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Lonesome Dove is a novel by Larry McMurtry. I absolutely loved this book and would recommend it to
anyone wanting an exciting and empathetic old Western about imperfect men achieving imperfect goals.
I had heard about Lonesome Dove before, but had never prioritized it on my list. One evening last month, at the top of a
hill in San Francisco, I ran into a friend who I hadn’t seen since he returned from his hike of the Pacific Crest
Trail. We got to chatting about books as we walked down, and he mentioned having listened to Lonesome Dove while
walking the PCT and loving both the writing and narration.
I picked it up soon after. It’s a slow start - McMurtry develops the plot and characters at a steady pace throughout ,
without too much exposition. My first impressions were that this was a book about cowboy heroes and their sidekicks
going on a quest to settle new lands, and that overcomeable struggle, victory over evil, plot armor and other common
storytelling tropes would pervade. This impression were very incorrect. At times, I was delighted by the unexpected
twists and turns things took, but I was also often made emotional by McMurtry relentlessly denying these characters a
break. Major spoilers from here on out.
The characters of Lonesome Dove are fantastic:
- Augustus “Gus” McCrae: the sharp, loud, talkative, and loveable adventurer, Gus’ internal conflict lies in his
appreciation for life’s joys (love interests, drinking whiskey on a porch, higher education, card playing) and an
unstoppable need to adventure into new lands, forgoing the joys of life for excitement and novelty. Probably the least
flawed and most badass character, this contradiction still leads Gus to an early end.
- Woodrow Call: a solitary, steadfast, reluctant leader of men. What defines Call is purity. A pure work ethic, pure
resistance of vices, pure decision-making, purity of law. While everyone in the main troupe (except Gus) looks to Call
to make the important decisions, like where they’re going, when they’re to cross a river, and how to react to certain
dangers, Call’s ignorance to his own emotions and misunderstandings of what he sees as failings of others leads to
nonoptimal outcomes.
- Pea Eye: a kind friend, dull, and steadfastly hardworking man, Pea Eye is an admirer and follower. His worldview is
fairly limited and static, which results in him being surprised often. He says the obvious thing out loud, but given
the emotional stuntedness of the people around him, this is sometimes surprisingly poignant.
- Deets: while unfortunately being a bit of a “Magical Negro”, Deets is still a deeply compelling character
in Lonesome Dove. Hyper competent, friendly, but lonely and depressed, Deets is a great tracker and scout, able to
accurately estimate and recount distances between locations, and is well respected despite being the only black man in
the troupe. There’s a sort of “anti-Deets” side character, Frog Lip. While Deets is respected for his competence, Frog
Lip is a black man respected for his coldness and cruelty.
- Newt: the youngest Cowboy and the unclaimed son of Call, Newt is the most emotionally open of the group. Egoless,
sensitive, and eager to impress, readers experience many of the disasters like golf-ball sized hail, grasshopper
storms, lightning strikes, as well as stampedes and attacks from Indians, through Newts eyes.
- Clara: Gus’s “one that got away”, Clara goes from being a fable only spoken of in other characters memories to a
present character in her own right. McMurtry inserts a number of strong vignettes into Lonesome Dove. Characters are
introduced, their backstory fleshed out, and they enter the adventure. Clara’s history and role in the main plot is
one of the most powerful of these vignettes.
- Dish: like many of the men, Dish is technically competent (top hand, i.e. the best Cowboy), but emotionally inept. His
unrequited love for Lorena would be purely pathetic if not for the emphasis McMurtry puts on the lack of opportunities
for emotional development in the South during the 1870s.
- Lorena (“Lorie”): Lorie is pretty much a 3-dimensional damsel in distress. The abuse she takes at the hands of many of
the surrounding men is pretty horrifying. The Blue Duck kidnap sequence is extremely gnarly, and really the point of
the book where it becomes obvious that this is no fairy tale. She has simple dreams of living in San Francisco to
escape the Southern heat and be by the sea, and her PTSD from her various terrible life experiences seems reasonably
portrayed.
- Jake Spoon: Jake is a paragon of vice irresponsibility and laziness. His redeeming qualities are that he’s
good-looking and that he can be sharp, fun, and kind when it helps him get what he wants. He plants the seed in Calls
mind to settle in Montana, leads Lorie on with false hope of helping her get to San Francisco, and deserts the gang
when the going gets tough, eventually falling in with some evil characters, then being hung by his friends when
caught.
- Sheriff July Johnson: July is a heartbreaking character. He is boring, passive, and cowardly, but he’s also smart
enough to recognize at least some of this in himself, and lacks the spirit to change his ways. He is principled, being
guided by what he thinks he ought to do and what is right and proper, but this results in him being limp and
unexciting. He sort of floats through the novel, going from potentially heroic to irritating to read about, and ends
up in a liminal space at Clara’s ranch, having bounced from blind love for his terrible wife Elmira to a dead-end love
for Clara.
- Deputy Sheriff Roscoe: Roscoe is almost comic relief. His adventures are a joy to follow, and his murder hurts a lot
to read. His side story with Louisa is one of the funniest and most interesting, and I wish he had stayed with her
hauling stumps out of the ground and eating corn bread out of the pan.
- Blue Duck: the unparalleled villain of the novel. Even Frog Lip, another terrifying character, references Blue Duck
having stolen his horse. He wears a necklace of human fingers and commits unspeakable crimes, leaving an increasing
notoriety in his wake.
There are a number of unmentioned characters as well, ranging from interesting to forgettable. McMurtry does not skimp
on characters!
Unlike Clint Eastwood style cowboy portrayals, Lonesome Dove provides an unpolished view of the life of a Cowboy.
Cowboys, especially those bringing herds to new lands, were young, inexperienced suffered horrible death or injury
often, complained all the time, interacted with almost no women or people very different from themselves, and loved to
gamble, visit prostitutes, drink and boast. They were gross - dirty, with leaky guts, loose lips, and scars. I was
talking with a friend about how Ursula K. Leguin takes fantasy, a genre written by men including mostly men without much
real feeling, and inserts a diversity of realistic characters into comparably fantastical scenarios, and the depth of
character making all the difference. While the characters of Lonesome Dove aren’t as diverse as Leguin’s, in, say,
Earthsea, they are extremely real-feeling, giving the genre a richness that I haven’t experienced before.
Gus and Call are on another level from the common Cowboy. Texas Rangers the both of them, they have years of experience
fighting Indians, bringing justice to horse thieves, stealing horses from Mexico and bringing them across the border to
Texas, and establishing business.
Gus is so awesome. While not always admirable, he’s always entertaining. The bar scene where he breaks the bartenders
nose and gives a quick sharpshooting demo when Call and himself are being disrespected is the first time I really took
him seriously. His slow, touch and go death is brutal, and it was the first time I cried from literature since
Dumbledore died in my recent reread.
It’s a strongly male-centered book, but I think it’s actually a really healthy portrayal of masculinity, at least in the
sense of showing you what not to do and why. Dish is a cautionary tale about unrequited love and day-dreaming. Call is a
cautionary tale about refusing to accept your own failings and taking your own word too seriously. July Johnson is a
cautionary tale of passivity. Of everyone, I think Newt and parts of Gus are really the main characters to want to
emulate.
So if you want the best Wild West book you’ll probably ever read, give Lonesome Dove a go.