Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
BBM and Lonesome Dove
Brown Eyes:
--- Quote from: sfericsf on January 23, 2010, 12:32:36 am ---I just got through the 2-disc set of Larry McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk. It wasn't until the very end that I realized it's the same characters from Lonesome Dove. :D :laugh: I had only rented it because of Larry McMurtry and Diana Osana. And I now also see that the movies I put in my Netflix queue, Streets of Laredo, Camanche Moon, etc, are them characters too. I didn't even realize it 'til just this moment. :D
Hey, if Larry and Diana could put these two fellers in different settings, different stories, different places......
--- End quote ---
Heya Eric! Yes, it's a long, mult-book saga. McMurtry wrote Lonesome Dove first, but the plot of LD does not come first in the flow of the narrative across the 4 books. The narrative order is Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove and finally Streets of Laredo. With Dead Man's Walk you'll see Call and Gus just starting out, meeting for the first time, etc.
McMurtry really is quite a story teller.
SFEnnisSF:
--- Quote from: atz75 on January 23, 2010, 12:44:27 am ---
Heya Eric! Yes, it's a long, mult-book saga. McMurtry wrote Lonesome Dove first, but the plot of LD does not come first in the flow of the narrative across the 4 books. The narrative order is Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove and finally Streets of Laredo. With Dead Man's Walk you'll see Call and Gus just starting out, meeting for the first time, etc.
McMurtry really is quite a story teller.
--- End quote ---
Ok good. I've got the remainder in the queue for the proper order then.
1. Comanche Moon
2. Return to Lonesome Dove
3. Streets of Laredo
Brown Eyes:
Last night whilst continuing my slow-read of Comanche Moon I made note of two more short quotations that seem interesting to think about in relation to BBM. I don't think either of these are long enough or contain enough detail to really constitute spoilers.
"The two of them fell silent, looking across to Mexico. Though they quarreled frequently, they were often tugged by the same impulses, and so it was at that moment by the slow river. The longer they looked across it, the more strongly they felt the urge to attempt their mission alone - without cattle and without the other men.
"We could just do it Woodrow - the two of us," Augustus said." p. 444
...
"...[L]et's go to Mexico anyway," Augustus said. "I'm restless. Let's just saddle up and go tonight. There's a fine moon." p.445
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: atz75 on January 22, 2010, 10:33:50 pm ---There may be a small spoiler involved in this quotation... so if you don't want to know any specific details about CM... please don't read!
"...[H]e too had been friends with Long Bill for many years. He had known several men who had lost limbs in battle; the men all claimed that they still felt things in the place where the limb had been. It was natural enough, then, that with Bill suddenly gone he and Gus would continue to have some of the feelings that went with friendship, even though the friend was gone." (p. 394)
--- End quote ---
What a moving quote!! :'(
Reminds me of The Virginian...you might enjoy that novel too. Despite its name, it's about Wyoming.
Brown Eyes:
Thanks Lee. Yeah, there was a lot of really nice writing in Comanche Moon... and a lot that seemed to have strong resonance with BBM one way or another.
Anyway, I'm here to report that I finally finished CM after a long, slow reading process! Yeehaw!! And, in the end I really liked this book. Some of it really was tough to read (in terms of the subject matter, etc.)... but it was very riveting. And, I liked the pacing of this book a lot better than Dead Man's Walk. I particularly liked the last third-or-so of the book. I still like Lonesome Dove itself the best of the 3 I've read, but CM is a close second.
I'm totally fascinated to learn more about the history of the Comanche people after reading this book too. It's interesting to realize that there actually was a famous Comanche named Buffalo Hump, and that Quanah was also a real person. It's interesting to wonder how much of this series touches on historical fiction more than just plain fiction. I keep wondering how accurate McMurtry is being with his descriptions of Comanche life. I also find it interesting that McMurtry is so good at shifting first-person perspectives around from the various Texas Rangers, to the women in the Rangers' lives, and even to some of the male Native American characters... but he doesn't ever really seem to step into the shoes of the Native American women. He describes them and what they're up to sometimes, but we don't see the situation through their eyes in the same way that we do with other catetgories of characters.
The end of the book is just so incredibly sad. The encroachment of white settlers, slaughter of the buffalo and the younger generations of Comanches forgetting the old customs, methods of hunting/fighting, etc. is almost unbearably sad to think about.
I also thought the book ended really abruptly... maybe expecting the reader to jump right into the next book.
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