<p>I’ve lost track of how many times my heart was broken while reading - the death of Deets, the loss of Roscoe and Joe and Janey, July’s bewilderment at every turn, the themes of what was, and what might have been…</p>
<p>Although I’m following the discussion, I don’t feel compelled to analyze Lonesome Dove. I had the thought as I was reading that it was such a complicated yet simple book - there were no gimmicks, like Cloud Atlas and The Luminaries. I’m sure McMurtry must have researched (especially to use the Goodnight story as he did) but it read like it was written in an outpouring of understanding of those two old Rangers, almost like he was recording what he saw, and not dreaming it up. </p>
<p>And I thought the pigs weren’t invited but just decided to go along when everyone else left!</p>
<p>I know I was influenced by seeing the miniseries, although I have no definite memories of watching it. I couldn’t read the Augustus sections without seeing and hearing Robert Duvall, though. What an actor. (Did you know he played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird??)</p>
<p>I loved the humor in the book amidst all the loss and suffering.</p>
<p>I’m a little sorry I read the interviews with LMcM because he sounds like he doesn’t like the book too much. I think it means more to me than it does to him.</p>
<p>I don’t know exactly how old Blue Duck is, but since he’s a full-grown evil-doer in Comanche Moon, set about 20 years earlier than Lonesome Dove, he must be in his 40s at least. Po Campo should go near or at the top of your list–he is older than Gus and Call, referred to several times as “the old man,” even by Call. It’s mentioned at one point that Po is a contemporary of the trapper Jim Bridger, which would make him around 70. (<a href=“Jim Bridger - Wikipedia”>http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bridger</a>)</p>
<p>LOL Mary - I clicked on your Blue Duck link and got a blue duck.</p>
<p>Tiredofsnow Love your post (#100). I particularly agree with these statements:
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<p>I’ve wondered whether McMurtry’s feelings for Lonesome Dove stem partly from fear of being defined by one book, i.e., the author who wrote Lonesome Dove. He’s always asked about it in interviews - his later books compared to it. (Then again perhaps he’s just the curmudgeonly type.)</p>
<p>It’s strange that Bolivar and Po Campo are the two oldest characters. I never thought of them that way. Anyway, I just loved Po.</p>
<p>Maybe McMurtry’s feelings about Lonesome Dove are a bit like Haruki Murakami’s feelings about his novel Norwegian Wood. Norwegian Wood was so insanely popular in Japan that Murakami actually left the country for a few years to get away from all the furor over it. And it’s not even his best work! I got on a Murakami kick not too long ago and read eight books by him, and it was the one I liked the least.</p>
<p>Agree! The characters are amazing–all of them, really. Sometimes when I read a long book with a huge cast, I have to refer back to earlier chapters to keep everyone straight in my mind. I never had to do that with Lonesome Dove.</p>
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<p>That’s a good segue into this question:</p>
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<p>Doesn’t like the book too much? I’d say McMurtry doesn’t remember the book too much :). I don’t know how he could write, “All of the Hat Creek Outfit, including particularly Augustus McCrae, want Call to accept the boy as his own.” Because with the exception of Gus (and probably Deets), the members of the Hat Creek Outfit are mostly clueless and/or not particularly concerned about Newt’s paternity. Also, I wouldn’t say “unacknowledged paternity” qualifies as the central theme. </p>
<p>I think we get a little closer with this 1985 review in The New York Times:</p>
<p>“Curmudgeon” is the exact word I thought of in regards to LMcM, ignatius! You’re probably all right about him being sick of talking about LD.</p>
<p>And Mary, I agree that most of the Hat Creek boys were clueless! Deets and Gus seemed the most invested in getting Call to acknowledge Newt. </p>
<p>BTW, after I finished I read the preface - and I really wish I hadn’t, even after finishing Lonesome Dove.</p>
<p>I think Call grabbed onto the notion of the cattle drive to regain a little of that sense of purpose and that sense of moving forward that he had as a Ranger. Which probably is the same reason Gus asked him to take his body back to Texas.</p>
