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Episode 365: 'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry
00:36:31
John J. Miller is joined by Dedra Birzer of Hillsdale College to discuss Larry McMurtry's 'Lonesome Dove.'
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Deidre Berzer
Foreign.
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John J. Miller
Welcome to the Great Books Podcast. Today we'll talk about Lonesome dove by Larry McMurtry. I'm your host, John J. Miller of National Review, and you're listening to a production of National Review. Our guest is Deidre Berzer, who teaches history at Hillsdale College. She's also press director and editor in chief of the South Dakota Historical Society Press. She she's podcasted with us many times. Previously on Everything from the Virginian by Owen Wister and My Antonia by Willa Cather to most recently, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. She joins us in the studio as we record from Hillsdale College's campus radio station, WRFH in Michigan. DEIDRA welcome back to the Great Books Podcast.
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Deidre Berzer
Thanks, John. I love being here talking about great books.
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John J. Miller
Why is Lonesome dove by Larry McMurtry a great book?
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Deidre Berzer
I'm going to make the case that it is an epic. It's a Western epic in the spirit of Owen Wister and all of the great Western epics.
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John J. Miller
Since we're going to talk about whether this is an epic, what's a Western? Who are the characters? What's the story? This is a big, big book. We're going to try and break it down as best we can. Deidre I want to just jump right into the very first paragraph of this story. It feels like the opening of a of a really good yarn. So here's here's the line from chapter one, quote When Augustus came out on the porch, the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake, not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug of war with it, and rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck and the shoat had the tail, unquote. That feels like a great start to a story. It also feels kind of like a metaphor. Dee what's going on here?
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Deidre Berzer
I think it's a great metaphor for one of the major themes of the book, which is these two ex Texas Rangers. Woodrow Call pretty much just called Call throughout the book. And Augustus McCrae, known as Gus, pretty much through the book, made the country safe from things like rattlesnakes. I mean, not literally rattlesnakes, but the kind of varmin criminal element that the Rangers were put together to get rid of. And so they kind of sanitized Texas in the way that made pigs and the people who bring the pigs in, the settlers, able to do that and to colonize, to set up Towns. And so you domesticated animals, these pigs eating the rattlesnake, which is such a symbol for the wildness of South Texas.
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John J. Miller
Our story does start in a Texas border town called Lonesome Dove. What's the meaning of that name? What is this place like?
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Deidre Berzer
Well, I can talk a little bit here about the author, Larry McMurtry, and his intentions. So we know that from his various writings about this book that that sentence that you just read, John came to him in 1975 and he wrote it down. He thought, well, this is inspiration or whatever. And then he put it aside and worked on some other projects. And then happenstance, saw a bus that had Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, old broken down bus on the side. And I think, if I remember correctly, was in the Dallas area. And it just hit him that that was the next piece of inspiration he needed for that, for the book. It was about 10 years after he'd written that first sentence, and then off he went. So Lonesome Dove is this border town, very small, kind of has been town. It used to have multiple saloons. Now it just has one. And it has, you know, just barely what it needs to be a town. And that's where the Hat Creek Cattle Company, run by Gus and Call, have set up shop.
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John J. Miller
So Lonesome Dove is a fictional place, but it feels like a real Texas border town also. When does this take place? I think the 1870s or thereabouts. And we're in the Wild West, I guess. Dietra, how wild was the West? How wild was Texas and the rest of it in the 1870s?
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Deidre Berzer
The book talks a lot about the work that Gus and Call did, clearing out Comanches as much as they could. And so that's pretty much finished work at this point. They'd been doing it for 30 years. They started in the 1840s. Mexican bandits, they talk about they get their stock from across the border, right? So they freely cross the Rio Grande to round up cattle, horses. And then the Mexican hacienda owners, ranchers do the same across into Texas. So they kind of go back and forth, stealing each other's cattle. So it's not a big threat to settlement like it had been in their days of being Rangers. So Texas at this point is pretty much done with Indian wars, but the rest of the west, in the 1870s, it is prime Indian war time in Arizona with Geronimo, up through Nebraska and the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana with Lakota and Cheyenne, various groups.
