Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the movie version of Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show.
DVD/BOOK Review
The Last Picture Show, Larry McMurtry, Orion Mass Market Publications, 2000
There has been no shortage of coming of age stories in modern American literature. J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is merely the most famous and probably widely known of the genre. Here Larry McMurtry, the Texas bibliophile, Old West aficionado and pack rat gives us his take on growing up absurd in a faded semi- boom town Texas during the Korean War era in the early 1950's.
Although the locale is different from Catcher in the Rye the issues raised by the teenagers who drive the story and those of their perplexed and clueless parents are the same. And what do those issues entail? Sex, the meaning of existence, sex, what to do on Friday night, sex, what to do on Saturday night, sex- well you get the drift. And those dilemmas of youth and its fight for recognition as presented through the main characters Sonny and Duane are in McMurtry's hands well thought out and, at times, poignant. The attention to detail that McMurtry is noted for is on full display in the interplay between the 'jock' students, the nerds and the 'in' crowd. High school football, the whys and wherefores of the high school classroom and the sheer fight to find one's own identity in this mix all contribute to a very strong trip down memory lane for this reader.
From my own personal experience I know how tough it was to grow up in the 1950's and it is good to see that there are indeed some universal ailments that are common to the 'tribal community' called youth in America. Moreover, read this book because it also has a few things to say about the adults, especially Sonny's lover the older woman and the football coach's wife Ruth, and their dilemmas as well. Damn, McMurtry is singing my song.
The film version of this book strongly evokes visually the points that McMurtry tries to make in the book. It helps that he was the screenwriter in this effort. Fine performances were turned in by the young Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Cybil Sheppard as the object of Sonny and Duane's attentions . Also by Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman, as Sonny's older woman lover.
Cybil Sheppherd was really hot in "The Last Picture Show." I will have to read it. I will try to read that soon.
ReplyDeleteI loved "Lonesome Dove."
You might be interested in the reactionary writer Cormac mcCarthy, who also writes about Texas. Louis Proyect at his blog, crusades against him as overrated and reactionary.
Cormac McCarthy is an interesting, if reactionary, writer in the sense that he has a certain old-fashioned (politically incorrect) notion about the Old West. He thinks the cowboys, white men, manly virtues etc. were what made the West. It comes out graphically in All The Pretty Horses. Sometimes you have to read stuff that you do not like politically to reafffirm what you do like. In any case Larry McMurtry, who I am starting to think highly of, in a review od his works thought rather highly of him as a writer of the old West.
ReplyDeleteAnother Texas writer of interest is Horton Foote, known at least for Bound For Beautiful, but also for a screenplay version of To Kill A Mocking Bird that I am about to review.
Now to the real stuff. Yes, Cybil Sheppard was hot in "The Last Picture Show" in the same way that Marilyn Monroe was hot in "The Misfits". A strong role brings out the beauty of such women. I better leave it at that or people will start to call me a 'dirty old man' like our mentor Leon Trotsky and his Frida Kahlo.
Ren- I have been told that the book The Last Picture Show is part of trilogy by McMurtry. I think one of the titles is called Texasville but I do not know the other title. I wonder which way McMurtry is going with that. Back to childhood or forward to after Duane gets back from Korea? In any case we get two more shots at Sonny and Duane. I know I am looking forward to reading them.
ReplyDelete