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When the Light Goes: A Novel
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Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $3.65
You Save: $ 20.35 ( 85% )
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Average Customer Ratings:
In this masterful and often surprising sequel to the acclaimed Duane's Depressed, the Pulitzer Prize- and Oscar-winning author of Lonesome Dove has written a haunting, elegiac, and occasionally erotic novel about one of his most beloved characters. Duane Moore first made his appearance in The Last Picture Showand, like his author, he has aged but not lost his vigor or his taste for life.
Back from a two-week trip to Egypt, Duane finds he cannot readjust to life in Thalia, the small, dusty, West Texas hometown in which he has spent all of his life. In the short time he was away, it seems that everything has changed alarmingly. His office barely has a reason to exist now that his son Dickie is running the company from Wichita Falls, his lifelong friends seem to have suddenly grown old, his familiar hangout, once a good old-fashioned convenience store, has been transformed into an "Asian Wonder Deli," his daughters seem to have taken leave of their senses and moved on to new and strange lives, and his own health is at serious risk.
It's as if Duane cannot find any solace or familiarity in Thalia and cannot even bring himself to revisit the house he shared for decades with his late wife, Karla, and their children and grandchildren. He spends his days aimlessly riding his bicycle (already a sign of serious eccentricity in West Texas) and living in his cabin outside town. The more he tries to get back to the rhythm of his old life, the more he realizes that he should have left Thalia long ago -- indeed everybody he cared for seems to have moved on without him, to new lives or to death.
The only consolation is meeting the young, attractive geologist, Annie Cameron, whom Dickie has hired to work out of the Thalia office. Annie is brazenlyseductive, yet oddly cold, young enough to be Duane's daughter, or worse, and Duane hasn't a clue how to handle her. He's also in love with his psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, who after years of rebuffing him, has decided to undertake what she feels is Duane's very necessary sex reeducation, opening him up to some major, life-changing surprises.
For the lesson of When the Light Goes is that where there's life, there is indeed hope -- Duane, widowed, displaced from whatever is left of his own life, suddenly rootless in the middle of his own hometown, and at risk of death from a heart that also doesn't seem to be doing its job, is in the end saved by sex, by love, and by his own compassionate and intense interest in other people and the surprises they reveal.
At once realistic and life-loving, often hilariously funny, and always moving, though without a touch of sentimentality, Larry McMurtry has opened up a new chapter in Duane's life and, in doing so, written one of his finest and most compelling novels to date, doing for Duane what he did so triumphantly for Aurora in Terms of Endearment.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2007-03-06
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Studio: Simon & Schuster
SIMILAR ITEMS:
• Duane's Depressed : A Novel
• Telegraph Days: A Novel
• Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen : Reflections on Sixty and Beyond
• Books: A Memoir
• Paradise
CUSTOMER REVIEWS:
McMurtry -
This one is short, but still great. I wish I had purchased Duane's Depressed first so I could have the background story.
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When the Light goes Out -
I'm a big Larry McMurtry fan and I've read everything he wrote through "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen" and much of his subsequent work. The first of his books that I read was "The Last Picture Show" which made a major impression on me as a college freshman. I think the first real disappointment I had with one of his books was the first TLPS sequel "Texasville".
After "The Evening Star" I noticed a definite decline in McMurtry's works. I later came to understand that this was probably a result of his heart attack that ocurred while writing "The Evening Star". I kept reading his books out of loyalty to his past achievements and occassionally found a diamond in the rough. One of those was the second sequel to TLPS, "Duane's Depressed". It starts out with the same ridiculous dialogue from ridiculous characters involved in ridiculous events and activities that plagues McMurtry's later works. However, it settles into a meaningful examination of a man who was contemplating the meaning and purpose of life from a "later in life" perspective. I was moved by "Duane's Depressed" in much the way I had been moved by "The Last Picture Show". I sensed that I was growing up with Duane (although I identified myself with Sonny much more than Duane). A few more attempts at futility while reading the first two Berrybender books and I just about gave up McMurtry for good. However, when I saw "When the Light Goes", I wanted to see what had happened to my old friend Duane.
