Miles - Liked, but didn't love this. He has read lots of McMurtry but the author is so prolific that his later work seems to be all the same. Miles compared him to Elton John with his early stuff being fantastic, while his later years produced easy listening background music. He thought that Calamity Jane was the least interesting of all the characters to build the narrative around. There wasn't a lot of structure; it was big on tone which was mostly sad, but built up to depressing. It had the threads of all McMurtry novels: eccentric characters with wry, droll humor, and a melancholic sense of the passing of time. Miles had no prior conception of the characters and he thought they were brought to life well. He liked the theme of coming around to love the things we set out to destroy: beaver, buffalo, Indians. McMurtry's westerns always bring Miles a degree of escapism: open plains with nothing but space and time before you and no material goods. There is an appeal to that. He's glad he read it, but it's not a favorite.
Sandy - Westerns are not her type of book. Dora crying over Blue repeatedly drove her crazy. She suspected that Calamity Jane was swinging the other way. She wished that she had read this on a Kindle so she could find out how many times 'No Ears' was mentioned. This too drove her crazy, but she found Calamity Jane's letters to her daughter to be very touching. There were so many characters to keep track of, but she enjoyed looking up the true-life ones and learning their history. Sandy called Buffalo Bill the original reality TV star and was amazed that he was able to organize his show to places all over the world without the aide of a cell phone. She found Calamity a fascinating character as well and thought it interesting that she really didn't do anything other than tell stories, most of which were lies.
K'Lynn - Couldn't agree with Miles more. Lonesome Dove is one of her favorite books of all time, and time stopped for three days when she read it. So she liked, but didn't love Buffalo Girls. She liked the mix of fictional and real characters, but didn't think that Calamity Jane should be the focus. Her favorite character was No Ears and she loved that he wound up with a dozen or so wax ears. She too liked Calamity's letters to her daughter. She found the book humorous, touching, and full of good characters.
Becky - Ragg and Bone is also the name of a clothing store and she wondered if this were pure coincidence. Maggie shared that in England there were people referred to as Rag and Bone men who would come about occasionally shouting, "Rag and Bone man!" and Maggie's mom would send her out with a bag of unwanted clothing, kind of like a traveling Goodwill. Becky did a lot of homework on this book and found the term Buffalo Girls originated from the building of the Eerie Canal. The prostitutes in Buffalo, New York came to be known as Buffalo Girls. Of course, each town had their prostitutes, but Buffalo Girls must have had a better ring to it than Syracuse Girls and the name stuck. No Ears and Doozie were her favorite characters, Calamity Jane was too wearisome with all of her sadness and drinking. She thought the writing was great with a subtle dry humor. She liked the line about no one being too insane to hang out West.
Maggie - "This was the most depressing damn book I've read in a long time." She found nothing redeeming about it or any of the characters. She couldn't get a grasp on any of them and didn't know which ones were real or fictional. She thought there must be some humor in it, but was unable to find any. Although she didn't like any of the characters, she loved how No Ears looked forward to telling his people about the animals he saw at the zoo. More than once she thought to herself, "Will this book never end?" She found there was nothing in the book to like.
Michelle - Doesn't read Westerns, but has watched many and was familiar with most of the characters through this. Mentioned talking to Becky about the book and Sandy made a note to demote both Michelle and Becky to last place for next month's meeting. Michelle was hot and cold, at first liking it, then loving it, then she got tired of it. She varied back and forth through this pattern several times. Calamity Jane was her favorite character. She was the only woman out there doing what the men did, and she thought it was obvious that she had had relationships with other women. She thought the characters never wanted to settle down because they always saw themselves on a big adventure. She too loved No Ears and the relationship between him and Calamity Jane. She did a lot of research and estimated about 90% of what happened to the historical characters actually happened.
Carolyn - Thought that you wouldn't want to read this book for fact. She too researched the historical characters. Has any other book ever inspired this much homework? She thought that Calamity must have had a real daughter, but found it odd that she never mentioned it to anyone. It cracked her up that Ragg and Bone walked everywhere and she wondered how they knew where to go. Carolyn was very sad when Dora died when she finally had something going for her with the baby and new hotel. But in her research she found this wasn't the case at all and that Dora lived until the 1930's. Why would McMurtry choose to write historical fiction this way? Sandy then coined a new genre and called it Historical Bullshit. Carolyn also learned that the term 'cat house' originated from Dora's establishment when she had a wagon load of cats delivered to her hotel. She was disappointed that much of the book wasn't true and the homeless wandering and rampant alcoholism made her sad.
Leticia - Originally rated this a five except she too researched the real characters and that made her go up to a six. She assumed that Calamity was a lesbian and in love with Dora. She too found that Dora lived into her 60's and was a very strong successful woman. It annoyed her that McMurtry would change the truth with such a character as her. She loved No Ears and liked reading his perspective on things, especially the line about Whites always being so surprised by death when it was something that is always just a breath away. This is on page 321 of some of the versions, but not mine, so I can't quote it directly. She didn't think there was much action in the story, some humor, but mostly it was just depressing.
Pat - I thought it was a good companion book to Lonesome Dove. It marks the ending of the Wild West era by many of the major players themselves and so it makes sense that it's kind of depressing. Many of us used the word melancholy to describe it and I think that seems to evoke the West in general. I also saw many of the McMurtry staples: strong women characters that cry a lot, lots of death, and a dialogue driven plot that starts with zero backstory forcing you to trust the author to let the story unfold in his own unique pace. No Ears was my favorite character as well. The best part was his impressions of the zoo in London and it seems to me that would have been a better book all together, describing their time there and the clash of cultures. Yes, it was a sad book, but melancholy seems to fit the end of an age.
Kath - Greetings from a non-prostitute Buffalo Girl. I have not yet read Lonesome Dove so this was my first experience with McMurtry and I found it a dreary slog. I definitely felt the melancholy many of you mention as the characters aimlessly move around their West, watching it deteriorate around them. I also echo many of you with feeling that Calamity Jane should not have been the center of the story. I found her voice sad, for sure, but mainly repetitive and not so interesting. This shouldn't be the case; who she was as a female in her time was certainly interesting. I loved No Ears and would have loved even more of him and his wax ears that helped him hear the old voices from his life. Finding out from you all that Dora's sad ending was not true to life also annoys me. These people had a hard and interesting enough life that it seems cheap of the author to create a more melodramatic ending just to neatly package up the rest of the characters' stories. Coincidentally, I was in Florida this weekend visiting my parents and we went to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. One of their Complexes houses a Circus Museum and contained a poster from 1913 about Buffalo Bill's show. Apparently, in 1894 James Bailey (of Barnum and Bailey) bought an interest in the show and began the show's era of traveling by railroad. Not sure I can attach an image of the poster but will try.
Next book: Deliverance by James Dickey
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