pshaw_raven | Weekly Reading

Did you know this is the fortieth anniversary of Lonesome Dove's publication? I've had to buy a new copy, since my older one is long gone by now. It's already shipped but I have no idea when it will get here. Anyway, I wrote a hell of a lot about it.

One afternoon in spring, 1998, I'd finally turned in my senior thesis and had it accepted. Writing it had dominated my life since August, and the reading and research had gone on longer. I would be graduating with my bachelor's degree in English lit soon, and I was, for all intents and purposes, done with my classes. For the first time in four or five years, I didn't have anything I had to read, and since my literature track had emphasized criticism, I read a lot. Christmas and summer breaks were time to cram in any extra reading I wanted, and my job in the college library meant I had a massive backlog of books I was interested in.

That afternoon, though, I picked up a paperback copy of Lonesome Dove someone had given me and started reading. I wasn't into Westerns - I'd just done a minor in Medieval Studies, and cowboy stories were just the deeds of chivalrous knights transposed to America. "Gunsmoke" was like the legends about some Arthurian hero. But the person who'd given it to me assured me that it was worth my while. He described McMurtry's writing in glowing terms, and being an aspiring writer myself, I liked reading the work of people who were masters of their craft, whether or not their actual content interested me. In fact, it was the lack of interest that made me open the book up in the first place. Could Larry McMurtry win over someone whose habitual response to "cowboy stories" was eye-rolling?

I lugged that little paperback around for months. Reading it was slower going than I'd have liked - I was still busy, and after college I had to deal with moving, then trying to find work, and all the other pitfalls of modern life. When I initially moved, I left a lot of my stuff in storage, so my Louisiana apartment didn't have many books in it. The parish had a good library system, and nearby New Orleans had plenty of bookstores, but rather than jump to something else, I kept plugging away at Lonesome Dove, about ten or twenty pages a day, determined to read the entire thing. At first I felt it was well-written enough to deserve my attention whether I "liked it" or not.

I kept reading it because I couldn't imagine putting it down and walking away.

And I finished it that summer, sitting in my car one afternoon. I put the book on the seat beside me and just sat in silence for a long time, staring out the window at the cypress trees, blue sky, and noisy Crows. I felt like I'd gone on a cattle drive to Montana myself, and come back. Distances and years that, at that time, I couldn't fathom.

Now it's 2025 and I just explained to Fox that the novel is way better than the TV series. He wanted to know if it was anything like "Dallas" - the soap opera, I guess? I don't know, I didn't watch it. I don't really watch a lot of television, and I don't say that to brag or to make myself look smarter, but simply because I have a hard time paying attention to it. I did watch the series at some point and it seemed like a different story altogether. It was missing its heart. There wasn't much that compelled me to keep watching, while the book still occupies a part of my brain all these years later. (Especially Deets' pants.)

Earlier this week I started to look for my copy - the paperback with the elaborate "Old West" lettering. Despite being thick, it was small. Are paperback books even paperback sized anymore? It isn't here, and I assume it was probably a victim of one of my numerous moves over the years. A few minutes on bookshop.org and I've got a new copy that will be winging its way to me soon, because it's time to read it again and see what 27 more years of life will add to the experience.