“Lonesome Dove”: the Great American Novel?

I just finished a long (843-page) novel in my two-person book club with my friend Wendy. (We alternate choosing propitious books, read them at the same time, and discuss them online.) This one, Lonesome Dove (1985) by Larry McMurtry, turned out to be not only a page-turner, but also one of the finest modern novels I’ve read (it won a Pulitzer for fiction). In fact, I’ve put it in consideration with a few others as The Great American Novel.

What, you ask, are the characteristics of a candidate for the Great American Novel? This is purely subjective, but I’ll give my criteria. It has to be set in America, of course, and display diverse aspects of America and Americans themselves. It has to be epic (i.e., longish and involved), not hew too closely to a heavy-handed theme, contain tragedy and sorrow as well as joy, along with a soupçon of humor.  It has to be so American that it could not be set in any other country. And when you finish it, you will have not only a sense of what America was like at a given time, but also a need for your own time to process what you’ve read.

Another novel that I’ve considered as a possible Great American Novel is The Great Gatsby, which we’ve all read in high school. (It’s short, has well-delineated themes, and portrays American ambition.) But it’s not a good candidate as it portrays only a small slice of American life (rich people and obsessive love) and is not an epic, having as it does only a few characters. Another, also by Larry McMurtry, is The Last Picture Show (1971), a fantastic book and an equally fantastic movie—in fact, I think the eponymous movie is the best American or English-language movie ever made. Below is one scene from the movie, which I see as not only archetypically American but full of low-key but intense emotion. (McMurtry co-wrote the screenplay with director Peter Bogdanovich.)

Here Sam the Lion (played by Ben Johnson), who runs the picture show, restaurant, and movie theater in the tiny oil town of Anarene, Texas (modeled on Archer City, pop 1070, where McMurtry lived), takes young Sonny (played by Timothy Bottoms) fishing along with Sam’s mentally disabled son Billy. Sam reminisces about his love for Lois Farrow (played by Ellen Burstyn), who was married when they had an affair.

I think this is the modern and American equivalent of Shakespeare. No, the language isn’t fancy, but the emotions are real and deep. I can’t imagine any non-American equivalent. Johnson won the Oscar that year for Best Supporting Actor:

But I digress, except to say that one of the themes of this movie is similar to that in the novel Lonesome Dove: the attempt of people to stave off loneliness by trying to connect with others, and their inevitable failure to do so.

The plot of Lonesome Dove (which was also made into a 6-part t.v. miniseries) can be seen in extenso at the Wikipedia page. In short, it’s about a group of cowboys who run a livery stable and a horse- and cow-selling operation in the eponymous Texas town. (Time: mid-nineteenth century.) The leaders of the group are a pair of retired Texas Rangers, Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, played respectively in the miniseries by and Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones (great casting!). There’s a shortage of women in Lonesome Dove, and the men patronize :Lorena, the town’s only prostitute—the word in the book is always “whore”—when they need a “poke.”

There are a number of adventures, including a cattle-stealing jaunt to Mexico, but the meat of the plot comprises delineation of the characters, which include a black cowboy, Deets, the moral center of the book and the only man who is wholly admirable. Gus and Call decide to take a big herd of cattle to the distant but lusher plains of Montana, where they envision building a ranch. They take with them all the Hat Creek outfit men, as well as Lorena, who eventually falls in love with Gus. Along the way several other women appear, all having, like the men, frustrated relationships.  One woman, Clara, who lives in Nebraska, is the female equivalent of Deets: a moral center, though she’s immensely unhappy.

At any rate, tons of adventures ensue: there are fights with bears and Indians, murders, hangings of horse thieves, duststorms, locust plagues, and moments of happiness. If nothing else, McMurtry shows us that the life of a cowboy was far from romantic. It was hard, dirty, and exhausting.

There are also tragedies and some very sad deaths. The ending just sort of tapers off. .  there is no satisfying denouement, and that is good. (McMurtry wrote three other books in the series with prequels and sequels to this book, but I’m not interested in reading them.)

It’s a good candidate for the Great American Novel because, first, you can’t get more American than cowboys depicted at the height of Cowboydom in the mid- to late nineteenth century. But much more than that is the diversity of emotions and characters that make the book as rich as a novel by Dickens—if he wrote a novel with Americans rather than Brits.  As my friend Wendy wrote about Gus and Call, “They all were so human, deeply flawed, stubborn, and yet had their own standards and principles. And they kept going, which I think is the American bit of it.” 

All I can do is recommend that you read this book, pronto. Its length may overwhelm those who can’t read even short books, but it’s involved, engaging, and wonderful, right up there with All the Light We Cannot See (another Pulitzer winner) as the best piece of modern fiction in English I’ve read in years.

Are there other candidates for the Great American Novel? Yes, Huckleberry Finn is a good one, embodying the characteristics of the genre shown above.  I have heard that East of Eden, by Steinbeck, another wholly American epic, is another one, and I plan to read it soon.

Here’s the book that you must read:

Here is McMurtry talking about the book. Note that the cowboys in Lonesome Dove were older than McMurtry describes as typical of the era, with Gus and Call being seniors.

If you click on the screenshot below, you’ll go to a short video showing Robert Duvall claiming that the role of Gus was his favorite—and he had many great roles. Note that he compares Gus to a Shakespearian character.  There’s also a scene from the miniseries showing Gus and Call, in which, curiously, Gus reminisces about his lost love Clara.  (I haven’t seen the miniseries.) There are parallels with the Sam the Lion scene above.

Now I’ve made my recommendation, but I’m sure I’m missing candidates for the Great American Novel. What would you recommend as the book who takes the title?