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A review by baldwig
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry read by W. Kadinsky 5
• Larry McMurtry's character-driven Lonesome Dove with characters simultaneously interacting and isolating. Irretrievably leaving people, places, family and their familiar behind. Regret. No second chances. Deadly missed last opportunities. Seeing oneself in another is often off-putting. Characters poke around rather peek inside. A journey of (self) discovery. A hero's journey of finding oneself away from the sheltered security of home, leaving childhood and the comfortable behind. Doves symbolize peace and peace can be lonesome indeed. Given turmoil and dissatisfaction, people fly the coup/fledge their nest. Though some find themselves and others in flight, a lot just add the regret of leaving to their litany of losses. Many rivers of no return for home will have changed and It's inhabitants fled/fledged too.
• Name Game: Woodrow Call: stolid, steadfast,, silent, "knows his purpose." Call, a leader, people follow his call, battle Call, former Texas Ranger peacekeeper. Augustus McCrae, august- marked by majestic grandeur or dignity, the hog days of August. McCrae, McMurty, an author stand-in? Newt Dobbs. small, adaptable amphibian in the dry Hat Creek (men of many hats). Newt, a juvenile salamander, leaving Dry Creek to mature/tour up north. Jake Spoon: silver spoon, baby spoon, spoon-fed, dependant, arrested development. Pea Eye, pea brain, sleep with one eye open on lookout for the big Indian. Lorena (a whore of lore) Wood (servicing peckerwood peckers). Deets, details trail and distance, a man to have both by your side but also out front detailing direction.Deets- quiet, competent, best tracker, calculates distance accurately, scout, forecaster, wants, like everybody else, to be signified, superb trail companion. Po Campo, poor camp observer, trails the trail.
• Elmira Johnson, "in (men's) eyes she didn't belong to herself"
• Expected action becomes unexpected interaction: raid into Mexico finds no fireworks, only two lost Irishman; Roscoe Brown's search for July Johnson detours to Louisa, a feisty, matrimonial, widowed farmer. Expectations subverted.
• Mr. Sedgewick, "It's a great mistake to hurry." "Why?" Joe asked, puzzled by almost everything the traveler said. "Because the grave's our destination."
• "If one stopped to think about it, it was depressing how little most men learned in their lifetime."
• Call, "Better to have never know the pleasure than to have the pain that followed."
Call fears vulnerability. His busy body quiets his restless mind. Runs away from heartbreak, past and present.
• ""Don't you cheat, Gus," Lorena (Wood) said suddenly. "If you cheat I won't give you no pokes. Augustus was so pleased to hear her talk that tears came into his eyes. "We're just playing for buttons, honey," he said."
• "Though Bob (Allen) had been a horse trader all his adult life, he had no real skill with horses. If they disobeyed him, he beat them- Clara had often turned her back in disgust from the sight of her husband beating a horse, for she knew it was his incompetence, not the horse's, that was to blame for whatever incident had provoked the beating. Bob could not contain his violence when angered by a horse."
• "two buffalo, standing on the prarie as if they were lost. July started to shoot one, but it was more meat than he needed, and if he killed one the other buffalo would be as alone as he was."
• "She may know what I am, though," Lorena said. "Yes, she'll know you're a human being," Augustus said. "You don't have to duck your head to nobody."
• ""I'm honest," Clara said. "To most men, that's sassy.""
• ""I do wish I'd just stayed in Lonesome Dove," (Lippy) said," leaving Deets grave.
You can't go home again. Regret. Lonesome outside Lonesome Dove. Moanin' like mourning dove.
• Rivers are borders, progress markers, life to drink and death to cross.
• Clara passionately dislikes Call. Too similar? Both fear heatbreaking loss following dependence. Clara gravitates to animals (as does Call) and the very young (lost son's do-over) dependent on her. Clara takes long walks, spends more time alone and with the horses than together in the house.
• Clara, "It struck her that endings were never as you would expect them to be."
• "On some mornings things rolled inside Clara, and made her tense and snappish. She could do nothing with the horses on days like that. They would become as she was"
• ""Is it that he don't like me?" Newt asked." Augustus, ""(Woodrow) likes to think people live for duty-"" "He's got to keep trying to be the way he thinks he is, and he's got to make out that he was always that way- it's why he ain't owned up to being your pa.""
