When the Light Goes is the fourth book in Larry McMurtry’s five-book Thalia, Texas series. The main character in the series is Duane Moore, who was a high school student when introduced in the first book in the series, The Last Picture Show. In this one, Duane is in his sixties, and he’s feeling a bit mortal even if he doesn’t want to admit it to himself yet.
Duane's wife has been dead for two years, his son has taken over the family oil business, and Duane has pretty much become an eccentric recluse who just rides all over the county on his bicycle. And then Duane senses himself coming back to life a little when his son hires a brilliant young geologist who specializes in finding productive oil reserves in fields thought already to have been played out. It doesn’t hurt that she’s as attractive to Duane as she is brilliant.
But Duane is not a young man anymore, and his heart has other ideas about his immediate future.
McMurtry published only two novels after When the Light Goes, and by this point he was starting to explore end-of-life and legacy issues in his fiction. Duane urgently needs open heart surgery if he is to survive much longer, but he is largely ignoring the problem despite his steadily worsening condition. Despite the age difference between Duane and Annie, their love story is mostly a heartwarming one, and McMurtry is honest and blunt about whatever problems (be they sexual ones or compatibility-based ones) the age difference does cause.
The interesting thing about what Duane goes through, is that McMurtry himself lived through a very similar situation at age 55 when he had quadruple bypass surgery. He was connected to a heart-lung machine for something like five hours, and came out of the experience a broken man. He felt that he had truly died on the operating table, and that his old personality had shattered and was never coming back. McMurtry even hung the term “largely posthumous” on himself - and he believed it to be an apt label. He went into a deep depression and spent over a year lying on his sometime co-writer Donna Ossana’s Tucson couch and staring out the window. He wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t write, and was completely unable to read for pleasure. Ossana probably saved his life by finally getting him to co-write Streets of Laredo with her at her kitchen table. But whether McMurtry ever completely got over the experience is another question.
I suspect that the fictional relationship between Annie and Duane was one very meaningful to McMurtry, and I think that adds some significance to When the Light Goes that the novel would not otherwise deserve. This is not one of McMurtry’s best books, but it is one his fans will want to read in order to extend the Duane Moore story for one more chapter, if for no other reason.
Coming face to face with your own mortality is never easy. McMurtry has written so many well-known and popular books I'm ashamed to admit that I've never read any of them. Do you have a favorite?
ReplyDeleteMy favorite book in the world is McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove - but that one is something like 800 pages long, so it’s probably not the best place to start. Another of my favorites is The Last Kind Words Saloon, which might be the last one he wrote, if I recall correctly. It’s much shorter, but has a similar tone to Lonesome Dove.
DeleteVery nice review and does Duane ride all over the country on his motorcycle or a regular bicycle. Curious because I have been looking for a novel where someone travels the country by motorcycle. I was sorry to hear about Larry McMurty's deep depression after the quadruple bypass. That's a very big surgery and it would change a person.
ReplyDeleteNo, it’s a bicycle, not a motorbike. I have a book around here somewhere by an American who did Ireland by motorcycle, stopping at numerous pubs along the way and visiting with the locals. Really enjoyed that one. And YouTube has some really wonderful sites like that where people do the same. I just watched one where a young British couple rode from Florida to San Francisco over about 90 days, and really enjoyed watching them experience America that way.
DeleteI have not read any McMurtry novels either but based on your description of this novel, I really should find one of his novels and try it. Is The Last Picture Show a good place to start?
ReplyDeleteThe Last Picture Show is a genuine classic, but it’s very dark and really sad at times. I really prefer McMurtry’s westerns because they are so different from what people normally think of when they think “western.” He did a couple of western series, one centering around the characters made famous in Lonesome Dove. For me, it’s all about the characters he creates in his fiction; he was a master.
ReplyDeleteMcMurtry had some terrible health issues it seems. It's sad to think about such a great storyteller. I guess it worked its way into his last books.
ReplyDeleteHe really did have some issues late in life that caused him to suffer more than he perhaps should have suffered. His books, almost from the beginning, leaned on his personal background and experiences, one of the reasons, I think, that his work always appealed to me so much.
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