Larry McMurtry recently published his first non-fiction book [In a Narrow Grave], a collection of essays on Texas customs, beliefs, and cities. It will be interesting to compare this book with his novels, all of which display a knowledge of and respect for the land. But McMurtry displays no sentimentality or nostalgia for the country, however descriptively he has written of it…. McMurtry has written about life in the country and in the dead or dying little towns from first hand experience. In doing so, he has chronicled what becomes a major theme in his fiction: the initiation into manhood and its inevitable corollaries—loneliness and loss of innocence.

McMurtry's first novel, Horseman, Pass By … examines the initiation theme that is developed further in his later novels. A general feeling of loneliness permeates this first book. (pp. 171-72)

Lonnie's loneliness, however, is different from that of the adults in the book…. [It] is that strange mixture of restlessness, longing, and frustration so typical of the male adolescent. The same train that depresses his grandfather fills Lonnie with wanderlust…. (p. 173)

Lonnie's expressions of discontent and restlessness are, of course, symptomatic of his awakening sexuality, catalyzed by the presence of the brown skinned Halmea…. The primary motivation for Lon's wanting to escape the confines of the ranch, of Thalia itself, is to discover himself through sexual experience…. (p. 174)

Neither Updike nor Salinger has been as successful as McMurtry in describing the gnawing ache that accompanies adolescent sexuality. It is this same awakening sexuality that racks the boys in The Last Picture Show. Sex dominates their thoughts and their conversations, and it is the motivation for many of their actions (both foolish and violent)…. Halmea [in Horseman, Pass By] understands men, and she understands the adolescent male—she knows how sex can drive a man, causing him to be clownish, lovable, or vicious. She has been amused by Lon's sexual awakening, by his obvious and bungling overtures; now she can sympathize with his frustration and anxiety. In this she somewhat parallels Molly in Leaving Cheyenne, who realizes the importance of sex to a man: "it was because a man needed it, and had it all tangled up with his pride."… Indeed, it is only with the magnificently realized character of Molly that any of McMurtry's males find happiness, fleeting though it may be. Lon, in Horseman, Pass By, remains unfulfilled, and in the "Epilogue" it is apparent that he must flee Thalia and its environs…. But he is not going past Wichita, where his friend is hospitalized. He was correct when he sensed the futility of himself and of his friends: "All of them wanted more and seemed to end up with less; they wanted excitement and ended up stomped by a bull or smashed against a highway;… whatever it was they wanted, that was what they ended up doing without."

In McMurtry's second novel, Leaving Cheyenne …, the characters are equally bound to the town of Thalia and its environs; the Cheyenne of the title is Thalia (that is, Archer City), but no one leaves. Yet in this novel McMurtry is not so much concerned with adolescence as he is with the interactions of his characters…. The book is structured in four parts: the first section is Gid's narrative, the second Molly's, the third Johnny's, and the fourth the inscription on their tombstones. Both Gid and Johnny have loved Molly since they were boys, and the forty year span of the book traces their strange relationship with her. Much is revealed about Molly in the first and third sections; since she is the most important thing in the lives of the two men, it is quite natural that their narratives are predominantly about Molly. It is in Molly's own section, however, that the reader is given the greatest insight to Molly's personality. Although Molly's narrative is concerned with her memories of father, sons, and lovers, the section is really about her; in the account of her love for these men Molly seems to epitomize the Sanskrit message spoken by the thunder in Eliot's Waste Land: datta, dayadhvam, damyata (give, sympathize, control). Molly has indeed given all for love; her life has been dedicated in unselfish giving. Unlike Gid, she has not been afraid to be "whole hog in love."… (pp. 174-76)

Ironically, despite her complex motivation for doing so …, Molly marries the wrong man. The result is that her husband Eddie grows to hate her, and the lives of Gid and Jimmy are ruined. Nevertheless, Molly is a remarkable heroine in a book that recounts one of the strangest relationships in literature.

