The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry (2014) 30/40

This is book #30 of my 2018 Reading Challenge sponsored by Goodreads.com.  I pledged to read 40 books.  To make a framework for the books I would read, I established a reading protocol early in the year to make book selection easy and organized.  Each book chosen for this challenge must fall into one of the following categories:

     1. Authors recommended by other readers (author must be new to me)
     2. Any recommendations by my fellow readers of our online mystery reading group established in 1993 on Prodigy
    3. The next book in a series I have been reading
    4. The next book in a series I have abandoned (in an attempt to revive my interest)
    5. A book that references a historic event or period that is not in my lifetime
    6. A book that references any historic event or biographs a famous person who lived in my lifetime.
    7. New mystery author with setting in USA.
    8. New mystery author with setting in western Europe.  

This novel satisfies Protocol #5.

The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry. (2014) 

I started off not liking this book at all.  I was unsure if I could really finish it.  Yes, I was ready to let this book just fade into the sunset on the Texas plains.  Then, I did two things:

·      I vowed to read it without comparing it to Lonesome Dove (Pulitzer Prize winner, Larry McMurtry, 1985 and my favorite novel of all time)

·      I started over with a change of heart and just read the book.

This McMurtry novel could almost be considered a sequel to Telegraph Days.(2007)  It has cowboys, historic cattle ranchers, gunfire and Nellie Courtwright who seems to show up everywhere.  She is now in this novel in Tombstone along with the popular characters  of the Wild West.  McMurtry actually uses Nellie to move the novel’s intent along and surprises us with the ending.  Thinking about the ending still gives me bittersweet angst. No Spoiler—you have to read it for yourself.

Despite the lukewarm reviews that the novel received from newspapers across the country (including The New York Times) McMurtry is quite transparent in the very beginning of the novel and describes the novel for what it is—a story or stories of “characters floating in time”.    The reviewers complaints of no clear story line or cohesiveness is not the intent of this novel.  In fact, the reader may just find him or herself floating through those last days of open frontier, predictable boom towns and a country growing. 

Here is what McMurtry says in his introduction:

The Last Kind Words Saloon is a ballad in prose whose characters are floating in time.  Their legends and their lives in history rarely match.  I had the great Director John Ford* in mind when I wrote this book.  He famously said that when you had to choose between history and legend, print the legend.  And so I have done.

Here are some of the characters that appear in this novel, some are connected, some are not:

Connected characters

Charles Goodnight, (born March 5, 1836, Macoupin County, Ill., U.S.—died Dec. 12, 1929), American cattleman, who helped bring law and order to the Texas panhandle.  He is known as “the father of the Texas Panhandle,  however, what might be more familiar is his invention of the food wagon—now fondly known as “Chuck Wagons”.  Lonesome Dove is loosely based on Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving. 

Joseph “Ike” Clanton:   (1847-June 1, 1867)  One of the loose association of outlaws known as The Cowboys who clashed with Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday.   When Wyatt and Jesse Earp and Doc Holliday arrive in Arizona, Wyatt felt that Ike Clanton was the only one in town (Tombstone) who would have any interest in shooting him.  Present at the gunfight at the OK Corral but survives.

Billy Clanton:  (1862-October 26, 1881)   William Harrison Clanton was an outlaw Cowboy in Chochise County, Arizona Territory.  He along with his father Newman Clanton and brother Ike Clanton worked a ranch near the boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona Territory and stole livestock from Mexico and later from US ranchers. Killed during the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Johnny Ringo:  (1850 – 1882) An American Old West outlaw loosely associated with the Cochise County Cowboys in frontier Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona Territory, United States.   Main interest was “cards”.  He was involved in some business deals with Joseph “Ike” Clanton listed above.  He was not involved with the gunfight at the OK Corral.  He died at age 32, following bullet wound to right temple, possibly self-inflicted.  Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are investigated about Ringo’s death, but not charged.

 

Warren Baxter Earp:  (March 9, 1855 – July 6, 1900) Youngest brother of Wyatt Earp He set up the saloon in whatever town the Earps chose to occupy.  He carried the sign “The Last Kind Words Saloon”  from town to town. He was not present at the OK Corral when the famous gunfight occurred.  He was killed in a bar fight in Willcox, Arizona in 1900. 

Non-connected characters

Wild Bill Hickok

Buffalo Bill

General Sherman

Brief reference to Billy the Kid.

So in summary:

·      I finished the book.

·      It reads as a floating ballad of characters as promised. 

·      Short vignettes seem to be the pervasive style throughout the novel. 

Was there a symbolic message in the repetitive mention of HATS--maybe!

Hats described as driven by the wind in Long Grass and in Tombstone.  Was the cowboys' era being blown away? Or was it floating?  As this book ends, Nellie Courtwright shows up again, this time she goes to visit Jesse (Josephine) and Wyatt Earp in retirement in San Pedro, California. She decides to make the trip from LA in her new convertible.  She was not wearing a hat.  Should she have been wearing a hat it would certainly have been swirling with the wind.  McMurtry closes the novel with this trip symbolizing the end of the cowboys’ wild west era.   No hats allowed.

Favorite quote of the book:  

                 “Last time I rode into this town, it was full of Earps."

Check it out.

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*John Ford was an American film director.  He is renowned both for Westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, as well as adaptations of classic 20th-century American novels such as the film The Grapes of Wrath. His four Academy Awards for Best Director remain a record. 

Thanks to Wikipedia for assisting me in lassoing all these cowboys and their place in wild west history.