AT has a long-standing
summer habit of reading Texas writer Larry McMurtry. Most recently, we spent time in the pages of
Telegraph Days, McMurtry's 2006 novel that features
the amazing Nellie Courtright as its central character.
Oklahomans, in fact, might be interested in the fact that
Telegraph Days begins along the
Cimarron River out in the panhandle. The Courtrights, Virginia emigrants, have a broken-down ranch near
Black Mesa and the fictional town of Rita Blanca.
But the novel soon moves to such legendary locations as
Dodge City and
Tombstone, as Nellie meets many of the famous characters of the West. These include
Buffalo Bill, the
Earp brothers, and
Billy the Kid.
In McMurtry's story, the talented Nellie Courtright is the link between all of these people and places, giving the reader
an exciting and panoramic view of the late nineteenth-century American West.
Some of this tale is a bit unlikely, of course, and we wish McMurtry had slowed down the narrative in places, letting us
sweat and scratch a little longer in the hot, dusty streets of Rita Blanca and Dodge City.
Still,
Telegraph Days will please a lot of McMurtry fans, and Nellie Courtright is one of McMurtry's most memorable characters.
UPDATE: Speaking of McMurtry, we attended the Book Smart Tulsa event last night at the Philbrook, where novelist Rivka Galchen talked about her writing. Galchen, who grew up in Norman, mentioned the German writer Walter Benjamin in her talk.
We haven't read much of Benjamin's work, but her reference did remind us of McMurtry's Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, which we read some years back. This book, a reflective, intellectual memoir, is our favorite book of McMurtry nonfiction. It's well worth reading (or, in our case, re-reading).