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John J. Miller
And we're gonna see some of that in the epic story, this adventure that they Go on. Just a couple more contextual questions, then. Colin, Gus, are two main characters are Texas Rangers, or they were Texas Rangers at least. What's a Texas Ranger besides a baseball player? What. What is an actual Texas Ranger?
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Deidre Berzer
So I think militia group is the best way to explain it outside of regular military channels created during the Texas period in which it was its own independent country. And so they just continued and continue to this day. And they were, for all intents and purposes, like a National Guard, kind of a law enforcement. Yeah, law enforcement agency, kind of like your marshals, in a sense. But they were considered captains, you know, these two leaders in a military sort of sense.
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John J. Miller
So, Colin, Gus, were Texas Rangers. They find themselves in Lonesome Dove, this Texas border town. They're looking for something to do, at least it feels that way. Right.
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Deidre Berzer
So they run a cattle company, but mostly they're just doing things like fixing the barn, digging a well, kind of make work that needs to be done, but that's what they're doing. So they haven't been doing the Rangering for a good 20 years at this point.
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John J. Miller
And there's a kind of restlessness.
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Deidre Berzer
Yeah, there's a restlessness, definitely.
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John J. Miller
So they're gonna go on a cattle drive. This is. This is. How. How does that come about, then? What is a cattle drive? I. I know about it from, you know, having watched Western movies and so forth, but. But as a. As a. As an economic activity, as a. As a social and cultural force. What's a cattle drive?
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Deidre Berzer
This is the heyday of cattle drives. And basically what they're doing is taking the cattle from their source, in this case either side of the Rio Grande, and moving them on foot to the nearest railhead so that the cattle then are packed onto the rail cars and then shipped, usually to Chicago, but It could be St. Louis, other places, to customers, to customers east, or they're taking the cattle to military outposts. And some of those military outposts are near reservations. And so that's the cattle ration or some of the food rations that are going to the reservations.
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John J. Miller
So ultimately, this is about food production. Supply chain.
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Deidre Berzer
Yes, it's a supply chain and distribution.
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John J. Miller
Right. And all of that, These guys are going to go on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.
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Deidre Berzer
Yes.
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John J. Miller
Which is a long ways away. Why that destination?
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Deidre Berzer
So one of their fellow rangers named Jake Spoon shows up. They haven't seen him for a decade, and he's been all over, including Montana. And he tells them that that is cattle country. That is God's cattle country. And they would just do so well, if they took cattle up there, there weren't any ranches yet. This is late 1870s and so they could be the first cattle ranchers up in Montana. This suggestion wasn't really meant to be acted upon when Jake mentioned it, but Kahl takes it as maybe kind of the inspiration he's been waiting for. Or this almost a kick in the seat of the pants. This is the adventure. And they had had so many years of adventures at Rangers, and then just the biggest adventure of their days at Lonesome Dove is watching the pigs eat the rattlesnakes or go into the bar in the saloon. So this rejuvenates Call.
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John J. Miller
Call of Adventure, in a sense. Let's talk about these two characters a little bit more. Call and Gus, the main character. So many characters in this book. Lots of. There's a plot, there are subplots. It can be a kind of. It's not hard to follow, but it can be a kind of complicated story. And I don't even want to begin to try and get into some of those details. But center of it are these two characters, Call and Gus. Captain Woodrow F. Call. Who is this guy? What's he like?
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Deidre Berzer
So in Memoirs, the author Larry McMurtry says call is a stoic. And I think you can see that in his character. He's a man of few words. He's a man who always does the thing that he thinks is right. No matter how painful it might be. He always wants to be right. He is a workaholic. He never stops working and he doesn't understand people who don't work all the time. He has a hard time with that. And his best friend, you know, they've been partners in Texas Rangering. The partners in the Hat Creek Company is Gus. And he's the opposite.
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John J. Miller
Gus is a little bit different. Right. So this is Augustus Gus McRae.
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Deidre Berzer
Yes.
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John J. Miller
You know, whereas. Whereas Call is, you know, it's all about discipline, duty, honor, that type of thing. With this guy, Gus is a little different. He's. I don't know if I want to call him lazy. He's certainly charismatic. There is bravery there with this guy. But anyway, who is Gus?
