It's been awhile since I last read a McMurtry novel. Of course its hard to compare anything he has written to his Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove which is probably my favorite novel of all time. And The Last Kind Words Saloon was definitely not Lonesome Dove but it was still an enjoyable look at the old west. It was a light, humorous, and fun read with McMurtry telling his own version of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. He states on the back cover that "I had the great director John Ford in mind when I wrote this book; he famously said that when you had to choose between history and legend, print the legend. And so I've done." The novel takes Wyatt and Doc from the small settlement of Long Grass, Texas, then on to Denver where they briefly and comically play gunfighters in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Then they finally make it to Tombstone through an apocalyptic sand storm. Along the way are other notables including Charlie Goodnight, the famous rancher who also appears in McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series; Nellie Courtright, the newspaper reporter who was the focus of the McMurtry's novel Telegraph Days; Quanah Parker, the Comanche Chief; and the Clantons of Tombstone.
Overall, I did enjoy this for what it was: a "comically subversive work of fiction" as stated by Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Review of Books. Was this historically accurate? Of course not . . . for example the book has Buffalo Bill dying before the Earps get to Tombstone. But he actually died in 1917 while the gunfight in Tombstone happened in 1881. A mild recommendation for this one.
Overall, I did enjoy this for what it was: a "comically subversive work of fiction" as stated by Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Review of Books. Was this historically accurate? Of course not . . . for example the book has Buffalo Bill dying before the Earps get to Tombstone. But he actually died in 1917 while the gunfight in Tombstone happened in 1881. A mild recommendation for this one.
