Review: Lonesome Dove

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

A searing exploration of the old west and the men who made it, Larry McMurtry's seminal novel is an understated study of the many sides of masculinity.
When, earlier this year, Larry McMurtry passed away, a lot of the outpouring of love for him and his work was directed towards Lonesome Dove . I had never heard of the book but decided to take a leap of faith and went out to get the book for myself. While reading the book I started to see it in a lot of different places, as more and more people discussed it and revealed their love for it (Stephen King has called it one of his favourite books of all time) and luckily I was falling in love with it at the same time. The characters were so richly realised and multilayered that it was near impossible not to be enthralled by even the smallest things they did.
Let's start with one of the book's main protagonists (I've chosen not to call him the main protagonist despite his prominence as there a miriad of wonderful characters whose stories are told): Augustus McCrae. Gus is an old Texas ranger who now finds life to be a thing of simple pleasures; sitting on the porch on a night and drinking, playing poker at the local salloon, talking about anything to anyone, or any number of other slight, quaint pleasantries. He's pretty darn certain of what he wants in life and he's perfectly fine doing the bare minimum to get it.
His old partner in the Texas rangers, Woodrow Call, is almost entirely opposite to him. He can't stand the idling, the pleasantries, the painful minutiae of society. He finds it all too stifling. He's a simple man like Gus but what he wants is a lot more abstract. He misses being a ranger and roaming the new west, fighting and working to settle the land and now he's stuck in Lonesome Dove, where fights are peurile and inconsequential and the days all blur into one. He wants to be doing something again.
The story functions as a sort of multifaceted explorarion of the old west through the lens of a group of men travelling across it. I won't describe any of the story here because ultimately it's not as important as the characters. This is a novel that knows exactly how to make you understand everything about a person even when they're at their most unreasonable. It's a story that makes you hate the stubbornness and arrogance of masculinity while also appreciating the camaraderie and braveness of it. It's a story that finds a way to tell the tales of the women of the west without making them seem secondhand or passive, instead allowing them to feel present and active in their own stories, always making sure that no matter what happens it always must feel like the character's truth rather than the narrative's need.
McMurtry has crafted a story that tells the tale of the old west; the foolish, stubborn, brave men that built it, the headstrong, downtrodden, brilliant women who survived through it, and the pained, broken, death filled land that made it. Its characters are going to stay with me for a long time.

"It's all right, though," Augustus said. "It's mostly bones we're riding over anyway. Why, think of all the buffalo that have died on these plains. Buffalo and other critters too. And the Indians have been here forever; their bones are down there in the earth. I'm told that over in the Old Country you can't dig six feet without uncovering skulls and leg bones and such. People have been living there since the beginning, and their bones have kinda filled up the ground. It's interesting to think about, all the bones in the ground. But it's just fellow creatures, it's nothing to shy from.”

 

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