I thought that being a cultural “fish out of water” as a reader in a small West Texas town without a library would make him self-conscious or bitter when looking back. For some reason I thought he was a bit of a curmudgeon. What surprised me the most in this book is the affection McMurtry has for so many things – his childhood, his family, reading, and of course for books themselves. McMurtry is a patron author of lost causes – the West, cowboys, independent second-hand booksellers, small towns. Even if staying on them doesn’t make any sense. They’re about big spaces and the people resolved to stay on them. As he shares here, most of his books are probably about Archer City. That’s Larry McMurtry’s hometown, as well as the subject of his book The Last Picture Show. The cover photo, though, is the Dairy Queen in Archer City, Texas. A DQ can be a cultural hub in a rural area. Now I take my own kids there now when passing through. I used to go there as a teenager when driving to college. That DQ photo reminds me of the Dairy Queen I’d often stop at in Goldthwaite, Texas, at the intersection of Highway 183 and 16. I have great affection for everything about this book: the Dairy Queen cover photo, the West Texas rumination, the author’s cherishing of books and words.
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