makes way more sense why I'm suddenly seeing this everywhere now
>>25266276give annie proulx a try
>>25266297oh it's cuz a new biography of him just dropped apparentlyhttps://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/new-larry-mcmurtry-biography-western-star-takeaways/
It is very much the heavily idealized sort of western complete with the cliches but does offer more to chew on and weirdly the idealized quality works well for the completely accidental thematic content. It is pretty good if you don't look too closely, but I am not much for westerns or genre, just grab the odd book on whim from the library free bin.
>>25266642>heavily idealized sort of western complete with the clichesSuch as? I say this as someone who LOVES spaghetti western films but never really bothered with traditional westerns
>>25266276>I've been seeing him mentioned as one of the "great American authors"That's pretty hyperbolic, it's a solid novel but not the greatest American western ever written. His Berrybender and Thalia books are also quite good.
>>25266792It is very much of the traditional Hollywood sort full of "howdy, partners" and "how, whitemans." He is not quite that generic, but he gets close and it is very much playing cowboys and indians. But it works because the story is two old cowpokes go out on one last adventure only to discover that their west, the west they helped forge, is dead and was very possibly just an ideal of youth and either way, they are probably getting on to be too old for this sort thing and the country ain't what it used to be, the ideal has become less ideal and that is probably a good thing because killing ain't much fun anymore and probably never was with all that death and all. You've got the American ideal on the cusp of a major change, the idealized wild west, the ideals of a couple old cowboys and the dreams of some young ones all playing off each other in a way that is really impressive considering it was an accident and if you look close enough you can see the cracks in the facade, it's an ideal itself and it is almost a masterpiece of postmodern metafictional pastiche but it never quite crosses that line which just extends the ideal to the style itself and reflects the story.It is a weird book; half of me doesn't believe McMurtry's assertions that none of this is there and he just did not want to scare off his fanbase/give the book over to the world of literature, but the other half of me can't help notice the holes and flaws and realize it is just one of those things that sort of happened, like the Grand Canyon or the Badlands.
Louis L'Amour mogs
