I stumbled across this 2006 Larry McMurtry novel in a used bookstore a few months back, and I finally pulled it off of the shelf and read it last week, and what a delight.
The novel opens grimly in 1876 when our narrator, 22 year old Marie Antoinette "Nellie" Courtright describes the suicide of her father. The old man was an aristocrat in antebellum Virginia, and he decided to leave there "head west" to start a new plantation on the post Civil War western frontier. He fails, we are told, and along the way, his wife and all but two of his children die, before he takes his own life.
Like I said, it's a grim note on which to start a story, but "Telegraph Days" is anything but a grim tale.
Nellie and her 17 year old brother Jackson decide to leave the failed plantation, and head to the dusty little western town of Rita Blanca that consists mainly of a jail house, an abandoned telegraph office, a general store, and a bunch of saloons. in short order, Nellie arranges for Jackson be named deputy sheriff, and she becomes the telegraph operator. In even shorter order, Jackson becomes a hero by killing all six members of the notorious Yazee Brothers outlaw gang, Nellie writes a dime novel about the event, and becomes famous herself.
Like McMurtry's epic Pulitzer Prize winning novel "Lonesome Dove", this story captures what it was like in the fading days of the Old West, only he does it with more humor and in about 300 fewer pages in this one. Nellie tells her story as she encounters just about everyone that you have ever heard of from those days: George Custer, Billy the Kid, Wild Bill HIckock, The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and, especially, Buffalo Bill Cody. In fact, Nellie becomes the manager, or "majordomo" for Buffalo Bill as he promotes and stages his Wild West shows and sells them to the people across the country and the world who want to see just what the "old west" was like. I especially loved this bit of dialog between Nellie and Bill as he was convincing her to come on with him to manage his business affairs.
"It's a harebrained scheme," I said, "pay fighting Indians to pretend to fight?"
"Yep, and to pay sharpshooters to shoot and acrobats to tumble and trick ropers to twirl big loops and cowboys to ride broncos and all the rest of the folderol that goes with a Wild West pageant," he elaborated.
"This is making me dizzy," I admitted. "Nobody in their right mind would pay good money to see a place that looks like Rita Blanca. Even Yankees aren't that dumb."
"Sure they are - as soon as something's ended, people will start flocking to at least get a glimpse of what it was like before it was over," Cody said. "It's human nature."
"I'm a human, and it's not my nature," I assured him, but even as I said it I knew my remark was partly a lie. Why read Walter Scott if not if not to catch a glimpse of what life was like in older times - times that were surely gone forever?
That's some good writing there, and Nellie Courtright is one of the most engaging characters you will ever come across, as she somehow manages to hold her own against scheming reporters, grungy cowboys, drunks, and outlaws proving that you didn't have to be a man to survive on the sometimes perilous old west. Not that she had anything against men, you understand. In fact's Nellie's matter of fact need and the sheer joy that she takes in the act of "copulation" is one of the more delightful aspects of her character.
Nellie lives long enough to see the glory days of the Old West through which she lived be glamorized in the newest art form of the twentieth century - motion pictures, and in fact, she even played a part in the production of those early movies.
"Telegraph Days" is a fun and lively tale, and Nellie Courtright is a terrific tour guide as she tells her story.
Three Stars from The Grandstander.