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Deidre Berzer
So Gus. He is, I want to say the humor part in the book, he's just funny, the things he says. But he's, in a way, everyone's conscience in that he says what people think or what they could think, maybe they aren't thinking. He loves to talk and he talks non stop and he loves conversation. He doesn't get much conversation with Carl and So he basically starts an argument, or has the very same argument with Kahl almost every day and starts to push Carl's buttons any way he can because he just values that interaction with people. And that's how he deals with relationships, is having conversation. And so he goes to the saloon to have conversation. Also to plague games or play cards, I should say, but to visit the.
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John J. Miller
Special ladies there McMurtry calls a stoic, as you say. Does he also call Gus an epicurean?
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Deidre Berzer
Yes, he does. And Gus likes his whiskey, although call will drink as well. But Gus has his pattern of behavior, we'll say, where mostly he is hanging out on the porch of the house, if you want to call it that, and Lonesome Dove and drinking out of his jug of whiskey and making comments about everything and everybody.
- [12:21]
John J. Miller
So they're going to go on this cattle drive. There are several motivations here. One is the economic business opportunity you mentioned. The other is a kind of sense of adventure thing to do with Gus. There's also a woman involved, right? That's part of his motive.
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Deidre Berzer
Eventually. Yes. Yes. And he knows that they're going to get to Nebraska where the love of his life, Clara, lives. And he had proposed marriage to her. He was married to his second wife at the time, but she said no in favor of marrying a horse trader named Bob. And they ended up in Ogallala, Nebraska, where they have this big horse farm. And so Gus thinks, okay, I can visit Clara. And he had promised her that he would do so. And it has been 15 years and they have not been in touch at all. And so he carries this torch for her as the one woman that would have been right for him.
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John J. Miller
And so eventually they are going to meet. But a lot happens on.
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Deidre Berzer
A lot happens.
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John J. Miller
Yeah. With this cattle drive, I should say. This is a big book, isn't it? I mean, we've used the word epic here. It's as long as you'd expect to be. You know, my copy of the book is 843 pages. I don't know about yours and variations. It long book. Is it intimidating that it's this long, or is it just a completely absorbing story?
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Deidre Berzer
It's an absorbing story. So you just keep going. And then when you get to the end, you're like, well, I'm not ready for it to be done yet.
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John J. Miller
My sense is that sometimes you're at the end of the book of a book, and you can't wait for it to be over. Even a book you've liked, you're kind of glad when it's done. A lot of readers when they read Lonesome Dove, it's long, but they actually don't want to tend. They wish it could go on and on.
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Deidre Berzer
And also because it doesn't make little neat bows with all of the characters.
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John J. Miller
At the end, it's a messy book. Right? There's humor, there's tragedy, there's life, there's death, there's everything packed into.
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Deidre Berzer
Right. I think in the whole. I don't know if McMurtry as author intended this, but I think you can take that Lonesome Dove title and apply it to so many different aspects of the book.
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John J. Miller
So explain that. I mean, Lonesome Dove is a setting, it's a place, it's the place, It's a fictional place, but it's a Texas border town. What else does that. And it's a curious name for a town, but what else does that title mean? Lonesome Dove.
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Deidre Berzer
So I think it has to do with the characters. So many of them, they're lonely and this location, like they've been left all behind. Right. They're the Lonesome duff. So that's one of the reasons why Call responds so positively to this idea of heading to Montana to give them a purpose, to get them out of that kind of that rut of being the lonesome doves. McMurtry says that he intended the Lonesome Dove to be Newt. Newt is a 17 year old boy whose mother was a prostitute and his father is probably. But Call has never admitted that. And so this is the crux of conflicts within Call because Gus is always pushing him on this and then Clara really pushes him on this when they all make it to Nebraska and back and forth a couple of times. And he just can't bring himself to admit that this boy is his. Although anybody who sees him sees the similarities. And it's never occurred to Newt, though that would be his wildest dream come true. The Call would be his father. But then Gus kind of tells him on purpose and starts him to think about this. And then he just hopes that someday Kaal can bring himself to take in his son, right? Take him in as his son. And he intends to do it. And the words just aren't there.
