First up, a note for Shedheads in Chapel Hill or thereabouts: I’m going to be one of the speakers at this year’s Converge-Con, a conference about artificial intelligence and creativity. It’s sponsored by the UNC journalism school, open to the public, and is happening Oct. 21 and 22 at the Innovate Carolina Junction in downtown Chapel Hill. As of now I’m speaking the morning of the 21st, although I’m told the schedule is subject to change.
My talk is about how to identify and maintain our unique human voices with A.I. on the rise. A small teaser for my talk: I don’t think A.I. will ever fully understand us … because we don’t fully understand ourselves.
Come check it out!
Lewis Grizzard once wrote a book called THEY TORE OUT MY HEART AND STOMPED THAT SUCKER FLAT.
That’s how I felt after finishing Larry McMurtry’s LONESOME DOVE.
You might remember that I set out to tackle LONESOME DOVE as my big summer read a couple months ago. I read two or three chapters most every night, which added up to a lot of nights, because LONESOME DOVE is 102 chapters and 858 pages long. I had never read the book and have never watched the beloved miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. I just knew it was an epic Western and considered one of the great American novels.
It is, in fact, a great American novel. I’m glad I read it and I will probably read it again someday. But I can’t say I enjoyed it. When I put it down the other night, after surviving to the end, I was absolutely gutted.
Somehow I had in my head that it would be a fun read—not a comedy or anything, but a thrilling adventure, like Indiana Jones on the plains. It’s not that. It is a tragedy almost from the moment Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae set out on their cattle drive from Texas to Montana. There are at least a dozen major characters in the book. I can’t think of a single one who is happier at the end than they were at the beginning.
Authors are sometimes not good judges of what their stories are about. In his brief introduction* to the edition I bought, McMurtry says the great theme of the book is “unacknowledged paternity.” That is one of the themes in LONESOME DOVE—any book, especially by a skilled author, is about more than one thing. But I think the big theme of the book is desire—or to put a finer point on it, what the Drive-By Truckers (and my friend Wright Thompson) called “the cost of these dreams.”
*I mentioned in my earlier post about the book that McMurtry gives away a key plot point in the introduction. Having read the book and read some about it, I now know the spoiler happens in one of the SEQUELS. So I waited the whole damn book for a terrible thing that didn’t happen.
Everybody in the book wants something—to conquer new territory, to prove themselves to someone they respect, to escape a life that feels like a trap, to fall in love, to play cards and get drunk, or just to have one more big adventure. In one way or another, almost all the characters get what they want. But they pay an awful price to get it. Every few chapters there is another body left in the dirt on the endless plain, a grave barely marked and likely never to be found.
Still, I looked forward to sitting down every night with these characters. McMurtry is not afraid to hurt them—even the most innocent ones—but he also shows the good in (almost) every one. And more than that, he shows the complications of their inner lives. One character, as he is about to justifiably die by hanging, puzzles over in his mind just how he ended up in that particular place. Other characters pull off incredible feats of endurance only to wonder why they went through all that to begin with. I happened to be reading another American epic at the same time—THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS, Isabel Wilkerson’s nonfiction account of the Great Migration of black Southerners to other parts of the country from the 1910s through the 1970s. I felt the echoes with LONESOME DOVE as Wilkerson told the story of these brave people who set out for new lives and discovered that their old selves—and some of the nation’s old problems—stowed away on the journey.
McMurtry has the style I most admire in a writer—he tells the story in a simple and blunt and beautiful way. When a terrible thing happens, there’s no big dramatic windup, just blood on the floor. And when the cowboys on the cattle drive have a rare perfect day, you can almost feel the fresh air in your own lungs. People talk a lot these days about how nobody has the attention span to read a long book or watch a long movie or whatever. That’s bull. People will spend forever with a book or a movie they love. When I mentioned I was reading LONESOME DOVE, dozens of people told me it was their favorite book of all time. I understand why. Those 858 pages flew by and when they were done I wished for more.
Just understand, you’re not getting Indiana Jones. You’re getting Romeo and Juliet. Or maybe something in between. The other story I thought of while reading the book is THE SEARCHERS, John Ford’s brutal and beautiful 1956 Western. John Wayne is the star, playing his greatest role, a hardened Texas Ranger who goes on a five-year search for a girl abducted by a group of Comanches. It’s not a big spoiler to say that he rescues the girl. But man, does everybody pay a price. Ford’s famous last shot frames Wayne in a doorway between two worlds, looking inside at the family he reunited at an immense cost, while the endless landscape stretches behind him. Eventually he turns away, toward the dust. He won’t ever be the same. Neither will anybody else in the story.
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10 things I wanted to share this week:
Thanks to Frank Bruni of the NYT for including the kicker of my Dolly Parton essay in the “favorite sentences” segment of his newsletter (it’s down toward the bottom).
The indispensable Jeremy Markovich did some real digging to investigate something many a North Carolinian has wondered: Why does there seem to be a Chinese restaurant next to every Food Lion? (NC Rabbit Hole)
Another classic North Carolina story: Chang and Eng Bunker, the conjoined twins who were internationally famous in the 1800s and lived in Mount Airy, NC most of their adult lives. Their descendants recently held a family reunion. (The Assembly)
Believe it or not, the Bunkers weren’t the only famous conjoined twins with NC ties: Daisy and Violet Hilton, best known for their performances in the 1932 horror movie FREAKS, lived here in Charlotte for the last few years of their lives. I wrote a story about them back in 1997. (The documentary I mention in the intro is called BOUND BY FLESH. I’m one of the talking heads in the film.)
College football is strange enough to those of us who have lived with it our whole lives. But what if you’re an international student plopped into the madness? “I almost felt like I was part of a cult,” said a recent Michigan grad. “I was like, ‘What have I joined?’” (The Athletic)
We devoured all four episodes of the new season of THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE, featuring Adrian Scarborough as a meticulous police sleuth who lives on a houseboat. It’s well-acted but the real stars are the writers … of all the detective shows we watch, this is the one where I’m most often wrong at guessing the killer. (Acorn TV)
Several prominent deaths to note this week … RIP Gloria Steinem, who spent half a century fighting for women’s rights—and became one of the faces of the movement. A hero to millions. (NYT)
RIP Wendell Berry, the Kentucky poet and writer who became the voice of Appalachia and farm life and the value of good people and good dirt. His life advice: "stop some place, and stay there. Learn the history of it, and the names of the plants and animals and the neighbors." (NPR)
RIP Cassandra Wilson, the jazz singer who was so much more than a jazz singer—you could hear all the world’s music in her voice, and especially all the South (she died in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi). She was especially good at reinventing songs we’ve all heard thousands of times. Here’s her version of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
OK, one more: Here she is covering Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey.” What a damn voice.
Have a great Labor Day weekend, everybody.
—TT
Upcoming events
Oct. 21-22: I’m speaking at Converge-Con, a conference on artificial intelligence and creativity in Chapel Hill. Open to the public.
My books DOGLAND and THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM are available in all formats pretty much everywhere books are sold.
You had me with the Lewis Grizzard quote ! McMurtry’s characters are so perfectly imperfect! . The series was so well cast that everyone of them seems out of place in another film. And there are so many memorable quotes. Thanks for this reminder! Cheers! “Here’s to the sunny slopes of long ago.”
"Lonesome Dove" is one of my favorite books of all time. What a masterpiece. I was so sorry to finish it.