McMurtry once wrote that musicians love this book - James Taylor had the film rights - and it's not hard to see why with its artistic hero who is a down to earh Texan and keeps encountering women he wants to bed but also loves and somehow makes a mess of it. He marries one and wants to marry a bunch of others. There's the girl from Terms of Endearment (the McMurtry universe!), a hot one good at sex (who he marries and impregnates and who is the least complex), a neurotic mess in Hollywood who works as a cartoonist, a horny tennis playing housewife, a Mexican prostitute. The novel feels as though it builds to the lead dying but McMurtry says that isn't the case and he wrote a sequel with the character. I wonder how autobiographical this is - I assume a lot.
The world is a little like Don's Party - a conservative society starting to swing, heavy drinking, people getting married young but the marriages being open, lechy academics.
Some of the language hasn't aged too well and McMurtry's hero is a little rough with his hands but the book does work. Interior in the best way, very strongly felt. The scene where Danny and a mate are attacked by cops is brutally excellent. Fun sketch of Hollywood and the book worlds. I loved the guy who is always writing scripts about the Seventh Cavalry.
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