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John J. Miller
And so among the many complexities of this book, we have a kind of father son relationship here. Although. Although there's not the. At least early on, certainly not the open acknowledgement of that relationship.
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Deidre Berzer
So I think that's. Maybe that's what McMurtry thinks is the crux of the book, of the Lonesome Dove part. But Many of us over the years thought it was about Lorena. So Laurina is a prostitute, the one and only, in Lonesome Dove. And it's a very tragic story, as in probably every prostitute who's a main character in a Western. The tragic story of how they got there and had no other choice. And she's beautiful, and all of the cowboys just dream about her. And Gus is a special friend, and he indeed has to rescue her from some really bad folks who kidnapped her as they're heading up to Montana. And then she becomes very attached to Gus because he is her rescuer. But she does kind of fit that Lonesome Dove ideal. If you're just saying those words, it seems like it's her. And so I think probably many people who read the book think that she's the center and that's what Lonesome Dove is referring to. So it could go in a lot of different ways.
- [17:57]
John J. Miller
So this cattle drive, you've already given us a sense of all the things that happen on the way. This is not merely just, you know, herding a bunch of cattle north. There are, you know, that's an adventure in itself, but there are all these side adventures. There are. There are bandits, there are Indian encounters, There's. There's violence. There are these. These tangents and subplots and all these other stories along the way. One of the interesting characters, by my lights, is called Blue Duck. He's an Indian, kind of an antagonist to the group. Who is this character? How does he work his way into the story?
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Deidre Berzer
He's actually a real historical person. And so while the Comanches had been pretty much defeated in Texas and the Kiowa, there are still renegades. They are called in the book, out there doing all kinds of very bad things like murder, rape, pillage, you name it. And Blue Duck is the worst of them. And he was someone that Call and Gus had tried to bring in as rangers and had not been able to. And of course, he comes back to haunt them, and he knows who they are. They cross his path. Gus didn't quite realize who he was when he saw him. And he could have killed him, but he didn't. And then Blue Duck is the one who does kidnap Lorena. And so we see Blue Duck showing up from time to time throughout the book. And then at the end, he is finally captured in Colorado, not by Gus or Call or any of our main characters, but Call is there to see him hang.
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John J. Miller
Kaal visits him in a jail cell. They have to have a kind of final meeting.
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Deidre Berzer
Yes. What happens There it's kind of a meeting of. Almost like it's a reunion. I'll say it's a reunion, like bringing back in a. Because of what Call's been doing when he gets to Colorado and he's on kind of the back end of this journey. And Blue Duck kind of needles him even in this moment when he's about to be hung. He's got all kinds of chains, like there's no way he's going to escape. But he really needles Colin like, you didn't get me. And, you know, I did all of these things, and you're not going to get me now. And I know how to fly because he says something. Call says something to the effect of, unless you can fly, there's no way you're going to escape. And he says, oh, I do know how to fly. An old woman taught me. And then, you know, they take him. They have. I can't even picture this. On top of this courthouse is a gallows. And on their way up there, he blew Duck pulls the deputy who had arrested him out with him and goes flying out of the plate glass, and they both die as they hit the ground.
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John J. Miller
So he flies, but he flops. And actually. But this is his end. It's a dramatic end. Yes.
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Deidre Berzer
And right before he does that, he catches Call's eye and he looks at him. And that is haunting to Call.
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John J. Miller
One of the themes of Lonesome Dove is civilization versus barbarism and the coming of civilization and how that's a good thing in a lot of ways, although it can make people restless and uncertain and so on, especially the people who are initially doing some of the settling.
- [21:26]
Deidre Berzer
And that actually is an underlying theme of Gus's that he is kind of pointing Call towards. And Call refuses to believe it. But on this cattle drive, we get a lot of that conversation. And some of my favorite passages from the book about how they made this safe, the world safe for bankers or that part of the country safe for bankers.
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John J. Miller
Deidre, that's a really interesting passage. Do you want to. Do you want to read that?
