Lonesome Dove

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Lonesome Dove miniseries. In honor, I read the novel, finally available on the kindle! and really enjoyed it.

McMurty’s strength in writing is his characters – you read on because you become so invested with the characters that you must know what happens to them. It’s really beautiful.

I was so invested, in fact, that when the novel ended, I was SO sad! I wanted more! I wanted to know how the rest of them lived out their lives!

I also had such mixed feelings about the book because lots of horrible things happened to the characters and, like a Wes Anderson movie, each character was brought to his or her basest form. Honestly, half of me wanted to pick the book right back up and re-read it in the hopes that things turned out a little differently.

Some of the things I noticed (and if I were in an English lit class would write an essay about them):

The female characters were very dominant. Most of them bossed their men around and often emasculated them completely.  I felt the representation of my sex was very homogenous and a little mean… but maybe the women in the old west were just like that… They married for convenience, free labor, and safety, never love. They used their feminine mystique as power over men. And they made completely illogical decisions! (although I’m aware women do that).

There was very little true love in the novel. A few characters loved the idea of a person or respected one another. There was even very little familiar love - the offspring produced among the characters is for free labor, a burden, unwanted, or rejected.

Most of the men lack intelligence, are scared of women, have irrational fears, and make you wonder how they’ve survived in the frontier this long.

While all these character flaws gave me mixed feelings as a reader, it was still a wonderful novel! These are flaws that exist throughout mankind are a real part of people’s existence.

The overarching theme throughout the novel comes from the Latin motto Augustus McCrae carved on the livery sign in Lonesome Dove: “Uva uvam vivenda varia fit.”

It’s actually mis-written and in its altered form roughly means, “We are changed by the lives around us.” VERY true theme in the novel! In its good and bad. Throughout each character’s journey, he or she is changed by the other lives.

Lonesome Dove is an epic novel and a truly beautiful work of literary art!