<p>When I was walking this morning, “Pancho and Lefty” by Willie Nelson came on my iPod - </p>
<p>The boys tell how old Pancho fell, and Lefty’s livin in cheap hotels
The desert’s quiet, Cleveland’s cold
And so the story ends we’re told
Pancho needs your prayers it’s true, but save a few for Lefty too
He only did what he had to do, and now he’s growing old</p>
<p>Or in Jimmy Buffett’s words “my occupational hazard being my occupation’s
just not around”.</p>
<p>Great point about being able to keep the characters straight - although I was a little thrown when we shifted to Fort Smith.</p>
<p>And I didn’t think the book was about “the stocking of Montany” OR unacknowledged paternity… I thought it was about bad hygiene (just kidding).</p>
<p>I guess I do want to analyze the book after all!!</p>
<p>The scene where Blue Duck “flies” was familiar to me - is there a similar scene in a different book or was it just because at some level I remembered it from when I read LD before? </p>
<p>I’m back from my mostly without internet weekend. You all have been very productive!</p>
<p>I’m okay with McMurtry saying the plot is ultimately about unacknowledged paternity, though for most of the book it seemed to me to be about the friendship of men is a mostly womenless world and their longing to have that last adventure together. They didn’t want to grow up, they wanted to relive their youth - and they did, but it made them sadder not happier.</p>
<p>I do feel that even though Call couldn’t get the words out, and that fact will haunt Newt, he can be forgiven as all his actions in those final scenes with his son were those of a father. They should have been enough - and I think Newt will eventually feel they are enough.</p>
<p>Clara was an interesting character have mixed feelings about her. I don’t really think she needed any of the men in her life emotionally. </p>
<p>I must say, at times the book felt like Game of Thrones, I started dreading reading the next chapter and finding out who gets to die this time.</p>
<p>Lol, Tired of snow “And I didn’t think the book was about “the stocking of Montany” OR unacknowledged paternity… I thought it was about bad hygiene (just kidding).”</p>
<p>The only redeeming thing about Jake was his cleanliness! Ewwwwww, sex with the smelly, dirty, dust covered men- ugh
I saw ever River as an opportunity for the men to bathe, snakes or no snakes! </p>
<p>Mathmom" Clara was an interesting character have mixed feelings…she didn’t need any men emotionally"</p>
<p>Perhaps, that was a reason I liked her so much, after all those love struck men, pining away for Unattainable women. in fact, I didn’t buy into this aspect of the book. Were men really smitten like this, pining away their lives for long lost love. Gus, Call ( maybe) Dish, July, big bison hunter watching Maggie from afar. And, if they weren’t pining they had killed their wives- Bol and Po campo??</p>
<p>As much as I liked this book, I would not want my 20 somethings to read it Palpable misogyny. </p>
<p>Interesting comment, SJCM Could you elaborate on what you see as misogyny in the book? I think the male characters’ feelings about women may have been something like their feelings about Native Americans…a product of the times. Clara was surely a wonderful woman character. I did get tired of Lorena, though. She suffered so much and for so long that I almost felt that McMurtry invented her just to be a punching bag.</p>
<p>^^^ SJCM is the one who’s glad she didn’t read it in her twenties. I too hopes she elaborates.</p>
<p>I read Lonesome Dove shortly after publication. I considered naming my son Augustus and could have gotten away with doing so as it was also my grandfather’s name. I settled for naming a cat Gus. 8-| It amuses me now to think that Augustus is once again a name to be considered, i.e., Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars.</p>
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I love Po Campo too. Maybe segueing in your golden years into cook for a passel of cowhands was a time-honored custom.</p>
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I so agree - one of the great strengths of the book. I also agree with
The cowboys mainly seem oblivious to any father/son resemblance between Call and Newt. Of the characters who know Newt’s paternity only Gus and Clara make an issue of it - Jake and Lorena don’t care. (Lorena knows, doesn’t she? I seem to remember some discussion between her and Gus.)</p>
