New biography by David Streitfeld examines how McMurtry spent his career dismantling the romantic myth of the American West by replacing it with picaresque fiction rooted in Texas specificity.
Key Takeaways
McMurtry’s core thesis: the West’s traditions were “invented by pulp writers, poster artists, impresarios, and advertising men” – the selling preceded the settling.
He replaced high romance with picaresque – hucksters, bandits, and Rangers – to expose the West as a place of absurd mythical invention, not noble tragedy.
The cowboy myth grew purer as fewer real cowboys remained to contradict it; ranching gave way to oil patches and dozer caps almost overnight.
McMurtry freely fictionalized his own life, which is the central premise of Streitfeld’s biography “Western Star: The Life and Legends of Larry McMurtry.”
He arrived at his vocation through a 1942 gift of 19 boys’ adventure books, his first exposure to the western as genre, in a household with no books at all.
Hacker News Comment Review
One comment, no substantive technical or critical discussion; the thread is effectively a single endorsement of Lonesome Dove as a novel and its TV adaptation.
Notable Comments
@SubGenius: calls Lonesome Dove “a beautiful novel” with “every character fully fleshed out and real”; praises the TV series adaptation as well.
