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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent companion to early McMurtry novels
Review: In a Narrow Grave is a short collection of essays published in 1968 after McMurtry's first three novels ("Horeseman, Pass By," "Leaving Cheyenne," and "The Last Picture Show"). The themes explored in these works of fiction are delved into further in this non-fiction work. Specifically, McMurtry discusses growing up in rural Texas and how that influenced his work. The main theme of the essays, not surprisingly, is the death of small town Texas as people abandoned the country for the big cities (he focuses on Dallas, Houston, and Austin).Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the last one; McMurtry talks about his family, which includes several generations of Texas ranchers and cowboys. Many of the stories he tells have made their way into his novels, so one really begins to appreciate just how autobiographical his novels are. I also greatly enjoyed the chapter about the filming of the movie version of his novel, "Horseman, Pass By" (the movie is called "Hud" - a great classic). Another interesting section describes McMurtry's road trip across Texas. Less enjoyable was the chapter on Texas writers pre-1960, which focused on several non-fiction writers of whom I was unaware. Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit and look forward to reading more of McMurtry's work. If you like McMurtry's fiction work, then you'll also likely enjoy this short compendium.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent companion to early McMurtry novels
Review: In a Narrow Grave is a short collection of essays published in 1968 after McMurtry's first three novels ("Horeseman, Pass By," "Leaving Cheyenne," and "The Last Picture Show"). The themes explored in these works of fiction are delved into further in this non-fiction work. Specifically, McMurtry discusses growing up in rural Texas and how that influenced his work. The main theme of the essays, not surprisingly, is the death of small town Texas as people abandoned the country for the big cities (he focuses on Dallas, Houston, and Austin). Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the last one; McMurtry talks about his family, which includes several generations of Texas ranchers and cowboys. Many of the stories he tells have made their way into his novels, so one really begins to appreciate just how autobiographical his novels are. I also greatly enjoyed the chapter about the filming of the movie version of his novel, "Horseman, Pass By" (the movie is called "Hud" - a great classic). Another interesting section describes McMurtry's road trip across Texas. Less enjoyable was the chapter on Texas writers pre-1960, which focused on several non-fiction writers of whom I was unaware. Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit and look forward to reading more of McMurtry's work. If you like McMurtry's fiction work, then you'll also likely enjoy this short compendium.
Rating: 
Summary: A collection of essays about Texas and Texans.
Review: In this collection of essays, McMurtry treats various aspects of Texas life from bestiality to the loss of the frontier, but in the end he is only moderately successful in uncovering the spirit of his subject. The writing is uneven, and not surprisingly, those essays that dispense with intellectual analysis and reflect the author's emotional feelings are by far the strongest of the collection. In particular, the essay on the McMurty family captures the sense of loss of a way of life in a way that intelectualizing could only muddle. A major cause for the unevenness of the writing is due to the author's internal conflict over the appropriate way to record his observations: by non-fiction or through fiction. In those essays in which he attempts to intellectualize his prose, it becomes stolid and loses much of its impact, while the prose of those essays that deal with the textures and emotions of the subject rival some of his best writings. About a quarter way through his book of essays, McMurtry muses: "... In writing this chapter I have begun to wonder if it is possible to write a discursive book about Texas which will not turn out to be simply a book for Texans, or more narrowly still, a book for Texan intellectuals." I think that this, along with the author's choice of prose style, becomes the central conflict for the author and at the book's end this uncertainty remains.
Rating:
Summary: Narrow Graves & Wide Open Spaces
Review: Larry McMurtry knows Texas, and in 1968 put together a book of his observations about all things Texas called In a Narrow Grave. The title is a fragment of a line from the song "The Dying Cowboy"; the title of the song relates more obviously to McMurtry's main topic. From McMurtry's perspective Texas is on the cusp of a change of identity, from cattle rich to oil rich. He both laments and celebrates the passing of the cowboy looking from the Texas that once was to what Texas is becoming. He does all of this in a manner that is both amusing, informative and thought provoking. McMurtry chose to be "bookish" as he puts it, to following in his father and uncles' footsteps, though as McMurtry relates, those footsteps were being blown away and getting more difficult to follow all the time. He is critical of both the past he admires and the present he seems to distrust. His journey is at times objective, subjective and intensely personal. In the most touching piece, the last in the book, he introduces us to the McMurtry clan and gives us a family profile of success and failure on the open Texas plain that is touching and heartbreaking in its depth. He describes lost times, places and people. The shortfall here is the material is dated. Thirty-plus years have produced much change and it would have been interesting if McMurtry had produced an epilogue to bring us up to date and help us close the years since In a Narrow Grave was first published.