"When the Light Goes" is a short novella. It lists as 195 pages but at least a dozen of those pages are blank. The rest of them are generally filled with the same old ridiculous characters saying ridiculous things and getting involved in ridiculous situations. What is relatively new to these sequels is an elaborate literary description of sex. This book could justify the classification of pornography and there isn't much justification for all this detail. I can sense a purpose for some discussion on the subject inasmuch as Duane is confronting the limits of his masculinilty after realizing his heart troubles. However, the details and frequency of them made me wonder why I was reading this. There ARE some aspects of Duane's continuing maturity. However, I noted that the last chapter (Capter 50 in a 195 page book!!!) covered, in five pages, more events than the previous 190 pages.
I know that the heart attack he suffered had a great effect on Larry McMurtry. I know because he told us in some of his later writings. I found much of his observations to be helpful in understanding people I know who have experienced the same life-changing event. I can't help but notice that McMurtry's books and chapters have shrunk greatly. Maybe he needs to pay the rent but it seems to me that he has lost his literary attention span. It's almost as though he gives us a rough sketch of an imagined plot and fills in all the dialogue. In my book, "When the Light Goes" is strictly for those who want to follow the saga of Duane Moore and perhaps, the saga of Larry McMurtry.
A quick, easy but flawed read -
When the Light Goes is a good, quick read. I occasionally pick up a Larry McMurtry novel as a change of pace. His prose in this novel is very loose and moves very quickly, aided by the very short chapters. McMyrtry's description of aging accompanied by illness and lack of virility seems accurate, at least for his main character Duane. However, other than Duane, all the characters seemed a bit two dimensional. It held my attention for 200 pages, but it would have lost me if it was much longer. Also, this reader, although not squeamish, could have done withy out some of the overly graphic sexuality. Like too much of the rest of the book, it made sex very two dimensional and lacked any true feeling or emotion. What a shame for a writer who is capable of so much better!
soft porn -
This book was nothing more than soft porn. How did I get sucked into this one. And, yes, I meant the double entendre.
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Put Out The Light, Please -
Duane's World, Part IV
I have recently fulsomely praised Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show trilogy (The Last Picture Show; Texasville: Duane's Depressed) a saga centered on the coming of age, mid-life crisis and struggle with mortality of one small town Texas oilman and good old boy Duane Moore. Frankly, I thought with the review of Duane's Depressed concerning Duane's struggle to find relevance in his life as he hovers around old age and faces the grim reaper that I was done with this series. Needless to say that was not the case. Although I wish it were so.
I mentioned in my review of The Last Picture Show that the coming of age story described there boiled down to what to do on high school Friday night-the search for sexual companionship. What to do on high school Saturday night-the search for sex- you get the drift. Apparently in his dotage Duane is hung up on that same aspect of the tragedy behind that human drive except he has included weekdays. That, however, is not enough to sustain this slim novel. Moreover, I believe that Mr. McMurtry knows that as he has tried to spruce up his plot and characters with every current sociological trend known to the American scene- the search for a trophy wife, daughter Nellie's gayness, daughter Julie's nunnery prospects, his lesbian psychiatrist's off-hand desire to throw away all her profession ethics for a chance to go to bed with Duane and the South Asian invasion of the mom and pop business marketplace, reliance on sexual aids, etc. Come on now, Larry this is not even Austin.
I once commented in a review of Howard Fast's Immigrant series set in California over a couple of generations that during the course of the work his characters intersected every possible leftist political impulse in pursue of filling out the story line. I mentioned, at some point well before the last book, that the series had run out of steam. That, sad to say, has happened to Mr. McMurtry here. His story has run out of steam. What is left? Duane as the "stud" at his Thalia (or Wichita Falls) assisted living facility. He deserves better. Larry, put out the light. Please.
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