Customer Reviews (1)

ROADS...by Larry McMurtry
McMurtry has been a favorite author of mine for some time.I purchased this book based on my past enjoyment of his writing.

I (begrudgingly) read 150 pages of it before throwing it across the room. (Where it still lies)

Now I know why it only cost me $0.01.......Save your penny! ... Read more

Product Description
POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION. MAY 1963. SP218 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Impossible!
A McMurtry book that's not on the best seller list, that's barely even listed on Amazon.Maybe it's because the book was immediately overshadowed by the fantastic movie with Paul Newman and Patricia Neal when it was new.But Hud is still Larry McMurtry at his best during those early, struggling years as a regional novelist.HUD is one of the reasons he no longer is.

If you've seen the movie and loved it, great.But you won't find that takes anything at all away from the book.I recommend you get a copy when it's available, find yourself a comfortable easy chair and settle back for a dip into Larry McMurtry's past, Texas past, and the past of an America mostly forgotten. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Beautiful.
I was saddened to read the negative review which appears above mine.This body of work is among Danny Lyons' finest achievements.Every photograph in Indian Nation is wrought with a compassion and closeness rarely attained by even the most sympathetic observers of our native people.The historical circumstances of America's natives are indeed sad.Conditions on American reservations are bleak.This is not news.Lyons approaches his subjects with neither judgment nor pathos, and has recorded them without succumbing to the pitfalls of romanticism.Societal, emotional, and aesthetic complexity are limned here for all to see.And if the reviewer above does not, then it is because he or she - for some strange reason - has chosen not to.

This book is a visual lie.
Danny Lyon has put together a collection of photographs that depict American Indians as the saddest and most hopeless people ever known to man. This supposed documentary photographer has obviously imposed his own visual aesthetic upon his subjects to exaggerate their poverty and despair. This collection of work is a pretentious "disease of the week" photo story. The only positive emotion found in these photos is the result of the reunion of a couple separated from each other by a prison sentence. Although American Indians face a plethora of problems they are among the most resilient people on the face of this earth. They smile, laugh and love, but Lyon chose to leave all of this out. It saddens me to see someone who has done admirable work in the past stoop to this level. Oh, by the way, Larry McMurty's introduction stinks as well. He states that drunken driving accidents are among the commonest of events on western American Indian Reservations. ... Read more

Product Description
If you had to give America a voice, it’s been said more than once, that voice would be Willie Nelson’s. For more than fifty years, he’s taken the stuff of his life—the good and the bad—and made from it a body of work that has become a permanent part of our musical heritage and kept us company through the good and the bad of our own lives. So it’s fitting, and cause for celebration, that he has finally set down in his own words a book that doesjustice to his great gifts as a storyteller. In The Facts of Life, Willie Nelson reflects on what has mattered to him in life and what hasn’t. He also tells some great dirty jokes. The result is a book as wise and hilarious as its author. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

He cut his hair !!!!???? but he is STILL Willie
having been a willis fan for many past eons (at least it seems that long) it is a pleasure reading this witty, humorous, and completely delightful side of an all american hero/icon.He is great on stage, but he is there to play music - thank god - not to be a humorist.He does both well... bettter than well. It is a grand read for anyone, even tho you're not a country music fan.However, I cannot imagine such a person. Having worked in country radio for many years, i cannot imagine a world without willie!I highly RECCOMEND this slim missive!! Dick Patterson from Reno, Nv And Vallejo Ca

The first Willie Nelson book I have read.
This is a great book written by a great man.It was just what I needed to put me in a better mood.I would have liked it if there was a little more story and a little less lyrics but the lyrics were fun to read too.I can't wait to read more of his books.

Funny and entertaining!
Willie is able to give the reader insight into his personality in a funny and entertaining way making the reader want to keep reading!The book is full of information about the singer/songwriter and has some truly great lines and jokes!

wn fan loved it!
Got this for my dad who is a huge Willie fan and I thought he had everything of Willie's - but this one he didn't and was very impressed to see we had found something he hadn't seen before. He enjoyed reading it and found it funny.

Requested for Christmas
My son asked for this for Christmas. He really knows country music and is no fan of pop. He only wants the true country and the real soul of country music and stories. If this were not the real thing he would not have asked for it. If he recommends it, you can take it to the bank. ... Read more

Product Description
Larry McMurtry's major four-volume series follows the Berrybender family—aristocratic, English, and fiercely out of place—on their journey to see the American West as it begins to open up.

