This is book three in Larry McMurtry's "Last Picture Show" or "Duane Moore" series (whichever is more correct) and continues the saga of Duane Moore, who we met as an high school senior in "The Last Picture Show" (one of my very favorite books and movies) who is now 62 years old and with a still larger family that would definitely push me into a sound state of depression. In fact to me, Duane is the sanest person in the one-stoplight town of Thalia, Texas, those most if not all other town residents consider it to be his cheese slipping off his cracker rather than vice versa. (Living in what until several years ago was a one-stoplight town in Indiana, I find plenty of "facts of life and living" in such towns captured in McMurty's strong writing. Small towns are special places for both good and ill and oen growing too fast such as mine have special growing pains especially where the local agricultural community is concerned. Not to mention the changes with increasing population and subdivisions and still the only town I know of in the world where both a McDonald's and Burger King have closed. This is in my town, not Thalia. I find that fact rather remarkable since the same sized towns surrounding us, five within a 15-mile radius.)Anyway, I'm babbling as usual for anyone who bothers to read my reviews (and for those that do stumble upon them, I apologize that I am waaay behind on my duties here at GoodReads due to real life interference). I'm also not going into the story too much since it would be far too many spoliers in my opinion even to give out the first major event in the novel. I'd just rather not do that. Suffice it to say it gets off to a fast start and how one decision by one resident can throw a family and even an entire town into something of an uproar. This is well-worth your time and even starting the series with this one I don't think would throw you off-kilter much as each book could stand alone I suppose. But I read a series in order ... a parochial-school habit pounded into me permanently I'm afraid.I'm staggering slowly through this series not because they are uninteresting but I like to stretch out a series and make it last. Silly I suppose but just how I am. Apologies for more foibles in my reading habits. :)
Once in a great while, the resonance of a book takes you by the collar and shakes you like a dog with a sock. This is one of those for me. Maybe it wouldn't have been this way a year ago or a month from now or if I had eaten differently this past week, but I just finished this book and I'm a wreck. It's hilarious. It's sad. And hardest of all for me right now, it's a mirror. This business of the importance of who you are at the moment you read something (or see a movie, or listen to a song) interests me. But it's not just your mood—part of the job of the artist is to set that mood, after all, even though it's an imperfect craft—it's also bigger, as in, your time of life. I got a lot more out of reading Moby-Dick in my thirties than when it was assigned in my teens; and I think I got gobsmacked by this book partly because I'm over 50 and I'm a father. I bet if I'd read this right after the Melville, I'd have given it only four stars.I'm also amazed by the craft of this thing. McMurtry's Duane is a good man, deeply introspective (though unused to it), acting at maximum capacity. How the author keeps these plates spinning is a thing of beauty. It should not be that interesting to be inside the head of a 60+ uneducated Texas oil-man who is trying to find himself, but I was breathless with wonder throughout. Maybe it's my own existential angst, but that can't be all of it. The guy can write the hell out of a character.The blurb: One day Duane Moore decides he's tired of riding in his pickup and that he'll start walking. Everywhere. And the citizens of Thalia, Texas, especially his wife Karla, think he's off his rocker. You can get more of an idea of the book reading other reviews; what I haven't seen but thought as I read it is that this is a funnier, deeper, Texas revisiting of some of the themes of Rabbit Run and related to the escaping-mom novels of Anne Tyler.
What do You think about Duane's Depressed (2003)?
I love this book, far more than its better-known prequels, The Last Picture Show and Texasville, which people may know from the Cybill Shepherd movies. Despite the protagonist's differences from my experience (Texas oil man, high school-educated, with a family that seems to do nothing but sew its wild oats), this book speaks to my experience as a man in these United States. Duane, fed up with his life as the head of a small oil company, patriarch of an affluent but wayward family, and leader of a small town community, feels compelled to acknowledge his problems by parking his pickup in the carport, set up residence in a remote shack six miles away, and begin to walk everywhere.
—George
Although I'm a huge McMurtry fan, the title of this book put me off and I read it only after reading When the Light Goes and Rhino Ranch, sequels despite this one's being billed as "the final volume in The Last Picture Show saga." It does tie up several loose ends from that story by way of killing off some characters and I strongly suspect that McMurtry's own depression following his bypass surgery informed his portrayal of Duane Moore, the stable, sensible one who is even sensible in his mid-life crisis. Reading this made me want to buy a bicycle and read Proust (Remembrance of Things Past - Kilmartin translation).
—Mary
McMurtry always makes me laugh, and I've admired him since reading Lonesome Dove. This book catalogs the journey of a man who has grown tired of his own life and looks outside his family for what he needs, yet he hangs on to keeping up his elaborate garden. He gives up all transportation and walks, read Walden and Proust, and moves to a cabin, and after his wife dies he falls in love with his Lesbian councilor. Basically, the book says that to overcome stored up, painful emotions, one needs to talk to face them. This will allow those forced into the necessary obligations of living for others to free themselves to enjoy their own life, which to McMurtry means watching sailboats in a Mediterranean Sea. His twists and turns often surprise me, but he's often chaotic for no reason, and the ending was cheap and unsatisfying.
—Sharon
