I Like Larry McMurtry

Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry: The story starts in Texas, and I kept waiting for everyone to move to Cheyenne so someone could leave it. No one did. the word "Cheyenne" is never used. No one leaves anywhere. McMurtry quotes the song "Goodbye Old Paint" in the epigram, and implies that "Cheyenne" is youth. Still, it would have been nice if someone had sung that song during the course of the book; as it is, I'm left with the suspicion the title was foisted on him to sell a "cowboy book" -- sort of like the pornographic covers were attached to Kilgore Trout's science fiction.

Anyway, I had to start with the title because it's a smelly guy on the bus with a loud boom box -- somebody's got to say something. And now that it's out of the way, I can tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. This is just a great book!

There isn't really s plot. It's just three people, two guys and a gal, in love with each other (no, not a precursor to Brokeback Mountain). Each gets to talk a little, to move the story forward through the years, from the spring of their youth to the sad nostalgia of old age. It's so good, I think, because McMurtry pretty much dispenses with other characters and hones in on the three. Even the ostensible "bad guy", the wife of one of the guys, disappears from view fairly early. Two other characters that have a profound influence are the sons, neither of whom is ever present: Molly (the gal) gets pregnant with the first one, and the next time either is mentioned is after they have been killed in World War II.

So it's all focused on Milly, Gid and Johnny. They two guys love Molly, completely and in every way one can love another. The two guys' friendship is one of the deepest and most vivid I've ever read. Molly sleeps with them both, regularly, and they both know it. The friendship and love of all three of them is so strong that it can stand this arrangement. It even survives the marriages of two of them t other people -- people, as I've said, who barely scratch the surface of minor charactership.

The ending is just great. I'd been wondering for days how it could end, was hoping it wouldn't be tragic or maudlin. It ends like it oughta.

I should mention I love language quirks (usually). In this case it's the use of "never" where "didn't" would do.