Sin Killer

It is 1830, the dawn of a new era in America's growth, when Lord and Lady Berrybender embark on a journey up the Missouri River to explore the frontier and to broaden the horizons of their children: Tasmin, a budding young woman of grit, beauty, and determination, her vivacious and difficult sister, and her brother. As they journey by rough stages up the Missouri, they meet with all the dangers, difficulties, beauties, and temptations of the untamed West. For Tasmin, these temptations include Jim Snow, a frontiersman, ferocious Indian fighter, and part-time preacher known up and down the Missouri as "the Sin Killer."

The Wandering Hill

Abandoning their luxurious steamer, which is stuck in the ice near the Knife River, the Berrybenders make their way overland to the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers to spend the winter in conditions of siege at the trading post of Pierre Boisdeffre. By now, Tasmin is a married woman, or as good as, living with the elusive young mountain man Jim Snow, pregnant with his child and about to discover that he has secrets he hasn't told her. For his part, Jim is about to discover that in taking the outspoken, tough-minded, stubbornly practical young aristocratic woman into his teepee he has bitten off more than he can chew...

By Sorrow's River

The Berrybender party once again takes to the trail, across the endless Great Plains of the West towards Santa Fe, where they intend—those who are lucky enough to survive the journey—to spend the winter. Along the way, they meet up with a varied cast of characters from the history of the West—Kit Carson, the famous scout; Le Partezon, the fearsome Sioux war chief; two aristocratic Frenchmen whose eccentric aim is to cross the Great Plains by hot air balloon; a band of raiding Pawnee; and many other astonishing characters who prove once again that the rolling, grassy plains are not, in fact, nearly as empty of life as they look.

Folly and Glory

Under irksome, though comfortable, arrest with her family in Mexican Santa Fe, Tasmin Berrybender—who would once have followed Jim Snow anywhere—is no longer even sure she likes him, or knows where to go to next. Neither does anyone else—even Captain Clark, of Lewis & Clark fame, is puzzled by the great changes sweeping over the West, replacing red men and buffalo with towns and farms. As the Berrybenders embark on a desperate journey to New Orleans—starving, dying of thirst, and in constant, bloody battle, with slavers pursuing them—both Jim Snow and Tasmin find themselves forced to choose among conflicting loves, and finally decide where their futures lie. ... Read more

Product Description
Part Two Of Two Parts

Patsy, young and beautiful, takes the easy road. With Jim, her shiftless husband, she drifts through the West, from one rodeo and honky-tonk to another. She and Jim are looking for something, neither knows exactly what.

Patsy moves through affairs of the heart like Sherman through Georgia--there's Pete, the rodeo clown; Hank, the graduate student; and others too numerous to remember.

Jim looks for fulfillment on the bulls he rides, closing his eyes to the real world. For the two of them, life seems always receding around the next bend, the next turn of the road.

"Funny and believable characters to care about. Vintage McMurtry." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board) ... Read more

Product Description
Louise Serpa has spent the past thirty years photographing professional rodeos from inside the ring.In Rodeo she takes us into the world of one of the first truly American sports.Accompanying these extraordinary images are Serpa's anecdotal and informative annotations; to counterbalance are Larry McMurtry's provocative "notes" challenging widely held beliefs about the mythic American West.McMurtry is the author of the best selling novels, Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and Terms of Endearment, among others.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The drama and excitement of the rodeo arena . . .
This is a terrific collection of 60+ black and white photographs by rodeo enthusiast Louise Serpa, dating from the 1960s to the 1990s. Most are a privileged view of the action, taken inside the arena, and the drama in those frozen moments of action is electric. As Larry McMurtry points out in his commentary at the end of the book, she has the gift of capturing motion just as a leaping animal and rider are poised in mid-air, ready to be overcome by gravity. Besides roughstock, she also finds the excitement in other events, like steer wrestling, team roping, and barrel racing, as well as the work of the bullfighters, or clowns.

One of the most dramatic shots is of a young bareback rider silhouetted against the thickening cloud of a sudden dust storm. In another, a fallen cowboy goes down under a completely air-borne saddle bronc. Another shows a surging melee of cowboys and horses in a wild horse race, while a saxophonist stands to play in the bandstand, and just beyond are boulders and forest-covered Arizona hillsides.

