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Chargement... The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel (édition 2015)par Larry McMurtry (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreThe Last Kind Words Saloon par Larry McMurtry
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. A quick, enjoyable read by one of my favorite authors. In his final novel, McMurtry spins a short yarn around the historical characters Charles Goodnight, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday. Though the story is brief, McMurtry displays his continued mastery of character development and dialogue. Not his best, but worth a read for fans. ( ) I would have enjoyed this more if I had known it was more a collection of sketches featuring mostly Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, along with several other characters from McMurtry's stories. I was puzzling over trying to make sense of the narrative until I finally realized that there really was no narrative, and by then nearly half the book was gone. Yes, I am that dense. So by the time I finally settled in to just enjoy the characters and the prose, there wasn't enough left to really enjoy. Audiobook, borrowed from my public library. Outstanding performances by Tom Stechschulte and Carine Montbertrand. The Last Kind Words Saloon is the opposite of McMurtry's masterpiece, Lonesome Dove. The Last Kind Words Saloon is a short novella that focuses on Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday as well as a series of other intriguing characters (some that come from other McMurtry's works) as they roam and ramble around the American West. The story is told through a series of short chapters (not uncommon to McMurtry) and vignettes. The novel ends with the famous shoot out at the OK Corral but it isn't a glorified Hollywood shoot out. In fact, it's quite anticlimactic. McMurtry dabbled in short prose more often than folks think and in a way, The Last Kind Words Saloon, is McMurtry exercising this strength of his. It also feels cinematic (McMurtry also worked movie scripts). McMurtry accurately captures this novel's flavor in his preface as “a ballad in prose whose characters are afloat in time; their legends and their lives in history rarely match”. Quoting the director John Ford: “when you had to choose between history and legend, print the legend. And so I’ve done.” What McMurtry has done, like the great John Ford, is taken the history and made his own sprawling, mythic American Western legend out of it. It might not be accurate or what you think but it's also superbly human. The Last Kind Words Saloon is a mythic, melancholy, humorous journey through a different time through the eyes of legends. And it may not rank as one of McMurtry's greatest novels, it certainly, and if you allow it to, can move you. Like for many others, this fell flat for me. I don't get what it's supposed to be. It's far removed from Lonesome Dove's heights and it's not even a Dead Man's Walk. A meditation on the western heroes and some attempt to contrast the legend with a less glamorous reality? Except he states the opposite from the outset. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Fin XIXe siècle, Long Grass, presque dans le Kansas mais pas tout à fait. Presque aussi dans le Nouveau-Mexique mais pas tout à fait. Wyatt Earp et Doc Holliday sont, certes, des cow-boys mais plus tout à fait. Ils observent leur monde qui s'échappe : s'ils dégainent, c'est pour rater toutes les cibles, alors ils se tirent dessus avec des balles à blanc pour se donner en spectacle. Le bétail part en cavalcade, les femmes demandent les hommes en mariage et dressent les mustangs, on poursuit les Indiens pour ne pas perdre la main… Dans ce monde à l'envers, les deux amis errent de ville en ville, une enseigne Saloon sous la main avec l'espoir de l'accrocher dans un lieu où ce mot aurait encore un sens. Ce roman décalé qui joue les westerns chante avec tendresse et humour un Grand Ouest sauvage en passe de devenir un décor de carton-pâte. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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