- Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Orion mass market paperback; New edition edition (Sep 7 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0752837214
- ISBN-13: 978-0752837215
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 222 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In The Last Picture Show Larry McMurtry introduced characters who would show up again in later novels, Texasville and Duane's Depressed. This first volume of the trilogy drops the reader into the one-stoplight town of Thalia, Texas, where Duane Moore, his buddy Sonny, and his girlfriend Jacy are all stumbling along the rocky road to adulthood. Duane wants nothing more than to marry Jacy; Sonny wants what Duane has; and Jacy wants to get the hell out of Thalia any way she can. This is not a novel of big ideas or defining moments; over the course of a year Duane and Jacy make up and break up, Sonny begins an affair with his high-school football coach's wife, and the only movie house in town closes its doors forever. Yet it is out of these small-town experiences--a nude swimming party in Wichita, a failed sexual encounter during a senior trip, a botched elopement, an enlistment--that McMurtry builds his tale and reveals his characters' hearts. No epiphanies here, just a lot of hard-won experience that leaves none of his protagonists particularly wiser, though they're all a little sadder by the end. --Alix Wilber
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Review
The New York Times Book Review McMurtry is an alchemist who converts the basest materials to gold; the sexual encounters are sad, funny, touching, sometimes horrifying, but always honest, always human.
Los Angeles Times McMurtry can transform ordinary words into highly lyrical, poetic passages. He presents human dramas with sympathy and compassion that make us care about his characters in ways that most novelists can't.
The Boston Globe There aren't many writers around who are as much fun to read as Larry McMurtry. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Los Angeles Times McMurtry can transform ordinary words into highly lyrical, poetic passages. He presents human dramas with sympathy and compassion that make us care about his characters in ways that most novelists can't.
The Boston Globe There aren't many writers around who are as much fun to read as Larry McMurtry. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
SOMETIMES SONNY FELT like he was the only human creature in the town. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
SOMETIMES SONNY FELT like he was the only human creature in the town. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looking for love in Thalia, Texas. . .,
By
This review is from: The Last Picture Show: A Novel (Paperback)
The melancholy at the heart of this novel is heartbreaking. And if you know the movie, you have a really good idea of the characters, setting and storyline of McMurtry's novel. Like the movie, the novel itself is in black and white. A handful of likable characters are surrounded by small-town ignorance and trapped by circumstance or their own limited understanding of the world. Meanwhile, much of the story takes place in the bitter cold, colorless months of north Texas winter.A year passes, from one football season to the next, and during those twelve months, the central characters, Sonny and Duane, graduate from high school and have a number of adventures, as much as two single young men can have in a small rural community. Duane is obsessed with Jacy, the richest, prettiest girl in school. Sonny, who has the more tender heart, befriends the coach's 40-year-old wife, Ruth. And their story is a sweet contrast to the generally coarse, unfeeling or blighted relationships among the rest of those in the town. Of the very few in town who seem to feel something like full-hearted love, McMurtry only gives us glimpses and dwells instead on what is to be lamented in the rest of his characters' unlived lives. Like the R-rated movie, this is an R-rated book, with somewhat more graphic detail. Meanwhile, the inner lives of his characters, as McMurtry reveals them, give the reader a great deal more of their shifting moods, ironies and nuances of attitude and emotion. With Sonny as the most central character in the novel, you get a much deeper and more sympathetic portrayal of him. And finally the book is worth reading for the scenes that did not make it into the movie. Like his two earlier books, "Leaving Cheyenne" and "Horseman, Pass By," this is a finely imagined novel, with strong, memorable characters, and a mood that ranges between the farcical and the profoundly sad. I'm happy to recommend all three.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brutally honest and masterfully written.,
By Mark "Technology, Music and Movies" (East Coast) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Last Picture Show: A Novel (Paperback)
Great writers write about what they know and the places they know. It's not a surprise that McMurtry sets so many of his stories in Texas. But that does not lessen the universality of his stories. The Last Picture Show is simply the best coming of age story about growing up in post-vietnam north america ever written.This book is written in a clean direct style. Some may feel that in order to be termed "great literature" a book has to have a wordy and complex style. But to me, the greatest literature is that which most clearly cuts to the essence of what makes its characters human. Those are the characters we relate to in literature. And this book is loaded with them. In fact it's almost frightening the way McMurtry gets inside the heads of these kids. If you remember anything about growing up you are bound to cringe at least once remembering the time you made the mistake of thinking exactly what one of these kids did. I don't think this type of amazing story-telling is unique to this novel. Terms of Endearment is an incredible book and seems to have not been mentioned by most other reviewers. Of course Lonesome Dove is bound to have admirers as well. In all, this is a great novel that is simple on the surface but has layers of complex undertones for those willing to explore them.
4.0 out of 5 stars
texas soap,
By
This review is from: The Last Picture Show: A Novel (Paperback)
I found this novel to be an easy and enjoyable read. I remember watching an edited version of the movie on network television many years ago. The novel covers a few additional characters than the movie. The novel mainly deals with the sexual escapades of the inhabitants of a small Texas town. This does not rank with McMurtry's best, Lonesome Dove and such, but it is a book you will enjoy as a touching, fun, and sometimes sad, journal of small town American life in the nineteen fifties.
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