The book is organized with a balancing flow of action shots followed by group and individual photos taken behind the chutes of riders stretching, adjusting their rigging, leaning on a fence to watch the show (backsides to the camera), or just sitting around talking. A few portrait shots capture a variety of moods among the contestants. Meanwhile, her own running commentary, describing rodeo events and rodeo people, flows along with the images.

By contrast, novelist Larry McMurtry's anti-romantic comments about cowboys and rodeos close the book, but as he observes, it doesn't seem to matter how strongly you challenge the myth. The myth lives on. Hugely enjoyable book. Currently out of print. Find a copy and hang onto it.

Great rodeo pictures!
I love the rodeo pictures in this book, but could have done without McMurtry's constant whining about how terrible the west is.Had a different person done the notes, I think it would have been much moreinteresting.Kind of smacks of jelousy in that McMurtry sounds almost likehe's trying to talk you out of enjoying the book.Had someone else writtenthe notes, then I would have given it 5 stars. ... Read more

Product Description
Part Two Of Three Parts

A love story, an adventure, an American epic, LONESOME DOVE embraces all the West--legend and fact, heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers--in a novel that recreates the central American experience, the most enduring of our national myths.

Set in the late 19th century, LONESOME DOVE is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana--and much more.The drive is a risk, sure, but it's a part of the American Dream, a chance to carve a new life out of the last remaining wilderness.

"Once again, McMurtry spins a yarn about the West--and also about the nature of friendship, of folly, of responsibility, of moral codes and men and their destinies." (The Wall Street Journal) ... Read more

Product Description
Novelist Larry McMurtry once received a photograph showing a demonstration of the then-new kerosene lamp to a mixed crowd of cowboys, soldiers, and Indians. To him, this image captured the transition from the Old West to the New West and led him to purchase the collection of glass plate negatives from which this print came. Sensing that the collection contained a fascinating record of cultural change and survival, McMurtry loaned it to the University of Texas Press for investigation. With the assistance of Comanche expert Daniel J. Gelo and others, Stanley Noyes has identified the photographers, subjects, and settings of these thirty-two photographs. Most appear to be the work of pioneer woman photographer Alice Snearly and her brother-in-law Lon Kelly, who worked in the heart of Comanche territory on the Texas-Oklahoma border. These images preserve the "interim" generation of Comanches, including Quanah Parker and two of his wives, who endured reservation life and forced moves to individual allotments of farm and ranch land. Yet the photos show not a defeated but a resilient people who have held on to many of the old ways while adopting enough of Anglo culture to survive. Noyes's historical introduction provides context for the photos, which he also describes in detailed captions. A few images of Anglo settlers and towns complete the picture of life in Indian Territory at this moment of change. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Comanches in the New West, 1895-1908
This book was ordered because I have a history with some of the photos in it. As a researcher for my historical body of works in oil, I was given permission to paint photos of this local early day photographer, Alice Snearly. The owner of her glass negatives at the time is a friend of my husband. Alice died in 1908 I believe. I interviewed her second cousin in Henrietta, TX. before she died about Alice and looked at some of the photos she had. One of my pieces that is in this book has been given as a permanent loan to the Asbury Complex in Comanche, OK, titled "Beef Time." It portrays many horses, wagons, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and Wichita Indians getting their beef issued by the Government out of Fort Sill. After painting a body of historical works on her, Larry McMurtry purchased the glass negatives and I believe donated them to the U. of Texas thus this book has been written. So, I feel a kinship in a way since I was a forerunner in some ways by painting fromher work, writing about her and interviewing her family. I even have the name of the Comanche Indian police there keeping order.

Interesting but Limited
This book is based around prints of 31 glass-plate photographs made primarily by Alice Snearly in and around Cache, OK, at the turn of the 20th century. The collection was acquired by Larry McMurtry, who donated the plates to the University of Texas Press, the publisher of the book.
Noyes, who wrote Los Comanches, provides some interesting but mainly inessential notes that at times border on the annoying, particularly when he noodles off into pointless speculation about how the subjects were thinking or feeling when their photo was taken based on the expressions on their faces.
There is a brief historical survey of the treaties that landed the Comanche on the reservation and the work of various Anglo religious, social, and political factions that gerrymandered their fate afterwards. Noyes also provides information on the Comanches' reservation life and their association with the Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache who shared their reservation. Commentary on the dress of the subjects is informative with respect to the assimilation of the Comanches into Anglo cultural and dress patterns during this transitional period in the tribe's history, but numerous notations on tribal dress also indicate how important the peyote ceremony had become for the tribe in captivity.
The photos are generally soft-focus and relatively low contrast, making it difficult to pick out detail, and there are no magnified views. The notes, however, do well at identifying individuals and pointing out notable objects in the prints. Also, Noyes delivers some interesting anecdotal material on Quanah Parker and some of the other tribal leaders during the reservation years.

