Fountaindale Public Library

Thalia, a Texas trilogy, Larry McMurtry

eng

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fiction

Thalia

971339220

Larry McMurtry

Thalia, Texas

a Texas trilogy

"After school on the weekdays, riding the long road home through ranches in the old yellow school bus, I watched the range change. I watched the whole ranch country shake off its dust and come alive," exclaims a character at the beginning of Horseman, Pass By. Those words belong to Lonnie Bannon, the sensitive young rancher who narrates Larry McMurtry's first novel. But in many ways they channel the vision of McMurtry himself, who, like annon, became a precociously observant cowboy on his father's ranch before beginning his own writing career. While McMurtry is largely known by younger generqations for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dov, it was these first three novels - Horseman, Pass By; Leaving Cheyenne; and The Last Picture Show, which compose this Texas trilogy, Thalia - that brought him to national prominence and boldly injected realism into American literature. Originally published in 1961, Horseman, Pass By appeared shortly after McMurtry graduated college. It was written while he was working as a cowboy on his father's ranch and was inspired by a short story he had written as an undergraduate "about the decline and death of a famous Panhandle cattleman." It is here "across the patches of moonlight" where "the red and green and yellow lights of Thalia shimmer" that we first meet young Lonnie, the grandson and heir apparent of the venerable Homer Bannon, who is envied by Hud, his hedonistic step-uncle, decked out in his "red suede boots" It is against this backdrop that Lonnie matures over the course of one fateful summer, as a persistent rivalry between his grandfather and step-uncle festers and a deadly disease ravages their cattle herd. In Leaving Cheyenne (1962), which anticipates Lonesome Dove more than any other novel, the stark realism of the American West is played out ina mesmerizing love triangle. In a work inspired by a French movie but transposed to post--World War II Texas, stubborn rancher Gideon Fry, resilient Molly Taylor, and awkward ranch hand Johnny McCloud endure the passions and rivalries of romantic love. Published three years later and demonstrating McMurtry's ability to create deeply empathetic, quintessential female characters, The Last Picture Show is both a raw coming-of-age story and an elegy to a frim Texas town trying to keep its lone movie house alive. With a new autobiographical introduction, Thalia affirms how McMurtry, in a career that now spans seven decades, has changed our perception of the West, with sorrowful tales of stoic cowhands, singular ranchers, and extraordinary women - creating unforgettable characters who will live on in the pantheon of American literature

adult