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    The Last Picture Show: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Last Picture Show: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Last Picture Show: A Novel
    Ebook301 pages6 hours

    The Last Picture Show: A Novel

    By Larry McMurtry

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lonesome Dove comes a powerful coming-of-age novel set in the American West. In Thalia, Texas, Larry McMurtry epitomizes small-town America and through characters reintroduced in Texasville and Duane’s Depressed, captures the ecstasy and heartbreak of adolescence.

    The Last Picture Show is one of Larry McMurtry's most memorable novels, and the basis for the enormously popular movie of the same name. Set in a small, dusty, Texas town, The Last Picture Show introduced the characters of Jacy, Duane, and Sonny: teenagers stumbling toward adulthood, discovering the beguiling mysteries of sex and the even more baffling mysteries of love. Populated by a wonderful cast of eccentrics and animated by McMurtry's wry and raucous humor, The Last Picture Show is a wild, heartbreaking, and poignant novel that resonates with the magical passion of youth.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJun 1, 2010
    ISBN9781451606584
    Unavailable
    The Last Picture Show: A Novel
    Author

    Larry McMurtry

    Larry McMurtry is the author of more than thirty novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. He has also written memoirs and essays, and received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on Brokeback Mountain.

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    Reviews for The Last Picture Show

    4/5

    440 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A coming-of-age story about a boy's last year of high school in a dying Texas town.I saw the movie version of this a couple of times before reading the book, and my overall impression was that it was one of the most novelistic movies I'd ever seen. Ironically, I think I liked the movie better than than the book, mainly due to the terrific acting, which brings a lot of depth to these characters. McMurtry's writing style flattens the characters, making it hard for us to really care about them. They are just so beaten down and have so little to look forward to. As with the movie, the character I understand most is Ruth Popper, but I just wish that when she gets angry, she would stay angry. McMurtry is a good writer, and he really does make the bleakness of this pathetic town seem real. It's a good read, but a terribly depressing one, without the power of Lonesome Dove. See the movie, though.Read in 2015 for RandomCAT.
    • 4/5
      I read this for one of my f2f book groups, at at first was not wowed at all. In fact, I complained to Jim that it was too episodic and repetitive. But I was quite pleased as the story went on. Mc Murtry does bring the threads together nicely at the end.It's hard to imagine what it must be like to grow up in a small, small town like that, with few opportunities for privacy, growth, ambition or escape. Yet I know it exists all over, a foreign land right next to my own.
    • 5/5
      I had a hard time putting this one down. Kind of a quick read. Old-school stuff, but still pretty racy at times. Wow!
    • 5/5
      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 book just felt very raw and very real.
    • 4/5
      Coming-of-age story set in a small Texas town in the 60s. If nothing else, it made me glad I grew up somewhere more lively. McMurtry portrays this environment clearly, but not sympathetically. I kept comparing how different these characters might have been if they had grown up in a place with more opportunities. I found the book dreary, somewhat depressing, and not enjoyable to read. On the other hand, there was a sense of honesty that gave me some insight into poor, rural places I otherwise don't see.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting read. The characters are very complex--like real people, actually. It's not so much the events of the book that stick out to me, but how the characters treated each other. I ranged from hating certain characters, to feeling sorry for them, back to hating them.

