Review of Boone’s Lick by Larry McMurtry (©2000; copy reviewed: first Scribner paperback edition, 2001)
by
The Disgruntled Graduate Student
Larry McMurtry is one of those “fringe” authors in the halls of academia. He isn’t generally considered part of the American Literary Canon, those mostly dead, mostly white, mostly male “great authors” who are studied regularly. With the advent of pop culture studies and the deconstruction of the traditional canon in favor of a more inclusive idea of great literature, authors like McMurtry have benefited somewhat. But I didn’t read Boone’s Lick for any class or in order to write an article. I read it because I like Larry McMurtry books, not necessarily because I want to call them “great literature” but because they’re so much fun (and yes, I know the two concepts aren’t always binary opposites).
All that being said, Boone’s Lick isn’t one of his best.
I really wanted to love this book. Though I dig Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show and Texasville, I have a particular fondness for McMurtry’s historical westerns. Lonesome Dove is one of the best novels I’ve ever read, period. And the other novels that focus on the same characters are, while not as strong, still good reads.
Boone’s Lick does not focus on the same set of characters. This novel tells the story of the Cecil clan: Mary Margaret, strong-willed matriarch in the tradition of McMurtry staple Aurora Greenway; Uncle Seth, Mary Margaret’s brother-in-law, a former Union soldier and all-around laid-back tough guy; Sherman “Shay” Cecil, our narrator, a teenager who has never been far away from his hometown of Boone’s Lick, Missouri; G.T., Shay’s younger, hot-headed brother who fears bears, storms, and being wrong; Neva, Shay’s younger sister, an Annie Oakley type; and Grandpa Crackenthorpe, Mary Margaret’s father.
Like Lonesome Dove, Boone’s Lick is structured around a journey. In this case, the journey is to the northwest United States. Mary Margaret has grown tired of her husband Dick’s wandering ways. A woodcutter by trade, Dick only comes home once every year or two, and that for only a couple of days, just long enough to make another baby. Then he’s gone again, and Mary Margaret has determined that his wanderlust is perhaps fed by desires of other kinds. She suspects that Cecil knows more than he’s telling, so she decides to find out for herself.
One problem with this novel is its brevity. Whereas Lonesome Dove’s cross-country journey unspooled over a thousand pages or so, McMurtry here attempts to chronicle a similar journey in only 287. The result is a novel of moments, rather than a developed narrative. While I concede it’s possible for such an episodic narrative to work, it really doesn’t here; we’re rushed from one happening to the next without being given time or reason to care.
Another problem is the sheer number of characters we encounter in this short novel. Along with the rather large family noted above, we also run across historical figures like Wild Bill Hickock, who disappears a third of the way through the book and seems to have been here for no other reason than to seem cool, and Colonel Fetterman, who (both in history and in this novel) led his men to massacre. His purpose here is also rather mysterious; perhaps his incompetence is meant to contrast with Seth’s know-how or Mary Margaret’s liberal view of Native Americans.
But even that isn’t enough for McMurtry. We must contend with the usual gaggle of supporting characters as well: Father Villy, an old priest who appears about the time Hickock leaves and disappears just as suddenly in the west; Charlie Seven Days, a Native American who does little but stereotypical “Indian things,” like tracking, hunting, and using the monosyllable as his utterance of choice; various thieves and ne’er-do-wells and Sheriff Baldy Stone, whose initial conflict provides a reason for us to meet the characters but little else; and Rosie McGee, Mary Margaret’s sister. Rosie is the town whore, apparently estranged from her family for reasons we know not; she allegedly has some sort of relationship with Seth, but we never find out what it is.
Then there’s the anti-climactic confrontation between Mary Margaret and Dick. Mary Margaret has long suspected that Dick has other women along the trails; this suspicion is borne out, perhaps moreso than even Mary Margaret has suspected, and one hopes for a payoff of equal moment. But what happens is a disappointment. Shay’s response is basically, “Is that all? We came all this way for that?” The reader echoes the sentiments.
Boone’s Lick is a fun read; McMurtry provides his usual snappy, humorous dialogue and the odd situations that probably could never have happened but should have anyway. And some of the characters we meet are fun and intriguing—Seth, Neva, Mary Margaret, Father Villy, even Dick, who lasts only twenty or thirty pages. The problem all comes back to the brevity: just as we come to like a character, he or she ducks out of the narrative, as if they suddenly remembered an appointment in a stronger story.
Read this novel over a weekend, perhaps when planning your next family barbecue. It’s a fine appetizer, but you’ll almost certainly want something meatier for your main course.