Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show

I just finished reading McMurtry's The Last Picture Show. I'd never read McMurtry before, with the exception of the first hundred or so pages of Lonesome Dove, which I only just started on the plane last week. But Last Picture Show was interesting. It is in some ways a coming of age novel, and I tend to like those. But here, there seems to be an alienation, maybe even an inability to love or to find love, that goes along with the coming of age. (I'm always excited when my students remember that bildungsroman is the fancy-schmancy term for a coming of age novel!) Maybe it's a book about the whole post-modern sense of alienation. I don't know. But by the end, the characters, epsecially Sonny, feel like they want to be a part of something larger than themselves, but they can't. They can't connect. Maybe this is what resonates with me right now--the wanting to be part of something. Forster would remind us to "only connect." Maybe the very act of my blogging is connecting and being a part of the larger something. I'm blogging because I know that at least Dolce Carina will read this and will appreciate that I'm here and that I'm writing. She's on the bus with me; I know that. (Gosh, here I am turning a post about something else into something about me again!) I don't know. I want to believe that I am a part of something larger. And I guess that deep down, I do believe that. I just get discouraged sometimes.

Anyway, The Last Picture Show had way more sex than I'm really comfortable with--I feel the need to give this disclaimer. But it was an entertaining read. And I think it probably captures something about life in a small town. It's not the most deep, important, moving thing I've read lately, but it was OK.


I did like the film adaptation, which I saw a couple of years ago, and I think that Cybill Shepherd as Jacy Farrow is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. Which is really neither here nor there, just an observation.

I have to read some stuff for school, but I think my next personal read will be Augustine's Confessions. How's that for a contrast? Or maybe Augustine is really about dealing with alienation and wanting to belong in this other kind of way. I guess I'll keep you posted (pun entirely intended!)