The LAST PICTURE SHOW : A Novel (original 1966; edition 1999)

(09 April 2000)

A copy bought in America, although it turns out I first read it before I owned a copy (more of that later). Still an amazing book on its third read. A wonderful, elegiac portrait of small-town America with its heroes and villains, revolving around the high school football team and its cheerleaders even when neither are actually very good. I’d forgotten how graphic it is, but the sex scenes are not gratuitous: it’s about teenagers growing up in a town where your first love object is likely to be a farm animal, and virginity is something to be both prized and got rid of – and there are some terribly embarrassing fumbles which are portrayed in as much excruciating detail as a rather humiliating trip to Mexico which will be built into something quite different back in Thalia.

Who can forget Duane, the football hero, Sonny, the not-so-much-a-hero with the soft heart and Jacy, scheming, adulterous daughter of a scheming, adulterous mother, as well as the cast assembled around them? No one is better at portraying small town love and life and few are as good at writing in a style which is utterly straight and believeable, as if he is literally writing down the facts. No wonder McMurtry went on to write four sequels – I will be rereading books 2 and 3 before launching into my newish copies of 4 and 5!

Here are my reviews from my previous reads:

February 1998 (from library)

“Engaging coming-of-age novel about young and older in a small town in Texas. Appealing, honest and well-written.”

July 2000 (this copy)

“A rereading made more interesting and poignant by my having read the other two books in the trilogy in the meantime. Classic characters and an engaging story line, all told in a confiding, open style that brings you right into their lives.”

"The Last Picture Show" was one of Larry McMurtry’s earliest publications. He was born and raised on a ranch outside Archer City, Texas and used his actual home town as a model for Thalia, Texas, the location for this novel.

"The Last Picture Show" takes place in the mid 1950’s. It was a time in history when every small town had their own single screen movie theater on Main Street; a place for teens to congregate and young couples gathered in the back row to hold hands and make out. A time when guys wore their hair slicked back in duck tails and frequently whipped out a comb to smooth down the sides. It was common for kids to pop open a can of beer while driving around in an old used American made vehicle, their girlfriends snuggled up next to them on the car’s bench seat. As the novel begins, two high school seniors, Sonny and Duane, wild, tough, and flooded with testosterone, are best friends and stars of the school football team. Respectable folks in town called them roughnecks. They both came from poor dysfunctional families with no parental guidance and when they were not sleeping through classes, working part time jobs, playing football, or hanging out at the movie theater, they were trying to have sex, thinking about sex, talking about sex, and dreaming about sex. It sounds like an adventurous “boys will be boys” comedy, but there is nothing funny about "The Last Picture Show".

Some scenes are painfully crude and intensely graphic. Parts are downright trashy. Be prepared to face the harsh reality that sex is often nothing more than a ploy. Some people use sex for entertainment, or to gain control or boast of their power. Some use sex as a desperate attempt for attention or to make others jealous. And then there are a few fortunate people who actually use sex to express love and devotion. All this is happening as Sonny and Duane struggle to find meaningful relationships and escape the inertia of living in Thalia.

Typical of all Larry McMurtry’s writing, the characters in "The Last Picture Show" come to life and whether you like them or detest them, they present powerful images that stay with you long after you close the book.

The film version of "The Last Picture Show" won 2 Academy awards and was nominated for 6 including Best Picture. Many years later McMurtry won the Pulitzer Prize for his most famous book "Lonesome Dove". ( )

Small-town Texas in the 1950s comes alive in Larry McMurtry's words. The small kindnesses, and the small cruelties, are all on display. The book mostly follows along with Sonny and Duane, best friends and silent rivals for the prettiest girl in town, Jacy. It's not much of a rivalry since Jacy is dating Duane - it mostly consists of Sonny longing for her and Duane pretending he doesn't notice.

I liked the way such a brief glimpse into the town brought such a varied cast of characters to life. It takes a lot to introduce so many people and make the reader care about all of them, to leave you wanting more but not feeling like anyone got short shrift. It's easy to empathize with Billy, the slow kid who sweeps various businesses and will just keep sweeping his way down the street unless someone stops him. Harder to feel for Lois Farrow, Jacy's mom ... and yet, you do. And at the center of it all is Sonny, with no idea how to get what he wants - and in fact, not much of an idea why he even wants it. ( )

I think it would be perfectly fair to say that I do not like role-fulfillment. By that I mean that I do not believe any of us are born into a role that we must fill until the day we die.

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry seems, to me, to explore the issue of the roles people are supposed to play.

Each character in the novel is faced with a crux in which they can continue to go on with what is expected of them (whether that role is as a housewife, as a man, as a wealthy teen, as a preacher, etc) or change into something that they no longer recognize as themselves. That I believe is the message of the novel: the roles are arbitrary and only the individual can choose what to do with what is expected of them.

The hard part is knowing that one can change who they are and what is expected of them. Otherwise, they continue and continue and continue… In one manner, we see why a unhappy wife of a football coach continues: she feels she had a role to play with her ignoramus husband; and being at the age she is, that is all she can accept, therefore no change can come out of it. But, when a teenage boy comes into her life and loves her body like no man has ever, her role is drastically changed.

And role changing is frightening after you’ve lived it for so long and without any exit plan.

Another issue that The Last Picture Show deals with is what really goes on in small towns. Often politicians will give us small towns as the American ideal and tell us how little crime they have, how few infidelities occur, and how the moral conscience is usually in the right. McMartry gives the uncensored view of what goes on in small towns and behind those closed doors all delivered in a matter-of-fact way that does not indicated any surprise from the narrator’s ink. The shocks and awes should not do just that: everything is presented as if the readers was the most casual type and would mumble nothing more than, “Of course, of course…I remember when I did that when I was a boy…”

Small town America is an illusion. The Last Picture Show is just that: the silvered-screen ideal being torn down to show us what is really going on behind what so many call idyllic and quaint. ( )

Every time I read this book, I find something new and wonderful hidden away. ( )