McMurtry is not as successful with his protagonists in his third novel, The Last Picture Show…. McMurtry has said that part of the concern of The Last Picture Show is to portray how the town is emotionally centered in high school—in adolescence. As a result, the protagonist of the book is somewhat inadequately developed. But The Last Picture Show is weaker than McMurtry's first two novels in other ways than characterization. For one thing, McMurtry seems to write better when he writes of the country. He hates the stultifying atmosphere of the small town, and his antipathy shows in The Last Picture Show. McMurtry says that the emotions at work in Leaving Cheyenne probably reflect his marriage rather than his adolescence, and are more complex, while the emotions underlying The Last Picture Show are distaste, bitterness, and resentment against the small town….

The Last Picture Show, employing the third person omniscient point of view, records the emotional experience of several adolescents (Sonny, Duane, Jacy, and Joe Bob) and indicates how the town (as opposed to the country) complicates their coming of age. (p. 180)

The main action of the novel is concerned with the emergence into manhood of a high school senior named Sonny Crawford. His sophistication (or loss of innocence) as well as that of his peer group, is accomplished through sex. It is through the medium of sex that the inhabitants of Thalia seek (and find) their identity. (pp. 180-81)

The earliest treatment of sex in The Last Picture Show is the description of the adolescent sex play of Sonny and his "steady" girl, Charlene Duggs…. Charlene allows Sonny a little "above the waist passion," but nothing else. Their love making has become a dispassionate ritual which, at best, is frustrating; ultimately, and inevitably, it becomes boring….

Duane is also having trouble with his girlfriend Jacy. Jacy, a spoiled and egotistical rich girl, has no intention of ever marrying Duane, who roughnecks on the night shift with a drilling crew. Jacy equates sex with popularity and performs most passionately when before an audience. (p. 181)

Jacy's theatrical passion actually enhances her reputation at Thalia's high school. Most of Thalia's adolescents seem to have been affected by the movies; even Sonny's girl, Charlene, is most passionate in a theatrical setting….

Though their sexual experience is somewhat broader than that of the girls, the boys of Thalia also often base their notions of love, beauty, and passion on what they have seen in the movies. (p. 182)

The closing of the movie theatre, which had exerted such an influence on the town's adolescents, marks the end of innocence (symbolized by Billy's death) and the emergence into adulthood by the town's youth (the last picture show was "The Kid from Texas").

Billy, the idiot boy who swept out the pool hall and the movie house …, symbolizes innocence. He is often the brunt of cruel pranks played by the boys, but he always remains trusting and loving. He cannot accept the fact that the movie is closed forever; "for seven years he had gone to the show every single night."… As a result of a fight over Jacy, Sonny has lost the sight of one eye, and when Billy is killed he has both his eyes covered with Sonny's eye patches. McMurtry told me that the blindness motif that runs throughout the book symbolizes the "sightlessness of life in a small town." The picture show is what the inhabitants of Thalia see beyond the town; when the show closes, what is beyond the town also closes for them.

The loneliness that was such a dominant leitmotif in McMurtry's first two novels is omnipresent in The Last Picture Show, which begins "Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the only human creature in the town." Sonny's loneliness is echoed in the lives of the adults: Ruth Popper, Genevieve Morgan, Sam the Lion, and Lois Farrow. The loneliness of the adults is underscored by their realization that they are growing old. (p. 183)

The loneliness felt by most of the characters in the book combines with the boredom of the small town to cause them to seek an escape in sex. (p. 185)

[Small] town life is what [The Last Picture Show] is about; specifically, small town sex life. It is not by any means a "western" novel—McMurtry's Thalia could have been located in Sherwood Anderson's Ohio or William Faulkner's Mississippi. Book Week reviewed The Last Picture Show as "a retreat into the literature of nostalgia," "a kind of Huckleberry Finn after the fall." This is, of course, not quite accurate—McMurtry is certainly anything but nostalgic in this book….

McMurtry's portrayal of male adolescence is realistic, if frank. If the book seems obsessed with sex it is only because the adolescent male is typically preoccupied with the subject himself. (p. 186)

McMurtry's male protagonists discover, or come close to discovering, the meaning of life through women who are much older than themselves—in many ways even Molly is a woman when Gid and Johnny are still boys…. The themes of loneliness and lost love are recurrent themes in McMurtry's novels, but the most important theme is the achievement of manhood (with its accompanying loss of innocence) by the various protagonists of the novels. (p. 188)