Call can't accept himself, nor consequently his off-spring.
• Augustus on his TN father, "I just seen that horses and hounds would get boring if you tried to make 'em a life." As bored with himself as others of his loquaciousness.
• As Gus and Newt loped ahead to end chapter 93, "The cattle looked tiny as ants."
• To Jasper, ""I guess you'll you'll cross (the Yellowstone river) if the Captain wants to keep going," Dish said." The cross boss Captain is not to be crossed.
• Gus in dugout river bank, "Indians mostly don't like fight in the wet. Only white men are dumb enough" ""I'm an admirer of good sense wherever I find it," Augustus said." Good sense. "and anyway he preferred the delirium to the tedium of waiting" "just pride talking"
Pride plus boredom equals impetuosity, whereas Call is cautious.
• Augustus McCrae and Dr. Joseph Cincinnatus Mobley debating "fractuosities!"
• "All men were standing around, disturbed that Dish was leaving. Newt felt like crying. Leavings and dyings felt a lot alike."
• Clara, ""No one could have kept (Gus) home. He was a rake and a rambler"" ""Bob was too dumb to realize there'd be a struggle," Clara said. "Half the time he didn't notice it even when he was in it.""
Men in this novel are maybe more aware of their environment, but less aware of others. Clara angry. Lost innocence. Discontented. Picked steady, empty Bob.
• ""Why, Captain, that little boy walks just like you." Call flinched, but Pea Eye hadn't noticed- Pea Eye was no noticer, as Augustus had often said."
Like Bob, Pea Eye's eye is open but doesn't see.
• "Maggie, of course, had not been hateful- it was the strange need she induced in him that he disliked to remember." Strange need.
• Call transfering the Hell Bitch, her saddle, his big Henry Winchester and his pa's watch to Newt. All the tears. Call on call, the authority, the leader. Body busy, then mind still. A driver of beings. Man of motion.
• Everybody becomes discontented and disconnected (except maybe little ugly Texas bull). Start looking back more than looking forward. Could novel have ended with the denouement of Call's departure? Yes, but it now completes an incompletable circle. A hero's internal journey. A hero is made through sacrifice. Leaving home is leaving childhood behind. Courage is not the absence of fear, but fortitude in the face of it.
• Call and Gus, former Texas Rangers. Home on the range far from comfort and memories of home. Pride-driven cattle drive. The characters try to seal themselves off from further pain. Call by separating himself and keeping his body busy. Gus shuts his ears by constantly running his mouth. Lorena keeps silent, emotionally distant to protect herself. Gus and Lorena are opposites attracted. Gus gives his protection and Lorena loans her ears. Whereas Call and Clara, even their names are similar, are so alike, they repel each other.
• Larry McMurtry's character-driven Lonesome Dove with characters simultaneously interacting and isolating. Irretrievably leaving people, places, family and their familiar behind. Regret. No second chances. Deadly missed last opportunities. Seeing oneself in another is often off-putting. Characters poke around rather peek inside. A journey of (self) discovery. A hero's journey of finding oneself away from the sheltered security of home, leaving childhood and the comfortable behind. Doves symbolize peace and peace can be lonesome indeed. Given turmoil and dissatisfaction, people fly the coup/fledge their nest. Though some find themselves and others in flight, a lot just add the regret of leaving to their litany of losses. Many rivers of no return for home will have changed and It's inhabitants fled/fledged too.
• Elmira Johnson, "in (men's) eyes she didn't belong to herself"
• Expected action becomes unexpected interaction: raid into Mexico finds no fireworks, only two lost Irishman; Roscoe Brown's search for July Johnson detours to Louisa, a feisty, matrimonial, widowed farmer. Expectations subverted.
• Mr. Sedgewick, "It's a great mistake to hurry." "Why?" Joe asked, puzzled by almost everything the traveler said. "Because the grave's our destination."
• "If one stopped to think about it, it was depressing how little most men learned in their lifetime."
• Call, "Better to have never know the pleasure than to have the pain that followed."
Call fears vulnerability. His busy body quiets his restless mind. Runs away from heartbreak, past and present.
• ""Don't you cheat, Gus," Lorena (Wood) said suddenly. "If you cheat I won't give you no pokes. Augustus was so pleased to hear her talk that tears came into his eyes. "We're just playing for buttons, honey," he said."
