 Best Sellers
| | Home The LAST PICTURE SHOW : A Novel | |
|  | |  | | | The LAST PICTURE SHOW : A Novel | | | | | SKU:
| | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | The Last Picture Show is one of Larry McMurtry's most powerful, memorable novels -- the basis for the enormously popular movie of the same name. Set in a small, dusty, Texas town, The Last Picture Show introduced the characters of Jacy, Duane, and Sonny: teenagers stumbling toward adulthood, discovering the beguiling mysteries of sex and the even more baffling mysteries of love. Populated by a wonderful cast of eccentrics and animated by McMurtry's wry and raucous humor, The Last Picture Show is wild, heartbreaking, and poignant -- a coming-of-age novel that resonates with the magical passion of youth. | | | |
List Price:
| $13.00 | |
Our Price:
| $10.08
& eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
| |
You Save:
| $2.92 (22%)
|
| | |
|
| | Product Details | | Author: | Larry McMurtry | | Paperback: | 288 pages | | Publisher: | Simon & Schuster | | Publication Date: | January 14, 1999 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0684853868 | | Product Length: | 8.06 inches | | Product Width: | 5.22 inches | | Product Height: | 0.6 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.54 pounds | | Package Length: | 7.8 inches | | Package Width: | 5.2 inches | | Package Height: | 0.6 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.55 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 53 reviews |
| |
| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
 Incredibly Powerful - Even Better Than The Film Jun 14, 2010
I loved Lonesome Dove and picked up The Last Picture Show as a representation of Larry McMurtry's early work. The "flatness" of the writing matches the surrounding country and makes what goes on beneath the surface of a small Texas oil town all the more powerful. The film The Last Picture Show is a classic, garnering Oscars for Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper and Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion, but the book is even better.
The Last Picture Show traces a year in the life of a small Texas oil town. Sonny and Duane are high school football stars, soon to graduate, who live in a local rooming house and congregate in Sam the Lion's pool hall. Through them we meet Jacy, the beautiful yet incredibly selfish and manipulative cheerleader, Lois, Jacy's mother with a storied past of her own, Coach Popper, the brutal football coach with an even darker side, Ruth Popper, the coach's ignored and quietly desperate wife, and others. McMurtry shows us the underside of small town life and in the process skewers traditional concepts of morality, religion, justice, family, success, dying dreams, coming of age, and redemption.
The Last Picture Show is one of the most honest, down-to-earth, and yet shocking and racy books I have ever read. It will keep you thinking long after you finish, the legacy of a remarkable writer who is the master of his craft. This is a tremendous, incredibly powerful book you will not soon forget.
smut in a small town Mar 15, 2010
I had long ago known about Larry McMurtry but had never read anything of his until I picked up his latest book, Rhino Ranch, which just happened to be the 5th in a series that began with The Last Picture Show. I really liked Rhino Ranch so much that I ordered three of the series, knowing that I could get a 4th at the local library. It was a good story, and altho I'm not offended by the lauguage, I had no idea how filthy writing was by more famous writers. John Updike being of the same sort. The story line about mostly what appeared to be dead end kids in a small town was well thought out and potrayed.
Gone with the wind Mar 14, 2010
Movie references, of course, from time to time are mentioned during the narrative of Larry McMurtry's "The last picture show" - a novel more about nostalgia of a lost time and innocence than cinema itself:
"The movies were Charlene's life , she was fond of saying"
"[He] had always thought your were supposed to get whoever you really loved. That was the way it worked in the movies."
"It would have taken `Winchester '73' or `Red River' or some big movie like that to have crowded out the memories the boys kept having."
However no person in this novel is guides his or her life according to movie stars or characters. This is a book of real people living their silly lives that haven't much in common with the rich and the beautiful. McMurtry populates his narrative with sad and lost souls and the agonizing movie theater -as the agonizing city where these people live - works as beautiful metaphor of lost chances and lives in a stand still.
McMurtry has a keen eye for characters - specially the female ones. The women in the novel are vivid and their problems and aspirations are quite touching. Some of them long for love, some for money and a few for both. There are also some girls here who only want to be alive and keep up with their nearly pointless lives. Jacy and her mother, Lois, are memorable creations, but the most beautiful character in the whole "The last picture show" is Ruth Popper, the neglected coach's wife who finds love in the most unexpected place. But in the world where this novel is set, loving equals sadness, suffering, not redemption or anything nice. They are characters condemned to live their miserable and suffering lives alone no matter how surrounded of people they are.
The male characters, on the other hand, aren't as developed as the female ones. The men in this book aren't very different. The two protagonists, Sonny and Duane, are so much alike that sometimes the reader must stop and thinking who is who. Not a single man in "The last picture show" knows how to handle their woman - specially the women they love. They may spent the whole novel longing for someone, and when he finally has a chance with this person he wouldn't know what to do. Even the older and married man aren't very good characters mostly because the writer never dives into their psyche as McMurtry does with the women here. They are plain - not uninteresting but never as deep or believable as the ladies.
McMurtry is capable of creating the most beautiful descriptions - specially when he is dealing with the emptiness, that is when places and lives get mixed, when the past seem a faraway place and the character in the book people of a long and forgotten (maybe overcame) past.
Trying to unfold a panorama of a small town's live, McMurtry brings to the narrative way to many characters and some strings never are properly pulled. Some events aren't as build up as other ones, and when they happen they read unbelievable and most unnecessary. But despite of - or because of - its flaws "The last picture show" is a beautiful novel guided by melancholy of a time and place that don't seem to exist any more. They may have been gone with the wind - the very same that blows through the
the truth in black and white Mar 02, 2010
Read this book years ago after seeing the film - wanted to know if it had been the director's talent or that of the writer. The director added to it talentwise but undoubtedly it was the sharp assessment of human character laid out in the book that made the film worthwhile. Read the book again now, ten years hence, and had forgotten many of the bleakest parts though I could not deny the brillance of McMurtry for laying us all bare.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
For Those Who Came of Age In a Small Town......And for Those Who Love Them Feb 11, 2009
I have read this novel many times over the years. Having come of age in small-town Texas, where there was only one movie theater for entertainment (we called it "The Show" and it's gone now)I completely relate to this book. We even talked our parents into letting us go to the same show on both Friday AND Saturday nights! Crazy. This should have been required reading for my spouse who hails from a large city! There is a great deal of depth to a number of the characters and something new has been revealed each time I read the book. I borrowed the name of one of the characters for my first child. The only thing that I was NOT aware of any of my country bumpkin friends engaging in was sex with the ranch animals!
| |
| |
| |  | |  |
|
Recently Viewed | You may also like ...
|
