Rent: Duane's Depressed : A Novel

This book hit me straight in the heart. I got so wrapped up in this book, that I couldn't put it down. I did not read the first two of the trilogy, I wasn't aware that is was a trilogy when I bought it. It is not that important. The way that Duane was depicted in this book was amazing. I felt as if I really identified with him. I recommend it to anyone whose heart is searching.

This book is a sequel to Texasville which is a sequel to The Last Picture Show. I have read both of the latter books and have seen the movies for each one. One should probably see the two movies before reading the third book in the series. Some characters are the same in all the books and McMurtry mentions other characters in the earlier books that have gone on to other lives and deaths in this latest novel.

I related to this latest one in the series because it is written from Duane's point of view and he is exactly my age for the period of the book. While I am not exactly from the part of Texas where the book is set, I have been through there many times and know the area. Whereas I thought, from the opening lines of the book, that it might somehow deal directly with the issues of sustainability and more simple living, I did not find any of the catch phrases of this movement in the book. There is however, much indirect evidence that McMurtry was thinking along these lines as Duane parked his pickup, hid the keys and started to walk everywhere from then on. Duane's shrink convinced him to get a bicycle, but he was never in a motorized vehicle during this entire book. Seeing the countryside as a pedestrian or a bicyclist brought out the environmentalist in Duane. Reading this book gives one a clue to the challenges that one would have in promoting Sustainability and Simplicity in that part of the world. Issues of family and extended family are dramatized, and while the children and grandchildren are treated in a positive way at the end, in the beginning of the book, the opposite is true.

The book deals with Duane's retirement and his mixed feelings about what he has accomplished in 62 years. I certainly identify with this dilemma. I believe that McMurtry developed some heart problems around the time of his publishing this book and subsequently had successful bypass surgery. In this story, he ironically, perhaps wishfully endows Duane with low blood pressure, low cholesterol and low PSA scores. In a subsequent non-fiction book, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, McMurtry discusses this brush with mortality. He also gives a history of his family in this part of Texas and his growing up in Archer City where he has built a library to house his huge book collection, many of which he discusses in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. If one is looking for a bibliography of books that one "should" read, this is it, in my opinion.

What I like about McMurtry's characters is that most are not criminals, sociopaths and dysfunctionals. Most are just trying to get along in life. True he does cover the colorful characters of the west such a Billy the Kid and Calamity Jane, among others. He uses dialogue very skillfully to tell the stories, especially in the earlier parts of a book. In a couple of books, he seems to have grown weary and resorts to a straight narrative in the latter portions in order to fill in gaps and describe what happens to certain characters.

This is the third volume in the trilogy which includes THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and TEXASVILLE.

Set in Thalia, Texas, once again, Duane Moore, now 62, is beginning to feel his age and mileage. He's tired of the rat race that seems to permeate his life, so he leaves his wife and home and takes up residence in a nearby cabin. He gives up driving and walks (then bicycles) everywhere, sometimes over great distances. He builds a huge garden in which he grows just about every foodstuff imaginable, cares for it religiously 10 hours a day, and gives all the food away to the poor who come for it. He begins going to a psychiatrist in Wichita Falls who tells him to read all of Proust, which he struggles through. (Proust is McMurtry's favorite writer.) Finally, he flies off alone to Egypt.

This novel is a major achievement for McMurtry, a big step up from TEXASVILLE in the trilogy. He is much more focused on his characters, and his insights are more penetrating. Some of the things he has Duane do in his search for redemption and meaning in life are outlandish (as only McMurtry could be), but he pulls them off convincingly (even when we begin to doubt the believability of things). Top-drawer McMurtry and a pleasure to read.

One of my favorite books that I read in my teens was "The Last Picture Show" by Larry McMurtry. (It was a pretty good movie as well). It really turned me on to this then-promising young author. When the sequel, "Texasville", came out years later, I read that as well. It turned out to be one of the worst books I have read. McMurtry's style of writing changed after his heart attack and his writing really suffered since shortly after "Lonesome Dove" came out. Still, I found myself continuing to read most every book of his that came out and wanting to be there when the old McMurtry showed up again.

After my experience with "Texasville", I bought, but was reluctant to read, "Duane's Depressed; the sequel to "Texasville". As I started out with the book I thought to myself, "This is what's wrong with the post-angina McMurtry". The problem is the excessive abundance of boringly idiotic characters. They're like an influx simplistic and Americanized people out of a Fellini movie. What made me almost put the book down and quit it is the multitude of Duane's children and grandchildren who are nothing but out of control spoiled brats. If this was the only book that I encountered these type of characters, I wouldn't mind. However, they overflow in all of the modern McMurtry.

As I struggled through a cast of totally disinteresting characters, I reached a point (at about a fourth of the way into the book) where the book really started to take off. We lose the dysfunctional offspring and start focussing on Duane Moore. His is a character well-developed by an author that was showing he's still got it. I found myself drawn into Duane and his life and challenges. I found myself relating to a man who was facing many things similar to what I was dealing with in my life. For the duration of the book, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. It was a truly endearing study of a man bewildered by his past, present and future. As Duane was struggling with his issues, I found myself wondering if McMurtry was being autobiographical. I know next to nothing about his private life. It wasn't until his 14th or 15th book that a picture of him was shown on any dust jacket and that's the same picture that has appeared on every book since. Maybe it's an analogy of how his life changed after his heart attack. Whatever it was, the character of Duane takes me back to the early talent of Larry McMurtry.

This is a very good book that just happens to start out poorly. It isn't up there with "The Last Picture Show", "Lonesome Dove", "Leaving Cheyenne", or "Horseman Pass By". However, it IS in the category of "Moving On", "All My Friends are Going to be Strangers", "Terms of Endearment" and several others. When McMurtry's good he is VERY good but when he is bad...

Duane's Depressed, the third book in the Thalia, Texas-based series that also includes The Last Picture Show and Texasville, is the story of Duane Moore who is a self-made business man working the oil fields of Northern Texas. He is a mild-mannered, aging and ordinary man whose walk to his cabin becomes a metaphor for his itch for a new life. The narrative begins with Duane surrounded by his wife, children and grandchildren, as well as the trappings of a typical rural life in that part of the country and ends with a world turned upside down and without any remnants of his past. Is Duane depressed or going through a phase considered normal for a sixty-two year old? Why won't he sleep in his own house any longer and could his abandonment of his truck, in favour of walking, be proof enough that he has a few marbles loose now?
As Duane progresses through a profound transition much happens that might not have made sense once, but makes for perfect congruity with the new man. The family is gone, the business is in one son's hands, the dog is gone and the lesbian psychiatrist is not likely to be kissed anytime soon. What would any man do? What would any sane man do? Fly away?
Read Duane's Depressed - a book which reads comfortably without the prerequisite of its prequels - and find out.