• "Though Bob (Allen) had been a horse trader all his adult life, he had no real skill with horses. If they disobeyed him, he beat them- Clara had often turned her back in disgust from the sight of her husband beating a horse, for she knew it was his incompetence, not the horse's, that was to blame for whatever incident had provoked the beating. Bob could not contain his violence when angered by a horse."
• "two buffalo, standing on the prarie as if they were lost. July started to shoot one, but it was more meat than he needed, and if he killed one the other buffalo would be as alone as he was."
• "She may know what I am, though," Lorena said. "Yes, she'll know you're a human being," Augustus said. "You don't have to duck your head to nobody."
• ""I'm honest," Clara said. "To most men, that's sassy.""
• ""I do wish I'd just stayed in Lonesome Dove," (Lippy) said," leaving Deets grave.
You can't go home again. Regret. Lonesome outside Lonesome Dove. Moanin' like mourning dove.
• Rivers are borders, progress markers, life to drink and death to cross.
• Clara passionately dislikes Call. Too similar? Both fear heatbreaking loss following dependence. Clara gravitates to animals (as does Call) and the very young (lost son's do-over) dependent on her. Clara takes long walks, spends more time alone and with the horses than together in the house.
• Clara, "It struck her that endings were never as you would expect them to be."
• "On some mornings things rolled inside Clara, and made her tense and snappish. She could do nothing with the horses on days like that. They would become as she was"
• ""Is it that he don't like me?" Newt asked." Augustus, ""(Woodrow) likes to think people live for duty-"" "He's got to keep trying to be the way he thinks he is, and he's got to make out that he was always that way- it's why he ain't owned up to being your pa.""
Call can't accept himself, nor consequently his off-spring.
• Augustus on his TN father, "I just seen that horses and hounds would get boring if you tried to make 'em a life." As bored with himself as others of his loquaciousness.
• As Gus and Newt loped ahead to end chapter 93, "The cattle looked tiny as ants."
• To Jasper, ""I guess you'll you'll cross (the Yellowstone river) if the Captain wants to keep going," Dish said." The cross boss Captain is not to be crossed.
• Gus in dugout river bank, "Indians mostly don't like fight in the wet. Only white men are dumb enough" ""I'm an admirer of good sense wherever I find it," Augustus said." Good sense. "and anyway he preferred the delirium to the tedium of waiting" "just pride talking"
Pride plus boredom equals impetuosity, whereas Call is cautious.
• Augustus McCrae and Dr. Joseph Cincinnatus Mobley debating "fractuosities!"
• "All men were standing around, disturbed that Dish was leaving. Newt felt like crying. Leavings and dyings felt a lot alike."
• Clara, ""No one could have kept (Gus) home. He was a rake and a rambler"" ""Bob was too dumb to realize there'd be a struggle," Clara said. "Half the time he didn't notice it even when he was in it.""
Men in this novel are maybe more aware of their environment, but less aware of others. Clara angry. Lost innocence. Discontented. Picked steady, empty Bob.
• ""Why, Captain, that little boy walks just like you." Call flinched, but Pea Eye hadn't noticed- Pea Eye was no noticer, as Augustus had often said."
Like Bob, Pea Eye's eye is open but doesn't see.
• "Maggie, of course, had not been hateful- it was the strange need she induced in him that he disliked to remember." Strange need.
• Call transfering the Hell Bitch, her saddle, his big Henry Winchester and his pa's watch to Newt. All the tears. Call on call, the authority, the leader. Body busy, then mind still. A driver of beings. Man of motion.
• Everybody becomes discontented and disconnected (except maybe little ugly Texas bull). Start looking back more than looking forward. Could novel have ended with the denouement of Call's departure? Yes, but it now completes an incompletable circle. A hero's internal journey. A hero is made through sacrifice. Leaving home is leaving childhood behind. Courage is not the absence of fear, but fortitude in the face of it.
• Call and Gus, former Texas Rangers. Home on the range far from comfort and memories of home. Pride-driven cattle drive. The characters try to seal themselves off from further pain. Call by separating himself and keeping his body busy. Gus shuts his ears by constantly running his mouth. Lorena keeps silent, emotionally distant to protect herself. Gus and Lorena are opposites attracted. Gus gives his protection and Lorena loans her ears. Whereas Call and Clara, even their names are similar, are so alike, they repel each other.