IN A NARROW GRAVE: Essays on Texas

This book is a great read. It was the first time I had read anything "short" for pleasure. I was thirteen years old and was into novels. I had already read "The Last Picture Show", "Horseman Pass By", "Texasville", all numerous times. The only essays and short stories I had consumed were the ones forced upon you (either to read or to write) in school. This book changed that for me. It showed how powerful a well written essay or short story can be. My favorite of the essays was "A Look at the Lost Frontier" -the one about the south to north car ride across Texas on Hwy 281. This seemed so personal, because I had visited some of the places that he mentioned on that trip. I have remained fascinated about this road ever since, regularly having to travel on it because of business. I can feel the same kind of ironic peacefullness that he mentions when he gets to the New Mexico border and turns back around and heads home. If I have been out of state for a while, to get re-acclimated , I will get into the truck and drive either up or down 281 aimlessly for however long it takes and the next thing you know, I am the Texas state of mind once again. When I am doing this I will stop somewhere and read this story (my favorite place to do this for some reason is around Hico, Texas) and the next thing you know whatever state I was in and getting used to is very distant and I am home. It has such a calming effect. That is a powerful essay. The other reason I like this and all of McMurtry's non-fiction is that you are continually discovering other authors. This was the first time I had ever heard of John Graves. In the part of the book where he was talking about Texas literature, he mentioned "Farewell to a River", about Graves' canoe trip down the Brazos before it was dammed up to make a series of lakes in north central Texas. Living on the Brazos, on one of these lakes, my interest was piqued. I found that book and read it at least ten times. Now when I cross the Brazos on Hwy 281, I too look down to see if I can see John Graves in his canoe, "for the Brazos is his river and one expects him there." The other essays in the book are great as well, mostly dealing with the dissappearing of the West and the cowboy de-mystified, which is a theme never far from hand with McMurtry and always interesting. He also deals with the (at the time explosive) subject of Dobie, Bedichick, and Webb--old Southwestern lit. luminaries which at the time were considers the Gods of Texas letters. While most at the time thought him a smug upstart (he was thirty or so) and basically a traitor for suggesting that these three were rather pedestrian writers who had occasional flashes of quality, he did it with grace and most would have to if not agree with his point of view, at least give him credit for wanting to tackle the subject. It was brave. He didn't just take potshots. It was more about breaking out of regionalism than trashing the ones that ha

McMurtry, in this collection of essays about Texas, says he prefers fiction to nonfiction, for various reasons, but I for one find these ambivalent ruminations on his home state more enjoyable than some of his fiction. The insights come fast and furious in this short book, by comparison with a slow-moving novel like "Moving On," written about this same time, where a few ideas are stretched thin across several hundred pages. Published in 1968, the content of "Narrow Grave" will seem dated to some readers. Written in the shadow of the assassination in Dallas and while another Texan was in the White House, the essays capture Texas in a period of rough transition from its rural past to its globalized present (the rise and fall of Enron would certainly have been featured in a current version of this book). Much of it is timeless, however. It includes one of my favorite McMurtry essays, "Take My Saddle From the Wall: A Valediction," in which he provides a history of the McMurtry family, who settled in the 1880s on 320 acres west of Wichita Falls and in the following generation relocated to the Panhandle to live mostly as cowboys and ranchers. In this essay, McMurtry separates the mythic cowboy from the actual one and describes how cowboys are probably the biggest believers in the myths about them. It's full of ironies, colorful personalities, and wonderful details. Altogether, the book attempts to present an unsentimental portrait of a state that also tends to get carried away by its own myths. The result is often a jaundiced view and gets to sounding like the worst Paul Theroux travel writing, where it seems like the writer has a personal grudge against the place he's describing. A car trip from Brownsville to the Panhandle is great fun for the wealth of local color captured along the way, but McMurtry focuses on every unhappy and unfortunate detail as if to warn the reader away from ever doing the same. The description of a fiddlers contest in East Texas is downright unkind. It's easy to see, however, that it's a lover's quarrel McMurtry has with Texas. I gladly recommend this entertaining book to readers curious about the Lone Star State and the man who wrote "The Last Picture Show" and "Lonesome Dove"

So it's dated history now, but written when Larry McMurtry was a young man beginning his publishing career. What an interesting and insightful read into the views of a "younger man" who later became an honored Pulitzer prize winner! As a native Texan, about McMurtry's age, I can recall a l960's Texas. He has treated his account with wit, energy, honesty and humor! I loved every page of the book and found myself chuckling at life the way it once was in the Lone Star state. As some have mentioned, it would be interesting to have a modern-day follow up of the Texas of today, but perhaps since Mr. McMurtry has now chosen to return to his roots, in Archer City, leaving the Eastern cities to other folks, he might be completely satisfied and comfortable with life as it in his small hometown in rural Texas where on each corner of the town square, he has placed a sizeable bookstore housing rare and collectable books, his legacy to future generations of Texans and others interested in such matters. I have toured these collections, and they are impressive indeed!Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/authorJeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl Books One - Three

In A Narrow Grave depicts Texas according to its geographic divisions exactly. McMurtry describes the people, customs, morals and behaviors of each of the divisions of Texas to a tee! If the reader happens to be from Texas or has lived extensively in Texas, he/she knows how accurate McMurtry's descriptions are and cannot help spending a large amount of the reading time laughing because of the accuracy. This books is absolutely enjoyable over and over again. My wish, is that he would write a sequel and revist the state again, doing a 90's or turn of the century version.

In this engaging collection, a thirty-something McMurtry of the sixties takes a pointed look at his personal origins, the contemporary evolution of Cowboy mythology, and considers their impact on his fiction. Wide ranging, yet concise and agile; the disparate topics are bound together with admirable wit and sensitivity. Anyone raised in mid-century Texas will feel at home with the content, if not the voice. The mind behind the imagery of the final narrative is thoroughly astounding. In my limited view, these essays will uneasily remain McMurtry's most enduring effort.