Rating: 
Summary: Great spring from the board, spectacular belly flop!
Review: "The Last Picture Show" is one of my favorite novels. With this sequel, we finally get to see what happens to the characters that populate that novel in the potentially rich setting of the oil bust of the 80s. "Texasville" had me cracking up and feeling like I was leaving for a wonderful, wacky and unforgettable journey, but around page 150 it just got too over the top for me. Everyone's so disfunctional or just plain unlikable that I stopped caring about nearly every character long before I finished reading the book. In the end, Duane's lover Suzie Nolan is the only character I cared anything about, and I was really sick of the endless succession of unbelievable events. And Duane ends up like a mental punching bag. No wonder he's depressed. As multi-volume series novels go, I think John Updike's "Rabbit" series is far superior. Updike creates characters we shouldn't have any business liking or caring about and somehow wins our empathy. I'll be skipping "Duane's Depressed" after this disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Texasville
Review: I do so agree with Reader of Indiana who says that this is the funniest book s/he has read. I found a most battered copy of 'Texasville' in a hotel library in Malaysia and began reading it somewhat reluctantly. It is hilarious. It kept me totally occupied through several airports during which I could often be heard to laugh aloud. Delicious! Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: A different book for a different era
Review: I haven't read many of Larry McMurtry's early books so far, so I don't know if he's not living up to his earlier promise, as some people contend. I did, however, like Texasville quite a bit. The contrast that McMurtry is trying to show here is quite obvious: while life in 50s-era The Last Picture Show was miserably simple, modern life in Texasville is horribly complex. The book is "wacky", and it is long and rambling compared to TLPS, but it reflects the situation in mid-80s Thalia much like TLPS reflected its own time. The story is episodic, like TLPS, but there are many more episodes to cover this time around.What is interesting in this story is that the characters have had every chance to lead happy lives, yet they are not happy at all. Most of them were at once time rich and successful, but this seems to have made their lives more complicated without actually improving them. Duane and Karla, the two main characters in the story, have bought lots of stuff and have both had more than a few affairs, which distracted them from the fact that they were growing apart. The other characters in the story are in similar predicaments. When the money runs out, chaos erupts. So how could the story not be sort of wacky? It is interesting to see who becomes aware of their unhapppness, and how they deal with it. This book is also quite funny. The oil bust-era may also remind you of the current high-tech bust. Many of the charactres seem to be in similar situations as today's former dot-com millionaires. I think most readers of TLPS will not de disappointed if they keep an open mind.
Rating:
Summary: A different book for a different era
Review: I haven't read many of Larry McMurtry's early books so far, so I don't know if he's not living up to his earlier promise, as some people contend. I did, however, like Texasville quite a bit. The contrast that McMurtry is trying to show here is quite obvious: while life in 50s-era The Last Picture Show was miserably simple, modern life in Texasville is horribly complex. The book is "wacky", and it is long and rambling compared to TLPS, but it reflects the situation in mid-80s Thalia much like TLPS reflected its own time. The story is episodic, like TLPS, but there are many more episodes to cover this time around. What is interesting in this story is that the characters have had every chance to lead happy lives, yet they are not happy at all. Most of them were at once time rich and successful, but this seems to have made their lives more complicated without actually improving them. Duane and Karla, the two main characters in the story, have bought lots of stuff and have both had more than a few affairs, which distracted them from the fact that they were growing apart. The other characters in the story are in similar predicaments. When the money runs out, chaos erupts. So how could the story not be sort of wacky? It is interesting to see who becomes aware of their unhapppness, and how they deal with it. This book is also quite funny. The oil bust-era may also remind you of the current high-tech bust. Many of the charactres seem to be in similar situations as today's former dot-com millionaires. I think most readers of TLPS will not de disappointed if they keep an open mind.
Rating:
Summary: Fans of Sonny from "The Last Picture Show" beware!
Review: Lots of fun. I read this shortly after "The Last Picture Show" and was pleasantly jolted by the contrasts between the two books, especially in tone and situation. The characters fumble with the same basic and pesky questions of sex, family, friendship, community... and boredom! "The Last Picture Show" laid these out as the challenges of coming-of-age. But "Texasville" wittily examines the way they haunt us into middle-age. Underneath the frenzy of spending sprees, sexual exploits, financial ruin, windstorms, and various melees, I found this a surprisingly poignant story of a group of people trying to figure out what to do with their lives and how to get along with each other.
Rating: 
Summary: Second Book Following Duane
Review: Probably not a Last Picture Show, but we find Duane and his friends in mid-adulthood and things aren't going so well for any of them. A slice of life picture? Happiness seems to be eluding the characters, but we are held to the last page by McMurtry's clever treatment of plot and characters. Duane's Depressed, the last book of the series follows, and the reader feels compelled to continue the saga of Thalia's interesting and different citizens.
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie - A Texas Frontier Girl, Books One - Three
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious Sequel
Review: Reading this book, I tried hard not to compare it to McMurtry's other works. I wanted this book to stand on it's own and not fall victim to the "It isn't Lonesome Dove" thought. I did manage to get through the entire book, though several times I threw it down in disgust. The story is lame, the characters are charicatures, but the worst part is that the only thing that was interesting about the entire book (Sonny's failing mental state) is left unsolved. Of all the characters I read about in this book, I was more interested in Sonny and why his mind seems to be slipping. Unfortunately, McMurtry leaves this (and many other items) as a loose end that doesn't get tied up. In fact, NOTHING is really completed in this book. It meanders through the affairs of everyone in town, and everyone in town is having at least one affair. Duane's children are spoiled, bratty, and would probably have benefitted from reform school. His wife is the Queen of PMS and his former girlfriend needs prozac. All in all, I'd have to say that Larry McMurtry missed his mark with this one. Had anyone else submitted such a story to be published, it would have been laughed out of town. I don't see any of the brilliance that this writer has exhibited in the past (even though I didn't compare the story itself to anything, I did search for signs that it was written by the same man). Read this if you want to see what life shouldn't be like, or if you have a couple of days of bad weather and nothing else to do.
