Larry Mcmurtry: Small Town Writer
Larry McMurtry:
Small Town Writer
Larry McMurtry, a man from a Archer County, Texas knows what it’s like living in a small town. However, all of his novels are not just about the frontier and the Great Plains of Texas. When being interviewed by Mark Horowitz from The New York Times, McMurtry stated, “I’m bored to death with the 19th-century west. I wrote more about it than I ever intended to” (qtd. in Horowitz). Then, in the same interview, when talking about his home in Archer County, Texas, he admitted, “It’s still such a strong landscape for me. I can’t escape it in my fiction. I can work away from it, but I always start here. And whatever place I’m writing about, I’m still describing this same hill” (qtd. in Horowitz). Apparently the Lonesome Dove author likes the small town theme. In an essay, Lynn Rudloff writes that McMurtry’s earliest novels, those of the Thalia trilogy, explore the lack of opportunity on the rural Texas plains and that like McMurtry in his own childhood, the young people of Thalia are stifled by the promise of the big cities (Rudloff 1072). Then in a plot summary for The Last Picture Show, the summary mentions that the novel is noted for its vivid recreation of adolescence and compassionate portrayal of the deadening effects of small-town life on the sensitive psyche of its
protagonist (Plot Summary). McMurtry notes how even the adults are so oppressed with
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the feeling of alienation and boredom that permeates the town that they, too, seek escape through sex (Plot Summary). McMurtry’s satiric aim was precise enough to infuriate his own hometown when its people recognized themselves in the characters (Rudloff 1077). While Larry McMurtry is from a small town in Texas, he clearly proves in his writing that in a small town though there are limited things to do, you easily learn all about love and life and to make the most with what you’ve got.
This point was proven through the main characters of The Last Picture Show, two...
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