Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond

I've read much more of Larry McMurtry's fiction than his nonfiction, and sometimes I find myself enjoying his nonfiction a great deal more. His wry, humorous point of view, gift for quiet irony, and depth of thought come across so much more strongly in his own voice, compared to those of the characters in his novels. And while I am very fond of "Leaving Cheyenne," "Horseman, Pass By" and "The Last Picture Show," my favorite McMurtry novels, it is an equal pleasure to be in the presence of the man himself, as he reveals himself in the essays in this book. Writing in his 62nd year, McMurtry lets himself free associate across a number of subjects; his life as a compulsive reader and book collector; the brief span of West Texas frontier history where three generations of McMurtrys lived, worked, and multiplied; the realities and myths of cowboys and ranching; his education at Rice in Houston; a short story writing course at Stanford with Frank O'Connor; his life as a novelist; the making of the movie "The Last Picture Show"; the passing of the urban secondhand bookstores; the emergence of Dairy Queens as social centers in small towns; the Archer City, Texas, centennial celebration; the demise of storytelling; the fragmentation of the American family; the importance of Proust and Virginia Woolf at a critical point in his life; the winning of the Pulitzer Prize for "Lonesome Dove"; and - most remarkably - his descent into a fierce depression following heart surgery in his 50s, from which he has not completely recovered at the time he was writing this book. There is a deep melancholy in many McMurtry novels, played sometimes for laughs, as in "Texasville" (where characters hang out at the Dairy Queen). Indirectly, he accounts for some of that in this book, turning as he sometimes does to the themes of loss and the impermanence of things - represented in so many ways, from the vast outpouring of books that sit in piles and on shelves, collect dust and will never be opened again, to the death of his father, a rancher who worked hard all his life and saw in his last years that his achievements were far too few. I recommend this book to anyone who's read McMurtry's novels and has wondered about the man whose imagination has produced so many memorable characters and stories. For the fun of it, you might just take it down to the Dairy Queen and read it there over a MooLatte.

Thirty years ago I read McMurtry's first book of essays, In a Narrow Grave. Now he has written the other bookend. Dairy Queen is a wonderful book. McMurtry lived at the right time--his life was at a watershed in history. He stands on the dry land between the nothingness of West Texas and the affluence of today. He has enough sense to connect the two with a good deal of nuance. Be careful, you'll get dust in your mouth reading about the dry, hot West Texas hard scrabble. McMurtry has announced that he is finished writing fiction; if this is his last book it will be a capstone. I read the book in one sitting and I marked it up as I read it. I liked it so much simply because McMurtry's journey is the journey of most humans. We can't wait to leave home--we make new lives away from home--and then, if we are lucky, we return home with forgiveness and understanding, knowing full well that we are very much a part of where we grew up. To be able to understand this and to be at peace with himself in the winter of his life--that's where McMurtry is and he has had the kindess to take the reader along for the ride.

The New York Times called this a peculiar book but they must not read much Larry McMurtry. This was a wonderful series of essays explaining much of the writing that he has done during his lifetime. I copied many of the sentences Larry wrote about reading because they were my experiences also. I too grew up on a farm and my reading habit is directly connected to that life. My love of reading is my life, and many of my favorite books are ones by Larry McMurtry. He can describe people better than most other authors. I have a better understanding of how he does that now that I've read this book. The honesty that Larry uses in describing his own life is startling. I'm going to look up Walter Benjamin now, I'm intrigued with the storyteller quotation.

For those that aren't familiar with Larry McMurtry's body of work, this book will seem to be a stand-alone effort. But, in reality, it is truly a sequel to his first book of essays - "In A Narrow Grave: Essays On Texas" (1968). If one hasn't read "Narrow Grave", it should probably be read first (or re-read if one hasn't recently). As far as storytellers go (the tie-in to "Walter Benjamin At The DQ"), McMurtry is certainly the last gifted storyteller concerning the Texas from the 1880's through this century. This new book is, I suspect, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the experiences of his dozens of now-deceased family members that he could set down either as straight history or as material for a definitive character (perhaps the "biography" of Sam the Lion prior to "The Last Picture Show"). Regardless, the things learned about McMurtry's own life are both endearing and entertaining. After reading the books, one should visit both Archer County and Archer City to try and soak up some of the elements that are a part of Larry McMurtry (and, of course, having a lime Dr Pepper at the DQ shouldn't be missed; neither should a visit to the bookstores where he has rounded up his herds of books - it's quite an experience).

McMurtry has proven himself and his talent time after time in a long career at the very top of his profession. His homey Americana themes are universal, his catchy, light-hearted prose is regionally charming and his lively plotting certainly has more depth than that of John Steinbeck (and I'm a big Steinbeck fan, by the way). McMurtry's latest, "Walter Benjamin At The Dairy Queen" (subtitled "Reflections at Sixty and Beyond") is the autobiography his legions of fans have been eagerly anticipating for decades. In the summer of 1980, McMurtry sat in a booth at the Dairy Queen on the southern outskirts of Archer City and studied "The Storyteller," Walter Benjamin's classic, in-depth essay on the nature of narrative. With Benjamin's ideas in mind, McMurtry began exploring his own narrative nature. How was it, McMurtry wondered, that a shy young man raised in a desolate, harsh place that had just recently been settled, "...a place where absolutely nothing of any cultural or historical importance had ever happened..." became an accomplished novelist? And a successful one at that? As documented in "Walter Benjamin At The Dairy Queen," McMurtry's search for answers to this and similar questions over the nearly 20 years since beginning his journey of self-discovery is truly remarkable. Spread generously among the provable academic facts, are some of the most revealing life details of this most private of word masters. For instance, even though he virtually grew up in the saddle, riding herd on a hard-working, dry land cattle ranch, McMurtry never considered himself a cowboy; and never wanted to. Instead, he yearned for nothing more strenuous or complicated than owning good books. In fact, McMurtry took up writing only because of his life-long love of reading. When his cousin went off to WWII, little six-year-old Larry became the delighted recipient of a box of paperback novels. Those nineteen volumes of pulp fiction lit a fire in the country boy's young soul. Almost fifty years later, McMurtry is one of the largest dealers in collectible and out-of-print books in the country, if not the biggest. But it was tough going at first. Through his high school and college years, McMurtry's voracious appetite for books only grew and grew. For a time during his poverty-stricken undergraduate days, he even occupied my literary review desk with the Wichita Falls TIMES and RECORD NEWS because of the steady supply of expensive new books that still come free with the byline. "...all I remember," he writes of those days, "is the thrill of opening the packages of books when they came, seeing what wonders had been cast up on my doorstep. " "Walter Benjamin At The Dairy Queen" is an unforgettable life's story that's as hard to put aside as it is easy to read. Sprinkled with family photos, anecdotes and lessons learned on his rise to the very pinnacle of the wordsmiths' vocation, this one is an all-too-short treasure trove of