- [21:53]
Deidre Berzer
Yes. So this is when they're on their way. They've left South Texas, heading toward San Antonio, but they're not there yet. And they're talking about, do we know anybody who's even been to Montana besides Jake Spoon? And so there's an Indian they knew named Black Beaver. And that's how they start. So Black Beaver claimed to have been all the way from the Columbia to the Rio Grande. Call said, that's knowing the country. I'D say, well, he was an Indian. Augustus said he didn't have to go along establishing law and order and making it safe for bankers and Sunday school teachers like we done. I guess that's why you're ready to head off to Montana. You want to help establish a few more banks. That's aggravating, Call said. I ain't no banker. No, but you've done many a banker a good turn. Augustus said. That's what we done. You know, kilt them durn Indians so they wouldn't bother the bankers. They bothered more than bankers, Call said. Yes, Lawyers and doctors and newspapermen and drummers of every description, Augustus said. Not to mention women and children, Call said. Not to mention plain settlers. Why, women and children and settlers are just cannon fodder for lawyers and bankers, Augustus said. They're part of the scheme. After the Indians wipe out enough of them, you get your public outcry and we go chase the Indians out of the way. If they keep coming back, then the army takes over and chases them worse. Finally, the army will manage to whip them down to where they can be squeezed onto some reservation so the lawyers and bankers can come in and get civilization started. Every bank in Texas ought to pay us a commission for the work we done.
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John J. Miller
So interpret that for us, right? That's. First of all, it's a great bit of dialogue, but interpret that for us. I mean, my attitude is like, we want a world that's safe for bankers, right? But these guys, they sort of recognize that on the one hand. On the other hand, they're not satisfied with this result.
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Deidre Berzer
Well, later on, Augustus says that they killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with. This is a theme that gets picked up in a lot of John Ford Western movies especially, too, that the people that created the foundations of civilization in the west, that made it safe for civilization, can't fit into that. They're outliers. They're not really part of that settlement. And they can't be, because they're too rough around the edges for that. And so we have a scene in San Antonio where they go to this bar that they had been in all the time. In fact, their pictures are up on the wall illustrating the deeds that they had done that made San Antonio safe. And things have changed so much towards settlement that not only are they not recognized at all, they're disrespected as a bunch of old cattle boys.
- [24:33]
John J. Miller
This paradox is at the heart of so many of the great Westerns. As you mentioned, John Ford movies. And so on. I'm glad you brought up movies, because this book, Lonesome Dove, is caught up. Its legacy is caught up with a TV miniseries. Yes. And Larry McMurtry, born 1936, died 2021. So a recent death. Recent. Ish. Lonesome Dove is a 1985 book. There was a TV miniseries in 1989 starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones. It was really popular when it came out. Is it. And then how does the TV show, how does that enhance or detract or connect with the novel itself?
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Deidre Berzer
So in an interesting twist to writing this novel, it started as a screenplay.
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John J. Miller
Oh, and Larry McMurtry, we should say, prolific novelist, but also a Hollywood writer for much of his life.
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Deidre Berzer
Yes. So it started as a screenplay that McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich wrote together. And then the book. And then hot on the heels of the book, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, is the miniseries, and it very well cast. So we've got Robert Duvall playing Gus and Tommy Lee Jones playing Woodrow Call and Angelica Houston plays Clara. You know, it's a great cast, and it is a masterpiece of a miniseries. And a lot of people watched it. I mean, enormous numbers of people watched it when it first aired in 1989. And a lot of the people who will say they love Lonesome Dove have tried to pick up the novel, but I think they're just so entranced with the miniseries. They have a hard time with the novel, which I think is a very interesting phenomenon.
- [26:27]
John J. Miller
But the novel itself, we think, is a great work of literature, right?
- [26:31]
Deidre Berzer
Yes. I'm going to say, okay, they're both great and they're both genres, so do them both. If you haven't read the book, watch the miniseries. But I do think the casting was excellent in the miniseries.
- [26:43]
John J. Miller
Now, let's take our story, as we start to wrap up our story of Lonesome Dove. They do make it to Montana.
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Deidre Berzer
They do.
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John J. Miller
An awful lot happens on the way.
- [26:52]
Deidre Berzer
A lot of death along the way. A lot.
- [26:54]
John J. Miller
An awful lot happens. But then there is a return journey, and there's a crucial event that happens. Deidre, what is that? What happens? What dominates this return journey to Texas?
