The Last Picture Show

Sonny and his friend Duane grow up hard in Thalia, Texas in the 1950's. Neither has much family to speak of. Football and girls seem important. Thalia seems like a small town populated by broken people. Tragedy abounds. There are plenty of life lessons around but not everyone is bothering to learn.

Larry McMurtry creates this small town and populates it with people you care about, despite their foibles, or maybe because of them. It's a fully realized, and satisfying, story.

The movie got me to read the book. Before i hit 100 pages, i was ready to abandon it not because it was bad or unreadable or i didn’t care but because it was almost exactly the movie. They did a very good job of adapting the novel to the screen.

Past the half, the story changes from the movie but only in expanse and order of events not too much in content.

This is the first of McMurtry’s books i’ve read. It’s simply written but the stuff he does put on the page is unapologetic, clear, and concise. He’s definitely a show-er not a teller.

The explorations of small town life are sometimes surprising but accurate. It’s the America of the ‘50s that no one wanted to talk about. But it’s also the America of today, just more show more innocent, if that’s not oxymoronic. It almost seems to be a coming-of-age story about the town itself rather than just one or two main characters. It’s about those first forays into the adult playing field that we all experience in and at the end of high school.

Bracingly matter-of-fact, the immorality of what most of the characters do or have done is contrasted with what shocks them- like when Sonny and Duane go to Mexico. McMurtry shows us the everyday nature of cognitive dissonance and even outright hypocrisy. He shows us what humans get up to when they are faced with boredom and loneliness. When given no other purpose than to uphold a decent demeanor, we succumb to what some would call our “baser instincts.” Sonny’s way of glossing things over so they work out is right in our face throughout. He excuses away several acts of violence, betrayal, and immorality with a shrug. He wants there to be no conflict. He wants peace. He wants to get away with what he wants to get away with but only learns the consequence of his actions and how that might apply to others late in the story. Or maybe not at all. show less

"… there was nothing to do but sit and look out the long empty street toward the west." (pg. 53)

The Last Picture Show will make you depressed as all hell, but the writing is so good you can't hate it. It is almost entirely plotless, depicting small-town life in Texas in the Fifties, complete with cafés, stop-lights, pick-up trucks and Levi's. This is what we might now call Americana, only it is lived-in; author Larry McMurtry brings almost a painter's eye to his vivid written tapestry. You can smell the coffee, see the glow of the diner and the lonesomeness of the red stop-light on a deserted night on the main street.

Given its lack of dynamic plot, the success of The Last Picture Show rests entirely on its characters. Here, McMurtry show more excels: his three lead characters, Sonny, Duane and Jacy, are all real, though it is supporting characters like Ruth, Genevieve and Sam who really shine. Even minor characters like the shabbily-treated teacher John Cecil or Miss Mosey, who owns the cinema (the 'picture show'), get their moments. When Miss Mosey desperately and tearfully tries to refund Sonny and Duane, who have left the last screening of a film at the cinema well before the credits have rolled (pg. 266), it is a quietly devastating illustration of small-town decline and impotence. Even with the rare event of having punters come through the door, she can't get them to stay.

It can, at times, become exhausting. The bulk of the novel is concerned with sex and manipulation, and whilst the relationships are well-written, it leads us to dislike many of the characters (even Sonny, by the end). It seems, by the final chapters, as though everyone has slept with everyone else, even the local livestock. (That's not a joke; in Chapter 10, some of the characters have sex with a heifer.) The combination of plotlessness and self-involved characters might be too much for some readers, especially as many will be coming to the book wanting to replicate their experience of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, with its vivid, dove-tailing adventure plot and some of the most enjoyable character combinations in literature.

That said, The Last Picture Show is worth persevering with on its own terms. McMurtry's simple storytelling style keeps the pages turning, and even if they make you feel hollow sometimes, the characters have a realness to them. There are a number of sweet scenes, most involving Genevieve in some way, such as Sam complaining about the football in the café as dawn breaks and "the cowboys and the truckers came in, blowing on their cold hands" (pg. 134). There is a literary merit to the novel, with the 'last picture show' not only representing the decline and ennui of small-town American life in the Fifties, but also the coming-of-age story of Sonny and his friends: Sonny "had always thought you were supposed to get whoever you really loved. That was the way it worked in movies" (pg. 187). Now he's realising life is not like that, and that it is hard "to get from day to day if one felt hopeless" (pg. 261).

The Last Picture Show makes you feel hopeless, but it is not hard to get through, and is one of the best-framed bildungsromans I've read. Only a writer as good as McMurtry can take you on a rollercoaster in a town that is "as empty as the country" (pg. 277). show less

"Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the only human creature in the town...."