Comanches of the New West
Excellent job by the authors with both the text and the selection of photographs. This is a very desirable book for readers interested in Comanches, the development of North Texas, early photography, or the process of Texas transitioning from frontier cultures into society as we have it today.

Fills a Big Gap
The historical introduction in this book has filled a huge gap bydetailing the events of the lives of Commanches after they were placed on the reservation up to about 1915.Most of the happenings are the same for other reservation peoples and yet few nonIndians are familiar with the sequence of events after various native groups of people were put on reservations.

The photographs are unique and ones not previously seen before.Larry McMurty has provided a valuable service by making these images available through the University of Texas archives. ... Read more

Product Description
Monsieur Monde is a successful middle-aged businessman in Paris. One morning he walks out on his life, leaving his wife asleep in bed, leaving everything. Not long after, he surfaces on the Riviera, keeping company with drunks, whores and pimps, with thieves and their marks. A whole new world, where he feels surprisingly at home—at least for a while.

Georges Simenon knew how obsession, buried for years, can come to life, and about the wreckage it leaves behind. He had a remarkable understanding of how bizarrely unaccountable people can be. And he had an almost uncanny ability to capture the look and feel of a given place and time. Monsieur Monde Vanishes is a subtle and profoundly disturbing triumph by the most popular of the twentieth century's great writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Existential crisis for an haut bourgeois
As author Larry McMurtry points out in his introduction to "Monsieur Monde Vanishes," Georges Simenon wrote this Maigretless short novel at about the same time Albert Camus had published "The Stranger."There are some parallels, certainly in the moods of the two books.That the French had recently experienced a traumatic military defeat at the hands of the Germans and were under Nazi occupation for more than four years could certainly have had something to do with the sense of alienation and detachment that are the central themes underlying both tales.

In "Monsieur Monde Vanishes," the story's protagonist, Norbert Monde, a man with a comfortable, upper-middle class life suddenly bolts from his marriage and professional responsibilities at the end of one ordinary workday and takes another identity and eventually begins to lead another life.Unfortunately for M. Monde, he is a magnet for others who are less fortunate or whose lives are less orderly.Through a series of encounters, his innate sense of responsibility (not shed with the old identity) pulls him back toward the accountabiity that he had hoped to be rid of forever.When he comes across the woman who was his first wife and his first great disappointment with life, in a state of crisis, the die is cast and Norbert Monde's vanishing act will soon be history.

The story speaks to virtually everyone's inevitable dissatisfactions with life, but makes no attempt to provide answers or comfort.Perhaps there are none to be had.

Interesting short novel.I have to admit that I prefer to have Inspector Maigret along for these crises de vie that are manifest in Simenon's writing.

A Stranger No More
MONSIEUR MONDE VANISHES is one of Simenon's roman durs, in which the author applies a darker and more noir edge to the foibles of everyday existence.The story is simple.Norbert Monde has lived a life noted by others for its upscale opportunities, but noted by Monsieur Monde himself for its straightjacket constriction.Living in the same house all his life, working in the business handed down to him, he longs to escape, existentially as well as physically, to the darker side.Out of the mansion and into the alleyway.He has had a glimpse of this in the past.His first wife had the hobby, before tucking her children into bed and kissing her husband good night, of posing for lurid pornography, sold on the back streets of Paris to whatever rogue wanted it.

It becomes clear that others really do not see him as a man.He is instead a provider - of money, of position, of status.His 48th birthday is so inconsequential that it goes unnoticed.

And so, on one day like any other, Monsieur Monde vanishes.Strikingly, he made no decision to leave his comfortable life.It was merely the normal, natural extension of that particular day.No more thought or decision went into it than on all the previous days when he returned home after work.This time, the natural progression was to just keep walking.

Trading in his fine clothes for a cheap suit, Monsieur Monde arrives first in Marseille where he meets Julie, the type of common girl whose company would be consistent with his new life.Traveling further to Nice, the two create their new lives of striking simplicity.Working at the illicit casino, consorting with rogues and vagrants, Monsieur Monde is so determined to shed his old self that he is actually glad when someone rips off the money he had brought with him.It was a betrayal of himself for taking the money along to begin with.

