"Telegraph Days" by Larry McMurtry

 

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.

Book/Movie Combo: "Horseman, Pass By" and "Hud"

 

The recent death of author Larry McMurtry, which I wrote about last month, prompted me to resolve to try and read some of his works (other than "Last Picture Show" and "Lonesome Dove") that I had not read.  

The first book on the list was "Horseman, Pass By", McMurtry's first novel, published in 1961.  It tells the story of contemporary cattleman Homer Bannon.  Now past eighty years old, he works a smallish cattle ranch in north Texas, lives with his second wife, her unscrupulous son, Hud, and his grandson, Lonnie.  It is through Lonnie's eyes and narration that the story is told.  Another key character is the ranch's cook/maid, an African-American woman named Halmea.

Similar to "The Last Picture Show", this novel evokes the sense of a time and place and an era that is fast slipping away, and the nothingness that living in a small middle-of-nowhere place in Texas can be. The town of Thalia in "Horseman" is the same town as the one in "Picture Show."

The central crisis in "Horseman, Pass By" is the outbreak of a deadly foot-in-mouth disease that develops in Homer's cattle herd, an event that necessitates the slaughter of the entire herd.  This of course, has a devastating effect on Homer, and it leads to actions that drastically effect the lives of Halmea, Hud, and Lonnie.

In 1963, a movie adaptation of "Horseman, Pass By" was released and renamed "Hud", and I watched it just this week, right after I finished reading the book.  It was directed by Martin Ritt and starred Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, and Brandon De Wilde.  The film was nominated for seven Academy wards and won three, including Neal for Lead Actress and Douglas for Supporting Actor.  Some slight changes from the book - Hud, played by Newman, is Homer's son, there is no second wife for Homer, and the Black cook, Halmea, has become Alma, played by Neal.  If anything, Hud, as portrayed by Newman is an even bigger heel than he was in the novel.  However, the final act that Hud performs in the book is eliminated in the movie.  I suppose that filmmakers in 1963 just couldn't bring themselves to depict what he did in the novel.  Even though we are talking about a sixty year old novel, I'm not going to give the spoiler here if you have only seen the movie.

As in the book, the infection that led to the destruction of the Bannon cattle herds is the central episode of the movie, and the scene that depicted it was especially wrenching to watch.  Newman was nominated for a Leading Actor Oscar - he lost that year to Sidney Poitier - and, not surprisingly, he was terrific as the, shall we say, "anti-hero" Hud Bannon. Not a likable character for the always likable Newman.  De Wilde was only 21 years old playing the 17 year old Lonnie.  He is best know for playing the young boy, Joey, in the classic 1953 western "Shane", for which he received an Oscar nomination.  In the back of my mind, I knew that he had died young: he was killed in a traffic accident in 1972 at the age of 30.

The question is often raised in such instances - which is better the book or the movie?  When seeking to answer, it should always be kept in mind that a book and a movie are two different art forms, and each should be judged on its own merits.  I found both the book "Horseman, Pass By" and the movie "Hud" to be very good pieces of work.  In spite of the changes noted above, the movie held close to the book, and depicted the lives and the emotions  of the characters every bit as well as they were shown in McMurtry's novel.  If you enjoyed one, you will certainly enjoy the other.

I give both he novel and the movie Three Grandstander Stars.

To Absent Friends - Larry McMurtry

 Larry McMurtry

1934 - 2021

American novelist Larry McMurtry died last week at the age of 84.  I confess that I have only read two of McMurtry's novels, but they were among some of the best works of fiction that I had ever read.

One of them became a memorable motion picture, released in 1971...

And this one, a novel that can only be descried as "epic", won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1986.  It 1989, it was turned into one of the great television mini-series of all time and starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones....

His novels, per his obituary in the New York Times, "demythologized the American West with his unromantic depictions of life on the 19th century frontier and in contemporary small town Texas."  In addition to over thirty novels, he is credited with writing over thirty screenplays, and he won an Oscar for one of them, "Brokeback Mountain" in 2006.  His novel "Terms of Endearment" was adapted into a movie that won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1983.  His debut novel, "Horseman, Pass By", was made into the 1963 movie "Hud", starring Paul Newman and won three Oscars.

In addition to his Oscar and his Pulitzer, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 by President Obama.

He was also book collector and antiquarian bookseller of some note, amassing a collection of over 400,000 volumes.

Reading about him upon his death has inspired me to seek out and read many of his other works, which should be a good self-improvement project for the year 2021.

RIP Larry McMurtry.