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Deidre Berzer
So they get to Montana, and it is glorious and they just keep going. And the cowboys start to wonder, is Call ever going to stop? Are we ever, you know, is he going to keep going into Montana or into Canada, all the way across? And he had been told about the Milk River. So in his head, you know, they're going to cross the Yellowstone and they're going to Cross the Milk river, and then maybe they'll. They'll check things out. So he sends Gus and another one of the cowboys who was a ranger, had been with them all that time. They call him PI. And so they range on ahead, trying to see if there's a good area to establish their ranch in. And Gus likes to kind of ride up on hills and look over. And he did that and didn't take the precautions that he knew he should take. And he ended up riding right into a band of about 20 lakota. And arrows start flying and gunshots start flying. And so he and P have to kind of hold out against this bunch. But he's already been shot in the leg with an arrow. And they are very far days rides from anywhere and anyone. So by the time help is able to get to Gus, it's too late. So one leg is done.
- [28:33]
John J. Miller
Gus is mortally.
- [28:34]
Deidre Berzer
Gus is mortally wounded.
- [28:35]
John J. Miller
He's morally wounded.
- [28:36]
Deidre Berzer
He's mortally wounded. That's a nice way to put it.
- [28:37]
John J. Miller
Yeah. And Call makes him a promise.
- [28:41]
Deidre Berzer
Yes. So he makes Call promise him that he will take Gus dead body back to Texas for burial.
- [28:49]
John J. Miller
And so Gus dies. Sorry, spoiler alert.
- [28:53]
Deidre Berzer
Maybe I should have said that.
- [28:54]
John J. Miller
But, you know, Gus dies, and we have this return journey where Call feels this obligation to take this corpse all the way back to Texas. I mean, you know, why not just bury him where he died? Which I think is probably what most people would do.
- [29:11]
Deidre Berzer
Yes. And Call has so many people making comments like that to him all the way down. But he makes a promise. And this is part of his stoicism, is you keep your promises, even if you think it's stupid. And it's probably going to. If it doesn't kill you, it's definitely going to take years off your life.
- [29:32]
John J. Miller
And there's something really powerful about this. We think of the burial of the dead as a corporal work of mercy. It's an ancient theme in literature. How do you treat the dead? It's Antigone and Sophocles. And last fall we did a great books podcast on As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, where traveling with a body is really a big event in the book. And this is an important thing for Call to do. And it just dominates sort of the back end of this book.
- [29:59]
Deidre Berzer
And it really speaks beautifully to their friendship. You know, that. And Gus, it's not just anywhere in Texas. He wants to be buried in the place that the most significant part of his relationship with Clara happened. And he always called it Clara's Orchard. It's a Place where they went for picnics. And that's where he wants to be buried. So that's what Call does.
- [30:24]
John J. Miller
So how does the book end? Very briefly, are we back in Lonesome Dove? At the very end of the book.
- [30:28]
Deidre Berzer
We are back in Lonesome Dove. Because once. Once Call manages to bury Gus and it's probably 150, 200 miles at least to Lonesome Dove. From this spot, Call doesn't know what to do with himself. Here he is again, without a purpose. And when Gus makes him promise that, he says, I'm doing you a favor. And basically, I think he doesn't come out and say it, but he was giving Call a purpose. Now he's back. Now he goes back to. He doesn't know what else to do. He goes back to Lonesome Dove.
- [31:03]
John J. Miller
And now, in so many ways, we're back where we started.
- [31:05]
Deidre Berzer
Yes.
- [31:06]
John J. Miller
And we should say, again, I want to emphasize this is an epic, sweeping book we've skipped over so far.
- [31:11]
Deidre Berzer
We've skipped a lot of parts.
- [31:13]
John J. Miller
Right. And good parts and interesting parts that keep this book alive and engaging for reason. I mean, just give Deidre a sense how sprawling and sweeping is this book.
