Lonesome Dove
Obsession Level: Epic
I didn't update yesterday. It had been a very long week and I wasn't feeling particularly inspired by anything. I didn't want to do anything that was going to force me to use my exhausted brain at all. That being said, I spent the entire night on Facebook. I did nothing all night but look at people's pictures, look at my own pictures, and just stare, waiting for status updates where my Facebook friends would tell me how exciting their lives are while I stared, blurry eyed at my computer screen. Pathetic, I know.
Today, however, I've decide to talk about one of my obsessions. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. The obsession doesn't stop just at this book, it expands throughout the entire series. This saga that he writes is probably the best saga of all times. McMurtry has an amazing writing style and I've never disliked anything that I've read by him. I will get around to discussing the other books in the future, but for the time being I'm going to just focus on this one.
If you've never read it, this is a book that you simply cannot miss. The story is beautiful and engaging and the characters are some of the most memorable characters available in literature. McMurtry writes with a simple style that makes his books easy to read and get really involved in without having to get too wrapped up in overly flowery language. I promise that once you read this book you'll be so intimately acquainted with the characters that you will want to read the rest of the series just to spend more time with them. Whenever I read this book, or watch the movie adaptation of it, I feel like I'm spending time with old friends. My three favorite friends in the book are Gus, Call, and Clara.
Gus is the charming, witty cowboy who doesn't take life too seriously. He's always up for a poke and a drink and realizes that life is too short to not take advantage of fun when it's available. His lifelong friend and working partner couldn't be more the opposite of him. Woodrow Call is far more serious and his mind is on getting things done. He's not the dreamer or the lover like Gus is, rather he is a doer that typically runs away from love and relationships. He never really seems to let anyone get too close, except Gus. Though he did have one love in his life, he never really treated her right, so you can suspect that he has a little guilt and regret built up that causes him to be the stand offish person that he is. Clara was the love of Gus' life, and he was the love of hers. Their brief time together in their youth is something both of them treasure, and even though they never end up happily ever after with each other, it's a beautiful love story.
The movie adaptation of the book is actually very good. Many of the movies made after McMurtry's books do a fabulous job of telling the story as it is in the book. Many of his novels are long, so the movies are too, but it's worth it not to leave out any of the really important details that come up in his complex stories. Lonesome Dove is a 6 hour movie (it was actually a miniseries like many of the films about McMurtry's books) with an awesome cast. Robert Duvall's performance as Gus is wonderful. He brings the character of Gus to life in a way that's even better than the Gus that I had pictured in my head while reading the book. He won me over so much that I was persuaded to name my cat Gus as a tribute to the character that I loved so much. Tommy Lee Jones plays the serious and practical Woodrow Call, and even though Call was never my favorite character in the book, there's something that draws you to him when you see him played by Jones.
I of course was thrilled to discover that the strong, independent, and sometimes coy and difficult, Clara was played by Anjelica Huston. I don't know who they could have gotten to play the part that would have been better for it. Huston, as always, gives a stellar performance.
If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, you need to do both. The movie is great, and it's mostly accurate to the book, but I think that no matter how good the movie adaptations of McMurtry's books are, you are still missing out if you don't read them as well.