Rating:
Summary: I love it anyway
Review: The common theme among the other reviewers seems to be that "it ain't no Last Picture Show." While I can recognize that LPS is a more tightly constructed book in the English class, reading it for credit context, I think this book actually has more life. The action is absurd in many respects, and the characters do selfish things, but there's a buoyant feeling to the whole business. Sometimes, driving down the road, I think of how Duane's dog, Shorty, rode away from Duane "looking inscrutable," and I just crack up. This is McMurtry doing what he does best.
Rating:
Summary: When life doesn't live up to expectations. . .
Review: Thirty years have passed since Duane Moore and Sonny Crawford graduated from high school in Thalia, Texas. The events of "The Last Picture Show" are a distant memory to everyone except Sonny, who continues to live in the past and occasionally gets lost there. Duane has married, gotten rich in the oil boom, raised a bunch of kids, built a 12,000-square-foot house outside of town, and is now $12 million in debt. The boom is over, and disappointment, the dominant mood of the characters in McMurtry's earlier book, is settling in again. This time, however, disappointment and depression are mostly played for laughs. Sonny, the poignant central character in "Picture Show," has been sidelined in this story by Duane's domestic conflicts, his efforts to remain optimistic in the face of bankruptcy, and his affair with a married woman who is also carrying on with Duane's dope-dealing, womanizing son. McMurtry plays up the ironies and absurdities of life in Thalia where, as Duane observes, everyone seems to have gone crazy. The married and unmarried swap partners with the free-for-all abandon of romance as it's portrayed in country and western songs. And a kind of lunacy grips others, whose adventures push the narrative into wildly implausible episodes of farce, such as a mammoth egg-throwing fight on the closing night of Thalia's centennial celebration. The melancholy mood that dominates "The Last Picture Show" makes only a brief appearance in this much longer novel, as Duane remembers a young employee killed in Vietnam. And readers, like me, who are fans of McMurtry's earlier work, will be disappointed that McMurtry treats the sorrows of his characters this time so lightly. At worst, the behavior of the town's residents gives Duane headaches and he comes to a realization that his "success" as an oilman and a respected citizen is not an achievement that gives him much self-esteem. The liberated 1980s women in his life (wife Karla, mistress Suzy, and old high school sweetheart Jacy) constantly remind him that he's less than adequate as a man. And at 48, he understands that he no longer has the energy he once had. Meanwhile, there are pleasures to be had in the novel. In particular, I enjoyed the endless varieties of ironic and humorous disputes that characterize the verbal exchanges between the characters. Duane has a comic ruefulness that both protects him and reveals his vulnerability. And finally, that is the central theme of this novel as all the middle-aged characters (and there are a host of them) try in one way or another to come to terms with lives that haven't lived up to expectations.
Rating:
Summary: When life doesn't live up to expectations. . .
Review: Thirty years have passed since Duane Moore and Sonny Crawford graduated from high school in Thalia, Texas. The events of "The Last Picture Show" are a distant memory to everyone except Sonny, who continues to live in the past and occasionally gets lost there. Duane has married, gotten rich in the oil boom, raised a bunch of kids, built a 12,000-square-foot house outside of town, and is now $12 million in debt. The boom is over, and disappointment, the dominant mood of the characters in McMurtry's earlier book, is settling in again. This time, however, disappointment and depression are mostly played for laughs. Sonny, the poignant central character in "Picture Show," has been sidelined in this story by Duane's domestic conflicts, his efforts to remain optimistic in the face of bankruptcy, and his affair with a married woman who is also carrying on with Duane's dope-dealing, womanizing son. McMurtry plays up the ironies and absurdities of life in Thalia where, as Duane observes, everyone seems to have gone crazy. The married and unmarried swap partners with the free-for-all abandon of romance as it's portrayed in country and western songs. And a kind of lunacy grips others, whose adventures push the narrative into wildly implausible episodes of farce, such as a mammoth egg-throwing fight on the closing night of Thalia's centennial celebration. The melancholy mood that dominates "The Last Picture Show" makes only a brief appearance in this much longer novel, as Duane remembers a young employee killed in Vietnam. And readers, like me, who are fans of McMurtry's earlier work, will be disappointed that McMurtry treats the sorrows of his characters this time so lightly. At worst, the behavior of the town's residents gives Duane headaches and he comes to a realization that his "success" as an oilman and a respected citizen is not an achievement that gives him much self-esteem. The liberated 1980s women in his life (wife Karla, mistress Suzy, and old high school sweetheart Jacy) constantly remind him that he's less than adequate as a man. And at 48, he understands that he no longer has the energy he once had. Meanwhile, there are pleasures to be had in the novel. In particular, I enjoyed the endless varieties of ironic and humorous disputes that characterize the verbal exchanges between the characters. Duane has a comic ruefulness that both protects him and reveals his vulnerability. And finally, that is the central theme of this novel as all the middle-aged characters (and there are a host of them) try in one way or another to come to terms with lives that haven't lived up to expectations.
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