- [31:26]
Deidre Berzer
That's why we call it epic, because it is sprawling and sweeping. I mean, it goes. There are parts in Fort Smith, Arkansas. There are parts in Colorado. We're on the Rio Grande. So border of Texas with Mexico, all the way up almost to the Canadian border. And you really get a great history lesson because a lot of it is historically based about 1870s American west and the changing America. Yeah. Things that are changing. Right. And that. Colin, Gus, they're taking kind of this last adventure, but they know what it is. That's part of their rush to get to Montana, is to get there before all the other cattle barons do. To get somewhere that's not settled up, where they didn't make it safe for bankers just to kind of. It was almost a last hurrah in so many ways, which is why I kind of think this. They take Lonesome Dove with them like they are. Lonesome Dove, it's the name of the town on the border. But it's an attitude, in a sense, or maybe a way of being, that in some ways they want to escape by going to Montana, but in other ways, they bring with them.
- [32:37]
John J. Miller
How did you discover this book as a reader? Did you watch the TV miniseries first?
- [32:43]
Deidre Berzer
I did. I saw the miniseries first.
- [32:45]
John J. Miller
What's your story? What was your way in?
- [32:47]
Deidre Berzer
I loved the miniseries, but I picked up the book in graduate school. I was Taking a course on Western American popular culture. And I incorporated it into my seminar paper. And my professor that semester had such a love for the Lonesome Dove story. He named his daughter Lorena.
- [33:10]
John J. Miller
Wow. After a prostitute.
- [33:13]
Deidre Berzer
She's more than that. She's a lot more than that.
- [33:15]
John J. Miller
Exactly.
- [33:16]
Deidre Berzer
Yes. And. But it's a book that's so well loved. It was one of Ronald Reagan's favorite books. It's on the shelf at the Reagan Ranch.
- [33:23]
John J. Miller
I've been to the Reagan Ranch. I know when you go there, there's a bookshelf full of books, and these are actually the actual copies of books that Reagan read. There's Witness by Whitaker Chambers, all the stuff you might expect. But I did not know Lonesome Dove was there. What does that tell us about Reagan?
- [33:39]
Deidre Berzer
Reagan, in many ways, was a Westerner. They did call him the cowboy president, But I think that he appreciated that, that Western sweep in understanding. He loved epics. Right. I mean, he's an actor. Right. He loved a good story, and he loved telling stories. And so I think that all of those things appealed to him. About this book.
- [33:59]
John J. Miller
Reagan, of course, is long gone. Larry McMurtry died several years ago. Lonesome Dove is a book from the 1980s, really, from another generation. Dee, one more question. What is the case for reading this book today? Does it speak to us now in a certain way?
- [34:14]
Deidre Berzer
I think if you're a person who appreciates a really good, complicated story with a lot of characters in that sense of getting to the end of an era, this is the book for you. Also, I think it's a cultural touchstone in a lot of ways, because so many people, even if they didn't read it, they watched it. It did win the Pulitzer Prize in 1986. So that gives it merit right there, but tells a story. A story, maybe, I want to say, actually timeless. You know, the relationship, the friendship, the working partnership that Gus and Call share is the center of the book in so many ways. And they're such different men, but they bring out the best in each other in a lot of ways. And they don't let each other get by with anything. That's seen in the way that Gus is constantly trying to get Call to acknowledge Newt as his son and acknowledge. And at the end, when Gus is dead, one of the places Call stops with the coffin is Clara's horse ranch in Ogalalla, Nebraska. And Clara really lays into him. She thinks that he should bury Gus there and go back to his son. You stay with the living, not with the dead. The dead don't know what you've done. And he keeps saying, but I made a promise. I made him a promise. And she said, the reason I would not marry Gus is because I didn't want to have to deal with you all the time. Like you and Gus are more of a relationship that I would be fighting against all the time. And I think, you know, it's one of these really famous literary friendships that's iconic, and I think that alone gives the book just such a wonderful center and it reverberates throughout literary history.
- [36:03]
John J. Miller
Deidre Berger, thanks so much for joining us and telling us all about Lonesome dove by Larry McMurtry.
- [36:09]
Deidre Berzer
You bet I would do this anytime.
- [36:11]
John J. Miller
You'Ve just listened to the Great Books Podcast, a production of National Review. Please subscribe to the Great Books Podcast and leave reviews of the show that helps us keep this podcast going. Please send me your ideas for future episodes. You can reach me through my website@heymiller.com on Twitter. My handle is heymiller. Last of all, special thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week with a new episode of the Great Books Podcast.