Since my last blog, I've read two more winners...Home Truths by Mavis Gallant and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I feel slightly bad, because I didn't do any writing about Home Truths. I thought it was easily one of, if not the the best, short story collections I have EVER read. But, even though each story was very well crafted and highly enjoyable, I didn't find any of the stories to be particularly memorable. This is not to detract at all from Gallant's writing ability at all, though. Her collection of short stories, though shorter than Katherine Anne Porter's, was so much better.:) Gallant explores what it means to be "Canadian"...Her depiction of Canadians is not always good, she sometimes demonstrates them as close-minded, but others as explorers of their world. Perhaps this is to show that just like in the US, despite sometimes international thought depicting us differently, it takes all kinds of Canadians to make, well, Canada.
The book I finished early this morning is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. It was 945 pages long, and at first, I was like "this book is FUCKING long." But, especially in the last 300 pages, it became quite amazing. Larry McMurtry is one of the most successful American writers, not only because he has published a crazy amount of books, but also because he has had those books turned into screenplays(Terms of Endearment, etc.)and also written several screenplays of his own, including the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain(adapted from E. Annie Proulx, short story). Lonesome Dove is also about cowboys, lots and lots of them, though absolutely NONE of them are gay, unfortunately. 945 pages and NO ONE IS GAY? Come on! Women too are scarce in the novel, only a handful show up of any real note and less than 5 women would be considered main characters(probably really only 2, Clara and Lorena). That was also disappointing, but then I had to really think about what the West was like...
I will completely, and totally, readily admit that the West has been a fascination of mine since I was probably about 7 years old, when I first read Little House in the Big Woods and all the books that followed. I have, for at least the past twenty years, scoured libraries and bookstores for anything about the West and pioneers, mostly women and pioneering, which is pretty rare. Willa Cather whom I adore(especially since she was a lesbian) talked about establishing the Midwest and living and working the land, but she always used male protagonists(arguably because then she could write more freely about the love for a woman). Cather's only Pulitzer prize winner also has a male protagonist. But, anyway, I've always thought the West and travelling the West was pretty interesting, though I always focused much more on the pioneer aspect and less on the cowboy aspect. There are quite a few books, interestingly enough, in the Pulitzer list, that are about establishing the West, which makes sense because the Pulitzer is supposed to be about the American Experience, a huge part of which of course is the never-again paralleled Westward Expansion. I will have many more books to read about the West and hard farming lives in the Midwest, which is great! Why didn't I have to read this stuff in school? Why are all the early books pushed aside and put away? I can't wait to read almost all of them, especially women writers writing about prairie experiences.
Back to Lonesome Dove. When the book opens, we are thrust into the small town of Lonesome Dove, Texas, with Augustus McCrae and Woodrow F. Call and all the other characters who will forever stay in my memory. The novel follows these two mean as they lead thousands of cattle north to Montana, loves lost and gained and also all the peripheral stories of other people and how the world is such a truly small place. My favorite character, besides Augustus(Gus) McCrae, is Clara Allen, who is Gus's long lost love, from twenty years prior. She only figures in the book in memory, until around the last few hundred pages, when the cattle trip stops by her house in Ogallala, Nebraska. Then, her life without Gus is revealed and when he comes to visit, he brings Lorena, the whore that he rescued from Indians(up until that point the only real female character in the novel). She winds up living with Clara through the duration of the novel, helping to raise Clara's two children as well as the baby son of a young sheriff who is half-heartedly searching for Jake Spoon, a cowboy that Gus has known for years, who is on the run from the law and spent quite a long time with Lorena, who is on the trail to Montana because of him. See what I mean? In the novel of Lonesome Dove, it's truly a small small world.
It is fortunate that for the most part all of McMurtry's female characters(what few there are)are quite strong-minded survivors. That makes me appreciate them so much, despite the presence of them. However, I have to remind myself that the West certainly had a limited female population anyway and what women survived HAD to be strong in body AND spirit. Even Louisa, a woman farmer that Roscoe(July Johnson the sheriff tracking Jake Spoon's deputy sheriff)encounters on his way west is a hard-working, takes no prisoners, kind of woman, a fact that surprises Roscoe greatly. I wonder what I would have done if that opportunity had been available to me back then. Would I have gone and taken my chances with the men? It was appalling to see how limiting the career options for women were. You were either a schoolteacher, married or a whore. How would I, if I was as I am now, a lesbian, have handled myself and would I have taken advantage of my desire to see the West and explore, or would I have stayed East and NOT risked my life. It was crazy enough to move out here on my own now, over one hundred years later with the amenities such as car and cell phones. I'm not sure what I would have done back then. My dream would have been(especially when I was single)to open a restaurant in a town and cook for the men who would have loved homecooked meals, but I'm not sure whether there was a real possibility of me then being raped or forced to marry. I'm sure I wouldn't have been allowed to be single for too long. And then, where would I meet other women and/or have had exposure to books and education? As one found out while reading Lonesome Dove, when Clara talks about how long it takes for her to get her magazines that she sends away for, and one discovers how illiterate the men were, it would have been hard for a big reader like me. However, the description of the landscape on the way north from Texas to Montana made me want to get in the car and do a long-distance drive right away and see Wyoming again, not to mention the land I haven't seen, Montana, which to all accounts is supposed to be absolutely stunning. There is so much to write about with a 900+ page novel, but this has already been super long. I can say, it is like the Gone With the Wind of the West. Perhaps that will give you a better idea...:) Pulitzer prize-35, GGs-34.