      I'm not sure that there is any lesson or theme to be learned from this book, but it does take you on a journey that is well worth it.
    • 4/5
      Finally, I got to read what happened to the same set of characters, before my favorite novel, "Dwayne's Depressed". It was very nice to get this background, though it has been a while since it was written, it's set in or around the 50's, and almost a generation before 'D.D'.
      Still, I love McMurtry's style SO much, I will have to read more, and soon. He's refreshingly old fashioned, and very down-to-earth. Small town life is honestly and unflinchingly portrayed, and it was good.
    • 5/5
      I remember returning after a 40 year absence to the small town I grew up in and discovering a smaller, downtown-abandoned town. I guess I channelled this memory when I read this novel set in Thalia, Texas located somewhere in north Texas. Essentially, it is a novel about a group of adolescents growing up in the 1950s aimlessly doing nothing with the exception of the one picture show, one pool hall, or one restaurant grill. McMurty's writing successfully created the mood of growing up in Thalia. The character's personalities and motivations were well drawn. The sexuality and angst of adolescence were richly described in this novel. The novel was dark but an enjoyment to read...and connect to an early life.
    • 4/5
      For those of you that have never read the book but perhaps have seen the movie...you should know that there is 100 miles of differences between the two. The book was published in 1966, five years before the movie was produced. I was amazed that the book is literally filled with surprisingly far more explicit sex than almost any novel that has been written today...55 years later. There are MANY...and I do mean many... scenes in the book that describe sex between the characters in very erotic detail. One of the things that struck me particularly odd about this novel was the lack of romance in the way that McMurtry dealt with all this steamy sex. This is diffidently not a book that everyone will enjoy but I had to give it a 4 star rating for the very nerve of the author to write this at that time.
    • 5/5
      A heartbreaker!
    • 4/5
      Small-town Texas in the 1950s comes alive in Larry McMurtry's words. The small kindnesses, and the small cruelties, are all on display. The book mostly follows along with Sonny and Duane, best friends and silent rivals for the prettiest girl in town, Jacy. It's not much of a rivalry since Jacy is dating Duane - it mostly consists of Sonny longing for her and Duane pretending he doesn't notice.I liked the way such a brief glimpse into the town brought such a varied cast of characters to life. It takes a lot to introduce so many people and make the reader care about all of them, to leave you wanting more but not feeling like anyone got short shrift. It's easy to empathize with Billy, the slow kid who sweeps various businesses and will just keep sweeping his way down the street unless someone stops him. Harder to feel for Lois Farrow, Jacy's mom ... and yet, you do. And at the center of it all is Sonny, with no idea how to get what he wants - and in fact, not much of an idea why he even wants it.
    • 4/5
      I think it would be perfectly fair to say that I do not like role-fulfillment. By that I mean that I do not believe any of us are born into a role that we must fill until the day we die.The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry seems, to me, to explore the issue of the roles people are supposed to play.Each character in the novel is faced with a crux in which they can continue to go on with what is expected of them (whether that role is as a housewife, as a man, as a wealthy teen, as a preacher, etc) or change into something that they no longer recognize as themselves. That I believe is the message of the novel: the roles are arbitrary and only the individual can choose what to do with what is expected of them. The hard part is knowing that one can change who they are and what is expected of them. Otherwise, they continue and continue and continue… In one manner, we see why a unhappy wife of a football coach continues: she feels she had a role to play with her ignoramus husband; and being at the age she is, that is all she can accept, therefore no change can come out of it. But, when a teenage boy comes into her life and loves her body like no man has ever, her role is drastically changed.And role changing is frightening after you’ve lived it for so long and without any exit plan.Another issue that The Last Picture Show deals with is what really goes on in small towns. Often politicians will give us small towns as the American ideal and tell us how little crime they have, how few infidelities occur, and how the moral conscience is usually in the right. McMartry gives the uncensored view of what goes on in small towns and behind those closed doors all delivered in a matter-of-fact way that does not indicated any surprise from the narrator’s ink. The shocks and awes should not do just that: everything is presented as if the readers was the most casual type and would mumble nothing more than, “Of course, of course…I remember when I did that when I was a boy…”Small town America is an illusion. The Last Picture Show is just that: the silvered-screen ideal being torn down to show us what is really going on behind what so many call idyllic and quaint.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoy the way that Larry McMurtry weaves a story. The characters are amazingly real and you can relate in some way to all of them. I am undecided on the ending...I wish something more conclusive would have happened but at the same time I appreciate that life goes on.
    • 5/5
      I'm very late coming to McMurtry. I'm sorry I've waited so long, but on the other hand happy to have a whole lineup of his books still available to be read. I remember, vaguely, seeing the movie when it first came out in the 70s, and I had the young Jeff Bridges in mind throughout my reading, here. But that's fine, as I'd have to say that was a very good piece of casting. At any rate, this is an amazing book about mid-century small town prairie life. Real, and not always admirable, people acting like people really act. Sad but not overly so and in the end infused with an overall kindness and generosity on the part of the author toward his characters. And one amazing turn of phrase after another spices up the writing. Wholly enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      This book covers that major, complex divide between childhood and adulthood. Once we have experienced love, heartbreak, fulfillment, disappointment, birth, and death, that is when life truly begins. These experiences, can leave us temporarily distraught; feeling as if the future holds no promise. Somehow, we cross over and do not remember any other way, nor do we want to. We become content with ourselves and with the education we call, life. At the close of this book, Mc Murtry leaves his three protagonists at the birth of this life-adventure. Endearingly bittersweet.
    • 4/5
      The Last Picture Show follows three teens through their senior year of high school in a desolate Texas town. Sonny, the main character, is passive and sex-starved; Duane, his best friend, is confident and better-looking, but struggling in a relationship with a much wealthier girl; Jacy, Duane's girlfriend, is overshadowed by her wild, glamorous mother and lacks the maturity to deal with her budding sexuality. Each character is vivid and real, earnest enough to make my heart ache but flawed enough to make me uncomfortable. This book, in a way, is about the depravity unleashed by extreme boredom. Each character pursues sex selfishly and recklessly, without a thought to the emotional cost to friends, family or lovers. More importantly, the whole town pursues gossip and scandal with a near-sexual fervor, resulting in acts of social brutality committed against innocent people. Yet these things could easily slip past the notice of an unobservant reader; although they are a prominent part of the book, they are almost eclipsed by the sleepy every day rhythm of small town life. I admired the writer's attention to detailed scenery and people -- even minor characters are three-dimensional and contribute something important to the story. My only complaint: sometimes the writer portrays the boredom small town life a little too well, and I occasionally found myself growing tired of both the setting and the characters. The ending was also just a bit too open-ended; although I like to use my imagination, I do want enough information to build a credible conjecture. The extremely open ending made me feel like the book didn't add up to much, but it was certainly a good ride.
    • 4/5
      A great little novel that was rendered as perfectly into film as anything I've ever seen. The most significant omission was the non-inclusion of the basketball game, which was simultaneously hilarious and ghastly. A straightforward little gem.