I decided to reread this after watching a documentary featuring movie director Peter Bogdanovich on the making of the acclaimed movie based on this book. I think that this was the first book by McMurty that I read (and I've read many of his books since, but not recently), and this is still a very good book.
It's the story of the coming of age of Sonny in his final year of high school and part of the following year, set against the backdrop of the death of the small Texas town of Thalia. It has an ensemble cast of characters--all walks of life are portrayed and humanized, and we explore the universe of human feelings and experiences in one small town. There's Sonny show more and his best friend Duane. There's Billy, the simple-minded boy who sweeps the streets and goes to the picture show every night. Keeping a kindly eye on these boys is Sam the Lion, owner of the cafe and the pool hall, and of course, there's the waitress with the heart of gold, Genevieve. Football is big in small town Texas, and there's Coach Popper and his unhappy neglected wife Ruth. Then there's the spoiled, narcissistic rich girl Jacy, manipulating all the boys in town and making sure she stays the center of attention. Her mother Lois is on to Jacy, but maintains the peace in her unhappy marriage to a rich oil driller. This may all sound stereotypical, but there's nothing stereotypical about any of these characters--they are real, living deeply humane people.
When I first started reading, I was struck by how much sex there is. I didn't remember this aspect of the book. But after all, we are mostly in the minds of teenagers as they learn the mysteries of the world and pass into adulthood.
Highly recommended if you haven't already read this oldie but goodie. And the movie is great too! show less

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry Finished 8/9/15

[The Last Picture Show] is a coming of age story set in a dreary, fading Texas town. The novel follows three teenagers—Sonny, Duane, and Jacy—as they complete high school and prepare…to…well, what? None of them really knows. As the story begins, the two boys are already free of parental oversight (and guidance).

Frank Crawford, Sonny's father, was the high school principal until an auto accident killed his wife and severely injured him. Strung out on prescription pain-killers, unable to return to the school, he's getting by running a domino parlor in the town. Duane's father was killed in an oil rig mishap; his mother lives in a two-room house, caring for her ailing mother, show more struggling to get by.

Sonny and Duane are living at a rooming house and typically avoid their surviving parents. Both have parttime jobs, Duane as a roughneck, Sonny delivering propane (for a dealer named Fartley). Together they bought an old pickup so they can get around. As the story begins, both have girlfriends, both have raging hormones. Sonny's dating Charlene, a dull, priggish, lumpen classmate. Duane dates Jacy, the spoiled rich girl; Duane expects to marry Jacy after graduation, and that's his only plan, his only topic of thought for the future.

After Sonny breaks up with Charlene, he mopes into the town's all-night café. The night waitress, Genevieve, asks him why he's blue. "There ain't nobody to go with in this town," he says. "Jacy's the only pretty girl in high school, and Duane's got her." To which Genevieve replies: "I'd call that his tough luck. She'll bring him more misery than she'll ever be worth. She's just like her grand¬mother. Besides, I doubt Lois and Gene want her marrying a poor boy."

Lois, Jacy's mother, doesn't much care, she says, but of course she's not taken with Duane. She advises Jacy that "…life is very monotonous. Things happen the same way over and over again….Everything gets old if you do it often enough. I don't particularly care who you marry, but if you want to find out about monotony real quick, just marry Duane."

Lois knows. Though hardly a romantic, her husband Gene provides a very comfortable life. A role model Lois is not; she's a hard drinker and, while she is picky, she sleeps around.

As the story plays on, Jacy does indeed churn a lot of tough luck, for herself as well as Sonny and Duane. Swept into the summer shenanigans—nude pool parties prominent among them—of wealthy, privileged teens in a nearby town, she dumps Duane. But the boy she has her eye on, abruptly marries a rival. She needs attention and will go to extremes to get it.

An upbeat story it is not. Virtually everyone in town is spiritless, struggling, beaten down, enervated, despairing. There are few available jobs of any kind, and certainly no "better jobs." Those that can get away have already done so. Those left behind, like the town, have nothing to look forward to.

Interestingly, McMurty dedicated the book "lovingly…to my home town" (Archer City). That may drip with irony, but McMurty has remained an Archer City resident. Yes, there's a lot to dislike in The Last Picture Show.. Yes, it's often crude, some of the characters are despicable, some are just losers. But it's true to life and well told. I finished the book about six weeks ago, and I still like it. show less

This book was a classic case of “they had us in the first half.” It begins with a lot of levity and comedic tone to describe the lives of 3 teens of varying backgrounds. There are some very yuck and uncomfortable relationships that happen but they do feel very organically written as a product of that time frame (~early 50s). The 2nd half of this book shifts tonally as the seniors begin to end their high school career and focus on their prospective futures (or lack thereof). Lots of interesting dynamics and a very bittersweet dissection of small town life.

I loved this book. His writing is so engaging and everything was developed and moved along at the perfect pace, especially the characters. They felt like real people you might meet. Even though this book is often pegged as a "coming of age" story, I didn't really see it that way entirely. It was about small town life in the early 50s and about the people of the town and their sad lives. A closed community, full of judgment, lacking privacy, sad, lonely. And it is SO Texas with the weather, the football, the false morality. Perfectly captured!

Of course, the book is full of sex. I wasn't expecting this since the movie clearly didn't have as much. It's not hot or romantic sex either. It's clumsy, cringy, and awkward. Everything about the show more book just felt very raw and very real. show less