<p>Agree on all counts. I knew from other McMurty novels that he can write women and is no misogynist, so I felt he was writing from more of a historical perspective. However, I do wish there were one or two more Clara-types in the novel. As noted in discussion question, we seemed to be inundated with harsh and angry females. (Side note: SJCM, Bolivar didn’t kill his wife, he just left her.)</p>
<p>I read Lonesome Dove the first time in my 20s and have encouraged my own twentysomethings to read it. Seems like the perfect age to me–they certainly don’t need to be sheltered anymore at that point, yet are young enough to not yet be jaded. I think a little maturity combined with a little vulnerability can be a wonderful combination when reading an epic novel for the first time. Those end up being the books you remember your entire life.</p>
<p>SJCM: I do think the cowboys probably pined for a certain woman. Take Newt, for example - “deeply in love with Lorena Wood, though so far he had not even had an opportunity to speak to her.” If not Lorena, then who? Other of the cowboys probably know a few more women but Lorena seems less hardened than - let’s say - the working girls of Ogallala - doubtful Newt will pine for the Buffalo Heifer.</p>
<p>Re Mary and NJTM’s comments that McMurtry can write women and is no misogynist. I think McMurtry agrees with you:
</a> Or as emeraldkity says: “I think men are often more romantic than women. Women have kids to look after, so they have to be pragmatic.” </p>
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Lorena - that girl gets underestimated. </p>
<p>I so disagree with question # 2) Just as the two main characters have very different personalities, the two women at the heart of the story also are studies in opposites. Clara Allen declined a proposal from Gus and moved to Nebraska years, if not decades, before the story opens. She’s tough, pragmatic, and practical. Lorena “Lorie” Wood is a lovely and kind-hearted woman who finds herself forced into prostitution by a cruel lover who then abandons her. Both women have powerful relationships to Gus, and Clara seems to have an instant understanding and fondness for Lorie. What similarities do you see in these two women?</p>
<p>The two women are not studies in opposites. Even Gus sees it.
<p>No, I too liked Lorie a lot. She looked soft on the outside, but she was one tough cookie. She found a way to be true to herself while she was a “sporting woman” (love that term!) I loved that she was not the typical Hollywood whore with the heart of gold. She was prickly, picky and strangely innocent. She falls for Jake, but figures out pretty quickly he’s not worth the infatuation, but she stays with him because he’s better than the alternative, and she thinks he might get her to CA. She falls for Gus because he’s so kind to her, at a time when that’s what she needs desparately, and because I think part of her recognizes that he’s not that invested in her - after all there’s Clara. She sends Gus off to finish his adventure in Montana, and I think she knows there’s a good chance he’ll either come back for Clara, or not come back at all. But she’s a survivor - I have no doubt she’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Mary–thanks for that note about the Union Pacific–I kept wondering why they weren’t crossing a railroad!</p>
<p>On the ages of some of the characters, from Lonesome Dove:</p>
<p>The marker Call made for Deets’s grave says “served with me 30 years.” And Deets had been with Gus and Call “almost as long as Pea Eye” (Chapter 5). That would make Call, Gus, Deets and Pea all in their 50’s, though they seemed younger to me.</p>
<p>Dish was “barely 22” at the beginning of the book (Chapter 4)</p>
<p>Lorena was “nearly 20” (Chapter 3).</p>
<p>Call hired four young hands for the trip, “none of them yet 18”–one no older than Newt, and another a year older. That makes Newt about 16 at the beginning. Must have been pretty shocking to the rest when he was put in charge!</p>
<p>“Am I the only Lorie fan?” No! She remains one of my favorite characters. Can one even imagine the brutality she endured and healed from after being kidnapped? I think McMurtry wrote with great sensitivity Lorie’s reconstruction with Gus and Clara’s help. However I think I kind of resent the last sentence of the book. Call meets Dillard who tells him of Wanz burning the Dry Bean.</p>
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<p>Call seems so clueless with his “who?”, and I suppose that’s the point. But I just wish McMurtry hadn’t left the ending with such a slur on one of my favorite characters. </p>