Telegraph Days

Being laid up with a cold means that one has a ton of time to read. So racing against a library deadline, I tucked into Larry McMurty's TELEGRAPH DAYS. A relatively short book compared to LONESOME DOVE and it prequels/sequels but Mr. McMurtry is a master at packing a LIFE(or most of one) in just under a three- hundred pages or so. Being a failed aspiring writer, I can admire the craft and the effort that must require. I've only read a handful of his books but the death of the REAL West seems to be a recurrent theme. The bittersweet longing when history passes into myth...and this book centers on a lady who witnesses one of the most famous historical events(The gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona). She even sees the events of her own life turned into a Hollywood motion picture during Tinseltown's own golden age. I'm not a literary connoisseur but I know that I really like Larry McMurtry's books enough to eventually read them all. Next--Time for a re-reading of Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS Trilogy. Of course, a marathon-viewing of Peter Jackson't movies has whetted my longing to visit Middle Earth again. My first and only visit was back in high school. To my young, impatient, impetuous mind, I found the saga slow-moving. Maybe I wasn't yet old or seasoned enough to appreciate it. And (contrary to the opinion of a couple of friends of mine,) Peter Jackson's rendering of the saga captured enough of it to make me return to the source material. Maybe even beyond...It's a big world to explore... GaP