Rating:
Summary: Messing with Texas. . .
Review: McMurtry, in this collection of essays about Texas, says he prefers fiction to nonfiction, for various reasons, but I for one find these ambivalent ruminations on his home state more enjoyable than some of his fiction. The insights come fast and furious in this short book, by comparison with a slow-moving novel like "Moving On," written about this same time, where a few ideas are stretched thin across several hundred pages.
Published in 1968, the content of "Narrow Grave" will seem dated to some readers. Written in the shadow of the assassination in Dallas and while another Texan was in the White House, the essays capture Texas in a period of rough transition from its rural past to its globalized present (the rise and fall of Enron would certainly have been featured in a current version of this book).
Much of it is timeless, however. It includes one of my favorite McMurtry essays, "Take My Saddle From the Wall: A Valediction," in which he provides a history of the McMurtry family, who settled in the 1880s on 320 acres west of Wichita Falls and in the following generation relocated to the Panhandle to live mostly as cowboys and ranchers. In this essay, McMurtry separates the mythic cowboy from the actual one and describes how cowboys are probably the biggest believers in the myths about them. It's full of ironies, colorful personalities, and wonderful details.
Altogether, the book attempts to present an unsentimental portrait of a state that also tends to get carried away by its own myths. The result is often a jaundiced view and gets to sounding like the worst Paul Theroux travel writing, where it seems like the writer has a personal grudge against the place he's describing. A car trip from Brownsville to the Panhandle is great fun for the wealth of local color captured along the way, but McMurtry focuses on every unhappy and unfortunate detail as if to warn the reader away from ever doing the same. The description of a fiddlers contest in East Texas is downright unkind.
It's easy to see, however, that it's a lover's quarrel McMurtry has with Texas. I gladly recommend this entertaining book to readers curious about the Lone Star State and the man who wrote "The Last Picture Show" and "Lonesome Dove"
Rating: 
Summary: Accurate and Fun Record of Texas of the l960's
Review: So it's dated history now, but written when Larry McMurtry was a young man beginning his publishing career. What an interesting and insightful read into the views of a "younger man" who later became an honored Pulitzer prize winner! As a native Texan, about McMurtry's age, I can recall a l960's Texas. He has treated his account with wit, energy, honesty and humor! I loved every page of the book and found myself chuckling at life the way it once was in the Lone Star state. As some have mentioned, it would be interesting to have a modern-day follow up of the Texas of today, but perhaps since Mr. McMurtry has now chosen to return to his roots, in Archer City, leaving the Eastern cities to other folks, he might be completely satisfied and comfortable with life as it in his small hometown in rural Texas where on each corner of the town square, he has placed a sizeable bookstore housing rare and collectable books, his legacy to future generations of Texans and others interested in such matters. I have toured these collections, and they are impressive indeed!
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl Books One - Three
Rating:
Summary: Accurate and Fun Record of Texas of the l960's
Review: So it's dated history now, but written when Larry McMurtry was a young man beginning his publishing career. What an interesting and insightful read into the views of a "younger man" who later became an honored Pulitzer prize winner! As a native Texan, about McMurtry's age, I can recall a l960's Texas. He has treated his account with wit, energy, honesty and humor! I loved every page of the book and found myself chuckling at life the way it once was in the Lone Star state. As some have mentioned, it would be interesting to have a modern-day follow up of the Texas of today, but perhaps since Mr. McMurtry has now chosen to return to his roots, in Archer City, leaving the Eastern cities to other folks, he might be completely satisfied and comfortable with life as it in his small hometown in rural Texas where on each corner of the town square, he has placed a sizeable bookstore housing rare and collectable books, his legacy to future generations of Texans and others interested in such matters. I have toured these collections, and they are impressive indeed!
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl Books One - Three
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