Moving On: A Novel

Author - Larry McMurtry ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Simon & Schuster was reviewed on 16-Oct-2008.

Search ISBN:0684853884 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Moving On: A Novel Reference Book. Classifications : General McMurtry, Larry ( M ) Authors, A-Z Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Paperback McMurtry, Larry ( M ) Authors, A-Z Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Classics British Chinese General General . Click the following link to view the cover of Moving On: A Novel.

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1) Paperback Book Moving On: A Novel by Simon & Schuster. Yes this book is very long, and yes it is worth the read. McMurtry is a wonderful author, he has a way of putting the reader into another life, the descriptions, and characters are so vivid that you forget that you are reading a book.

The characters are very memorable, its been almost 6 months since my reading, but still today all of the characters are still etched in my mind. After finishing the book I felt, and still feel that they are my friends.

The dialog is first class.

If you haven´t tried McMurtry I wouldn´t hesitate. I will definitely be reading all of LM´s work.

Also, if you are in the mood for some wonderful Alternative Country music, check out Larry McMurtry´s son James McMurtry. Lets just say the talent runs in the family.

Happy reading, and listening!¤

2) Paperback Book Moving On: A Novel by Simon & Schuster. This is the best Larry McMurtry book. Don´t be fooled by imitations! (So many of his new books pale in the shadow of his earlier works.) Try this wonderful novel. You´ll be haunted by it long after you have finished it.¤

3) Paperback Book Moving On: A Novel by Simon & Schuster. This is an early McMurtry novel, a long, rambling story with young Patsy Carpenter at the center of a large cast of characters that includes graduate students, ranchers, rodeo cowboys, a Hollywood writer, Haight-Ashbury hippies, and wealthy Texans - both new and old money. Written in the late 1960s, and published in 1970, "Moving On" is interesting for its attempt to capture the subtly shifting moods of its central characters instead of focusing on action and storyline. As page follows page, McMurtry describes his characters´ feelings of self-assurance, annoyance, boredom, frustration, and sexual tension. And often moods degenerate into tears - Patsy´s in particular.

There´s more than a bit of Henry Miller in much of the novel, as characters attempt to match up their levels of sexual passion, often finding that they are rarely feeling the same thing for each other at the same time. Seduction is often unsuccessful or unsatisfying, a rendezvous full of romantic promise may turn into an argument leaving both parties exhausted. A pass made after several drinks at a party or over a milk shake at a soda fountain may elicit an exchange of bitterness and barbed recriminations. A married couple talks openly of their infidelities. A wife accuses her husband of being neglectful, while she routinely meets a colleague of his for sex.

For readers who like action and narrative development, this book will seem very slow going. For some, the many shifts of mood and ironies of thwarted intentions will make the story seem flat and the central characters unfocused. By contrast, the marginal characters, especially an old widowed rancher, a rodeo clown and his young barrel-racer girlfriend, and a teenage bronc rider spring from the page fully realized. A few scenes are pumped up with melodrama (a professor´s wife breaks down in front of the girl her husband has tried to seduce; a champion rodeo cowboy refuses to accept that a ranch-owning woman he´s been bedding is growing tired of him; a pregnant young woman is rescued from a drugged existence with a sinister boyfriend). But the most crisply vivid and emotionally honest scenes involve the death and burial of an old man in the nearly treeless prairie northwest of Dallas. They´re simple and understated like the country folks who people these pages.

McMurtry says that this novel emerged from an image of a young woman in a car eating a melted chocolate bar. What follows that image is one thing after another, until we reach the end almost 800 pages later, and that same woman, now divorcing her husband, feels a kind of independence that may never surrender itself to another man. Some readers will find this ending worth the trip; others may find themselves, like McMurtry´s characters, in a somewhat different mood.¤

4) Paperback Book Moving On: A Novel by Simon & Schuster. I am in the process of rereading Moving On and just checked Amazon for other readers´ comments, which I found intriguing. I originally bought this book for two reasons: 1.)I´m a Larry McMurtry fan and 2.) I was interested in the rodeo aspects of the book. I was initially disappointed when Jim and Patsy left the rodeo circuit for the "desperation of suburban Houston," but I finished the book anyway. When I picked it up again recently, I intended only to reread the rodeo-related passages, and now (deep into the Houston section)I find I can´t stop reading. McMurtry´s creation of Patsy Carpenter is a grand achievement. Her endless crying aside, she is one of the most completely realized characters in contemporary literature. I can´t think of any other novel that chronicles with such convincing precision the moment by moment emotional life of a single character. There are times, certainly, when I find her annoying, but she is also endlessly compelling. The other characters (Pete, Eleanor, Sonny)are a great added treat in the novel, but it is ultimately Patsy who impresses, and it is for the creation of her that we should consider Moving On one of McMurtry´s best works. (P.S. to the earlier reviewer who gave the book a "lone star," what you say about the Waggoner ranch is very true. The descriptions are so beautiful that you want to move there (but then it functions as a kind of oasis in the book), and Roger is a touching character whose simple language belies great depth. McMurtry has created him with great affection.)¤

5) Paperback Book Moving On: A Novel by Simon & Schuster. This is my favorite book of all time! I would recommend it to anyone--McMurtry is also my second favorite author (1st being Pat Conroy).¤

6) Paperback Book Moving On: A Novel by Simon & Schuster. Moving On is a big, powerful novel about men and women in the American West. Set in the 1960s against the backdrop of the honky-tonk glamour of the rodeo and the desperation of suburban Houston, it is the story of the restless and lovable Patsy Carpenter, one of Larry McMurtry´s most unforgettable characters.

Patsy -- young, beautiful, with a sharp tongue and an irresistible charm -- and her shiftless husband, Jim, are adrift in the West. Patsy moves through affairs of the heart like small towns -- there´s Pete, the rodeo clown, and Hank, the graduate student, and others -- always in search of the life that seems ever receding around the next bend.

Peopled with a riotously colorful cast of highbrows, cowpokes, and rodeo queens, in its wry humor, tenderness, and epic panorama, Moving On is a celebration of our land by one of America´s best-loved authors. Moving On is vintage McMurtry.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 13-Nov-2008, 06848538849780684853888, 250-410-5X0-760-840-VUB-8

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