A novel as much about inner exploration, Monsieur Monde comes face to face with his former life, discovering along the way that real change (and I know this sounds wincingly like some new age mumbo jumbo) comes from within.The trip to the back alley, the gambling halls, and associating with loose women and morphine addicts, allows our good Monsieur Monde to find that, although his family had taken him for granted, he did in fact exist.He is substantial.And others, you better believe, will look into his eyes and know it, too.

Psycological novel
This is a great book but one would never read it if one merely read the back cover copy which is totally inaccurate -- so inaccurate that one suspects the writer of the copy has never read the book.I have read M. Monde Vanishes many times in French (La Fuite de M. Monde) and given dozens copies of this excellent English translation to friends and acquaintances.M. Monde learns, in the course of his adventures after he flees his unhappy existence, that true freedom comes from inside -- one does not have to tear one's life apart, one can to change one's perspective.In Simenon's usual concise, brilliant style.

"Let's take a boat to Bermuda
Let's take a plane to Saint Paul.
Let's take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack,
Let's get away from it all."

I have to admit that Frank Sinatra version of "Let's Get Away From it All" kept entering my consciousness as I read George Simenon's "Monsieur Monde Vanishes".The upbeat nature of the song is not remotely like the dark, reflective tone of Simenon's story but if you have ever sat in your office on a dreary day or sat in your home on a humdrum evening and just wondered what it would be like to just walk away from your life and start fresh somewhere else then you will have some understanding and, perhaps, sympathy for a man who wakes up one morning and decides to get away from it all.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, almost pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "Monsieur Monde Vanishes" is an excellent place to start.

As with virtually all his protagonists in these hard stories, Monde is a stolid, middle-class member of the establishment.Based in Paris, Monde runs the family export/import business. His is a life of regular habits, from the time he wakes up, through his work day and then through the evening.He is married (a second wife) and has children.Beneath this surface regularity lies a yearning to get away, to just leave everything behind and as the book opens Monde does just that. The rest of the novel explores Monde's journey, his new identity, the places he goes (the French coast) and the people he meets.He sheds his stolid identity like someone sheds their clothing at night and finds himself in a world entirely different from the one he leaves behind.The reader witnesses this transformation in what can be best described as something of a voyeuristic fashion.

Simenon's hard novels are often referred to as psychological novels but I find that term a bit misleading. Simenon does not analyze. He does not delve deep into his protagonists' minds. He presents the reader with a slice of the human condition and lets the reader deal with the implications, the psychoanalysis if you like. They do offer glimpses into his protagonists' lives even though (or perhaps because) he does not fill in the blanks for you. His character's actions speak for themselves and what they have to say is not always pleasant. In "Monsieur Monde" we are not presented with an explanation for Monde's acts. They are simply provided to the reader.It is up to us to judge them or analyze them if we so choose.In a world of fiction filled with happiness and redemption and the ultimate triumph of good against evil, Simenon is a breath of fresh (if pessimistic) air. "Monsieur Monde" does break away from this mold a bit as I found there was a bit more `closure' (a hackneyed word to be sure but it seems suitable for use here) in "Monsieur Monde" than in some of his other works.Unlike some of his other books we see someone reclaim some of the responsibility he walked away from.However, the question that Simenon poses is a critical one, is the Monde that reenters the world left behind the same man?

"Let's take a trip in a trailer
No need to come back at all.
Let's take a powder to Boston for chowder,
Let's get away from it all."

"Monsieur Monde Vanishes" was an enjoyable book to read. Highly recommended.L. Fleisig

Businessman's Vacation
One of the values of Amazon's recommendation software is that you are directed to authors with whose work you may not be familiar and who are not carried on the shelves of most bookstores.This is how I found Monsieur Monde Vanishes.It is an economical and very visual book even though the visuals are of mostly unremarkable venues: cheap hotel rooms, the back office of a nightclub, train stations, etc.The narrative value, however, lies partly in bringing such sites to life.

The largely passive Monde exits his successful life in Paris to allow another life in Nice to happen to him.In the end, this change enables him to return to his prior existence possessed of enhanced stature with his business, his wife and his son.The breaking of his life pattern, even though he is compelled to return to it, seems to give Monde additional power over his environment.

Read this book and get swept up in the rhythm of an unspectacular life that is likely different than your own in detail but not in method. ... Read more