Who would believe a 64-year-old retired oilman, who has three main arteries all clogged up with chicken-fried steaks, could get so much action in a dusty little Texas town?
Larry McMurtry – who shares much in common with the hero in his book – won the Pulitzer Prize for “Lonesome Dove” in 1986 and has to his credit 28 novels and more than 30 screenplays, including “Brokeback Mountain.” He is 71 and lives in Archer City, Texas, where he has four used-book stores; he has been quoted as saying that writers usually peak before age 60 and this book seems to prove it.
Still, he is McMurtry and sometimes we read him for the cadence, the shuffling gait, his touch with the old ways. In this slim, spun-out piece, you sense he’s saying goodbye to people and things and that the title is right on target.
Surely this is the last in the series that started with McMurtry’s debut novel, “The Last Picture Show.” The setting is the town of Thalia; it was always small and tattered, now it’s down to one Dairy Queen and about to blow away.
Duane Moore has turned over the family oil business to his son Dickie, who is running it just fine. Karla, Duane’s wife, was killed in a crash with a milk truck two years before. Their marriage had not been rich, but it was the best they had and built on a shared history and four kids. Toward the end of it, Duane had built a sparse cabin and moved into it; nobody liked it but they all seemed to accept his need to do that.
One day he tired of his pickup truck – de rigueur for any Texas man – and simply rode his bike or walked. Well, that’s just Duane, people said.
This book catches Duane as he returns from an impromptu trip to Egypt, which he hoped would help his depression. All of a sudden he is surrounded by lovely, educated and fast-talking women ready to bed him. These include young Anne Cameron, a computer expert now working for Duane’s old company, and an outrageous flirt. Then there’s Honor Carmichael, the shrink he’s been seeing for therapy, who is ready to turn from her lesbian preferences temporarily to show him a thing or two. A friend named Jenny suggests she would like to be more.
It’s no coincidence that McMurtry had heart-bypass surgery in 1991 and, as a consequence, severe depression, and that Duane is dealing with the same problems. While
Duane is ready to take advantage of any female favors offered, a heart attack and pending heart surgery get in his way, although he sure doesn’t act like he’s in any hurry to fix the problems. This is one slow-moving man.
Still, almost the whole book is about the sex he wants to have, or remembers he had, or does have; some of it a little surprising in its unemotional and textbook-like descriptions.
Duane’s oldest friend, Ruth Popper, dies. One of his daughters announces she’s a lesbian; the other reveals she will join a nunnery.
Duane even decides to sell the big old family home that he has so much trouble walking into. While a few interesting things happen, we’re still skimming the surface and the plot gets no more complex.
The ending is wrapped up too neatly and the last line is something even a junior writer would discard. Word people have always enjoyed McMurtry’s prose, but maybe this is a few words too many.
Hartman is a principal with Hartman & Brown.
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When the Light Goes
By Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster, pages, $24
