accessible than those previously published.

For a novel that chronicles the downward plunge of a middle-aged man whose wife has walked out on him unexpectedly, whose business is fast failing, and whose love life consists of a series of frantic, loveless couplings with various unattached women friends, Nothing But Blue Skies is a very amusing book.

This novel is filled with wonderful one-liners. While McGuane has said elsewhere that he sometimes thinks he will yawn himself to death in Montana—what with all the “yeps” and “nopes” of the natives there—the man definitely has a keen ear for his neighbors’ speech, and he has managed to capture that speech perfectly here. When these folks speak, McGuane is clearly a good and attentive listener, and he mimics their “poor-boy” conversations over coffee in a way which must turn professional impressionists green with envy: “Why, it’s not as if we had nice childhoods, home alone sewing up prolapsed cows with hog rings and shoelaces—I’m sure you done that.” And this: “‘By the way,’ the older man said, relighting the cigarette stub, ‘I believe my dog is superstitious. This morning he wouldn’t go up to that green stock truck belonging to Vanderhooven. Do you recall Joker ever being run over by anything green or anything which was owned by Vanderhooven?’”

And then there is the setting for Nothing But Blue Skies: Deadrock, Montana, is a town of some 10,000 souls wherein some of McGuane’s earlier works have been set. Deadrock is the sort of town where the protagonist’s recently departed wife, Gracie Copenhaver, can unself-consciously operate a cafe called “Amazing Grease”; it is a place where a run-down (although historically significant) Main Street hotel called the Kid Royale can be converted into a large chicken house in order to foil the bankers who would repossess it; it is the kind of place where a born-again Christian appliance repairman by the name of “Rance” is likely to walk over and interrupt the Holiday Inn meal of the town’s leading real estate developer and the Buick dealer to protest the dirty words he has heard being used during the two’s breakfast conversation—a conversation that centers on a pornographic video the Buick dealer has recently rented.

Thomas McGuane has been compared to Ernest Hemingway—both in his personal life and in his work. The comparison reflects the fact that McGuane’s leading characters, like those of Hemingway, are generally virile individualists—sportsmen, loners, outlaws—men who drink heavy and play hard while they go about the business of battling established authority and other wrong-thinking encroachers-upon-nature. But reading this novel may just as much put one in mind of the later work of Larry McMurtry as of Hemingway. This is not to suggest that McGuane is derivative of McMurtry, but simply that McGuane’s version of the modern West and McMurtry’s have much in common.

Early in the book we learn that Frank Copenhaver has long been a free spirit:

Once when Frank worked on a road crew in Yellowstone, when he was young, a girl who looked like Lucy stopped in her convertible while a bulldozer crossed the road. They spoke briefly, Frank put down his shovel and got in the convertible. When he returned two weeks later, the job was gone.

In short, Copenhaver has chosen to live life to its fullest—to seize the day—to see to it that life does not pass him by. Readers already familiar with McGuane will no doubt recognize this to be a recurring characteristic of the folks who people his books. Fans of Thomas McGuane have come to expect that characters in his novels do inexplicable things.

Consider a couple of examples: Besides starting barroom brawls with cowpokes and engaging in spontaneous sex with his travel agent, Lucy Dyer, in the backseat of a Buick (this is not his or her Buick, but rather a stranger’s car that happens to be handy and unlocked), Copenhaver sometimes sneaks around Deadrock at night peering into windows; for reasons that remain unclear, he steals a car from the parking lot behind the local hardware store to drive to another town; and later he steals Lucy’s cowboy-boyfriend’s pickup and, when he gets it bogged down in mud, hotwires a handy log skidder to try and forklift the truck back onto solid ground (with the not-unexpected results).

Another glimpse of Copenhaver’s idiosyncratic approach to life is provided when daughter Holly, home for a visit from college, tells her father that she thinks the wake “or the funeral, or whatever it was,” that he held when her mother left was “unnecessary.”

“Did any of you wonder what that outrageous wake must have made me feel like?”

Frank thought for a moment. “Maybe we didn’t think about that as much as we should have.”

