Rhino Ranch: final book in the Thalia TX series, 

Starting with The Last Picture Show (1966)

(Book Review)

Like Duane Moore, I’ve walked through 5 books in what began as the Thalia Trilogy and evolved into a series of novels by Larry McMurtry:  The Last Picture Show [“LPS”] (1966), Texasville (1987), Duane’s Depressed [“DD”] (1999), When the Light Goes [“WTLG”] (2007), and finally, Rhino Ranch [“RR”] (2009). That totals approximately 1,760 pages, dating back to 1966 when Duane and the gang were allegedly in high school, placing the beginning circa 1952. The final two books provide some hilarity and probably could have been combined into one longer episode, because they were published within two-years of each other (2007, 2009).

I will always picture Jacy played by the beautiful Cybil Shepherd; but Duane seems hard to characterize, because he is in many ways the Texas “everyman.” McMurtry wrote into Duane the “id” of every Texas male growing up and aging in small town Texas; the unorganized part of his personality structure that contains Duane's basic, instinctual drives is essentially the first-person narrator throughout the entire series. Duane wants to know and (maybe) be known. Duane tries to understand women, sex, his family, the oil business, how a small town runs, his doctors, and most of all the crazy inbred, narrow-minded characters inhabiting Thalia TX. The ranching era is gone, replaced by the era of the picture show and abundant oil, but McMurtry's strength in the series isn't just his historical description of the small town changing into the modern era, but also his deep understanding of the minds and emotions of all the people living and changing along with the times.

Occasionally, the narrative ran off in the ditch, but over the process of reading 5 long novels McMurtry shows that that is life in a little town with one blinking traffic light. Even Karla wove a little out of her lane, or stopped paying attention for a few seconds; and it got her smack-dab in the middle of the front grill of a huge milk truck. It’s easy to get side-tracked in Duane’s wanderings and wondering, but the pace just keeps slowly walking forward through his interesting life; the reader dumbly walking beside him like “Double Aught”, the big black creature in RR. During the LPS and for a small portion of  the book Texasville; the reader thinks that the series is about Sonny Crawford, but he leaves the scene in the middle of the 5 books, somewhere in DD; unhealthy, bitter, and alone—never really over his annulled marriage to Jacy at the end of high school.

There are strong women in the series: Jacy, Genevieve, Jacy’s mother Lois, Karla, Ruth, Jenny, Honor, Annie, K.K., Casey, Dal, and Nattie. Duane consistently struggles with how to communicate and relate to these antagonists, although he remains consistently attractive to women at all stages in his life, even marrying someone much younger, when in his 60s, he couples with the rich dilettante, Annie Cameron, from Marin County, California.

At times the prevalence of sex in these novels is overpowering, but the casual interplay of sexual relationships is a big part of small town living. (R-rating throughout) In the 70's oil boomtown Thalia, sex was just what was going on, as common and unimaginative as their fine-dining choices.

Seeing Duane’s worldview as he contemplates aging, fatherhood, the nature of his striving, his work, and the tension between his person-hood and his performance, made him one of the most relatable characters in Texas fiction. Like Mississippi's Walker Percy, Willie Morris, or William Faulkner, Larry McMurtry is one of this state's greatest writers.

"In his most powerful scenes, especially encounters between Ruth Popper, the wife of Thalia football coach, and Sonny Crawford, the high school student at the center of the novel, the intensity builds not so much through events as through McMurtry's preternaturally precise rendering of what each character is experiencing. Thoughts and feelings culminate in actions or spoken words that then ripple outward, provoking new joys, fears, hesitancies, hopes, longings." (quote by author/critic Gregory Curtis)

I especially understood his desire for true "presence" in his relationships, and distrust of those who merely used him for his money, power, reputation, good looks, or youth. As Duane finally went to a psychiatrist to treat his depression, we all got to watch the peeling back of his psychic “onion” to the point where he finally inspected what made him tick. Although his complex relationship with Honor (his psychiatrist) evolved, at first the counseling sessions rang especially true.

Surely Texan songwriter Don Henley read these books, and in 1989, after LPS and Texasville were separated by 21-years, he wrote “Heart of the Matter”, w/ maybe the long story of Duane’s love life and his personal struggles in his mind:

“There are people in your life who've come and gone,
They let you down, and hurt your pride,
Better put it all behind you; life goes on.
You keep carrin' that anger, it'll eat you up inside” (Don Henley--1989)

When it comes down to it, the heart of these novels and the conclusion of Duane’s story is all about forgiveness. Duane had to forgive his own mother, his best friends, Sam the Lion, Sonny, Jacy, Karla and his kids, as well as all the women he’d loved who let him down. He forgave the little town of Thalia, but most of all, he learned to forgive himself. In order to begin this process, Duane had to quit striving, park his pick-up, and step off of the carousel. Along with intense counseling and long introspective walks, it was also a major heart attack which brought him to a new place of self-awareness. At a point in DD he decides that he’s passed too much of life driving around in his pick-up and so he parks it and begins walking everywhere. His closest friends, family, even the everyday citizen of Thalia thought he had gone crazy, but in fact he’d stepped off the conveyor belt of life, and the cardiovascular benefits of all that walking probably saved his life when the heart attack struck him later.

Rhino Ranch (copyright©2009 by Simon & Schuster, New York) completed the series of novels in the same way an old man’s thoughts jump around in clipped, staccato speech patterns. Was it deliberately written to be indicative of the weakened brain of an elderly person? The short chapters often humored me, yet much of it was sad; it was good to see Duane reach a point of peace with many of the ghosts of his past. 

The long history of Thalia, which survived on gossip, personified by its most memorable citizen, comes to an end with this book. Powerfully connecting with a literary character on such a personal level is the sign of good writing. Wanting to see him grow and succeed, missing him every day before you are compelled to return to the story before bedtime: this is why I strongly recommend the investment it takes to read these novels. Mr. McMurtry has my sincere admiration for giving me a new friend; but was I predisposed to relate to Duane because I’ve also walked a similar path over many decades? I don’t think so. 

With a wide array of characters and worldviews expressed during the stories, McMurtry gives any reader a chance to see through another’s eyes, and none of the characters are especially evil or troublesome—just very human; interconnecting like only a small town can do. The final two volumes play out as sweetly and poignantly as the long, full life of Duane Moore, with many people stepping on and off his stage, living and dying and touching his life in some unique way. It was brought to a realistic, respectful conclusion and even though I will probably never return to this series; I'll never forget little Thalia. (5-***** for all five books) 

copyright©2016 by Mark H. Pillsbury