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Product Description
Set in Thalia, Texas, the small town that McMurtry literally put on the map when he wrote "The Last Picture Show," "Duane's Depressed" follows those of the characters who have survived into their twilight years. McMurtry brings the Thalia saga to an end with Duane confronting depression in the midst of plenty -- surrounded by his children who all seem to be going through life crises involving sex, drugs, and violence; living with his wife, Karla, who is wrestling with her own demons; and with friends like Sonny, who seem to be dying. This is McMurtry's strongest and most appealing "contemporary" novel since the much acclaimed "Terms of Endearment" -- the work of a powerful, masterful artist, with a deep understanding of the human condition, a profound ability to write sympathetically about small-town life, and perhaps the surest touch of any American novelist for the tangled feelings that bind and separate men and women.
Amazon.com Review
At 62, ever-dependable oil man Duane Moore ditches his pickup and starts walking everywhere--deeply deviant behavior in one-stoplight Thalia, Texas. "It occurred to him one day--not in a flash, but through a process of seepage, a kind of gas leak into his consciousness--that most of his memories, from his first courtship to the lip of old age, involved the cabs of pickups," Larry McMurtry writes. Yet oddly enough, Duane's marriage, four children and nine grandchildren, his career highs and lows, all occurred when he was nowhere near his vehicle. Within days he has moved into his cabin on a hill, reacquired his dog, Shorty the Sixth ("an air of slight guilt was typical of all the Shortys"), and begun to think on these things. Of course, this brings on an additional problem: "He realized that for the first time in his life he had too much time to think; of course he had wanted more time to think, but that was probably because he hadn't realized how tricky thinking could be."
Luckily for readers, Duane's attempts to go off the grid are far from successful. Thus do we have the deep pleasures of his comical and complex encounters with his wife, Karla, and family, not to mention some of Thalia's singular citizens. As ever, McMurtry's dialogue and narration snaps and surprises. He makes his hero's solitude, and his increasing depression, infinitely intriguing. Will Duane's attempts to literally and figuratively cultivate his garden succeed? Will he forge his way through the three volumes of Proust that his attractive new psychiatrist has prescribed in lieu of Prozac? Will the catfish that has found its way into his waterbed survive? Answers to these and many other questions await you in Duane's Depressed, the final book of the marvelous trilogy McMurtry began with The Last Picture Show and Texasville. Let us pray that it turns into a quartet: we need far more of Duane and his family. For a start, his granddaughter Barbi--"a dark midge of a child"--merits a volume of her own. --Kerry Fried
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