“Going down Main Street with a coffin? A loudspeaker truck playing ‘Paint It Black’ by the Rolling Stones? The pallbearers were all…bombed. Very few people in that huge crowd had ever even met Mama. Some of them believed she really died! It was a disgrace and now it has become a famous disgrace, the big event of the last ten years.”

“Well, it was a lot of fun for some people. Folks remember the good times.”

“Oh, boy.”

Indeed, Thomas McGuane’s characters are apt at times to do outrageous things. But then they are apt also to do wonderfully sane things. They are likely to go fishing, for example. More precisely, they are likely to go fly-fishing.

Some of McGuane’s best writing happens when the subject is sport. His collection of essays on sport, An Outside Chance (1980, rev. ed. 1990), ranks among the most articulate available on such diverse subjects as bird dogs, fishing small streams, motorcycle sports, hunting, and rodeo. So when in the course of the novel Frank Copenhaver retreats now and then to his favorite fly-fishing spot, those readers who know McGuane feel right at home.

The fishing scenes here are quiet and sane—idyllic, even—and readers share the joy when Frank coaches Holly into landing a huge trout:

“I’m so happy, I’m so happy!” Holly cried as Frank submerged the net to keep the trout underwater. “I never caught such a big fish!”

…They began hollering like wild hog hunters, gesturing at the sky, Frank with his fists, Holly with her rod.

“I’m the champion of the world!” Holly yelled.

And we share Frank’s sorrow when he and Holly discover later that this favorite stream has been dammed:

Frank drove Holly to her apartment. They talked very little on the way back. Frank thought that it was pretty unlucky to go fishing and find the stream had been stolen, particularly when you needed the stream for more than just fishing.

Nothing But Blue Skies is easily the most accessible of the novels produced by one of America’s best writers. Thomas McGuane has written a very fine novel, indeed.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXVIII, August, 1992, p. 1973.

Chicago Tribune. September 13, 1992, XIV, p. 3.

The Christian Science Monitor. October 7, 1992, p. 14.

Kirkus Reviews. LX, July 15, 1992, p. 874.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. October 11, 1992, p. 1.

The New York Review of Books. XXXIX, December 3, 1992, p. 14.

The New York Times Book Review. XCVII, September 13, 1992, p. 7.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIX, July 13, 1992, p. 47.

Time. CXL, November 2, 1992, p. 72.

The Washington Post Book World. XXII, September 13, 1992, p. 3.

While Nothing But Blue Skies might be nestled within the rich tapestry of American novels critiquing business ethics—from the reflective depths of Henry James's The Ambassadors (1904) to the existential drudgery of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit—its closest kin are, intriguingly, McGuane's own earlier works. The fraught father-son conflict that breathes through his initial tales makes a reappearance, though here it is seen through the lens of history, supplanted by the impending dissolution of a marriage. This shift marks a thematic maturity, heralding a quest for closure and resolution in narrative structure that McGuane's earliest novels seemed to artfully evade.

The story unfolds in a cascade of unruly escapades, racing headlong into a future both feared and inevitable. Picture Copenhaver, determinedly washing Boyd off his pickup by steering it through a car-wash, or the chaotic spectacle of a forklift impaling Darryl's truck. Scenes like hiding in a trash can to ambush a mischievous, bike-riding pre-teen inject humor and randomness into the violence, highlighting a blend of aggression and escapism that comically diffuses the tension. As the tale races to its climax, Frank spirals from one frenzied confrontation to another; whether grappling with cowboys in a drunk tank, clashing with preservationists over his Kid Royale Hotel and chicken farm, or facing off against his wife's lover, Edward, the story ultimately finds unity through Gracie, Frank's wife.

At a sprawling 350 pages, this novel stretches to nearly twice the length of McGuane's previous works. The prose remains as sharp as ever, but the sprawling narrative risks unraveling under the weight of its own comedic momentum. This risk, however, is cleverly averted by framing the story with a circular structure, beginning and concluding at the same juncture. Gracie's initial departure—and the fractured marriage that prompts it—sets the stage with austere clarity. The novel closes with Gracie's second departure, this time accompanied by Frank, revealing the roots of their estrangement and paving the way for reconciliation. By tracing this narrative circle, McGuane deftly provides an escape from despair, using this structure to impose order over chaos and distinguish the comic from the anarchic.