Nasty, Brutish, and Short

A Texan myself, I’m a big fan of Larry McMurtry. His most famous book, Lonesome Dove, is of course a classic, both on paper and on screen. The Last Picture Show, in my rural Texas mind, is also a very good book that capture smalltown life so well. I’ve even planned a pilgrimage to Booked Up, McMurtry’s bookstore in Archer City, TX.  

I say all that to say this: If you loved Lonesome Dove, don’t read this book. That’s my advice. It’s probably not what you’re looking for. This is the deconstruction of westerns that McMurtry tried to write when he wrote Lonesome Dove.

In this book, an Avengers: Infinity War of westerns, the author assembles Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill, and others. I was excited about that, but I probably shouldn’t have been. There’s not really a plot so much as a series of minor events. The characters aren’t the legends the reader expects. Instead, they’re a motley crew a collection of washed up frauds. Wyatt is a cantankerous and sullen bore. Doc is an idiot. In one scene (very minor spoiler), Wyatt and Doc line up some bottles they grab from the town dump for some target practice. They can barely hit any of them.

That’s probably the point of this book – we’ve idolized and lionized these historical Western figures that were just ordinary people from a rough time. If Wyatt Earp were interviewed in 2018, he’d be trending on Facebook for days with his backwards views and actions. OK. The most confusing thing to me about why this book was published – we all know that we probably wouldn’t see eye to with people from the 1880s. Why dwell on it?

This, like Wyatt Earp’s multiple shots at garbage dump bottles, was a miss. It was unnecessarily bitter and not particularly relevant in 2018.