Duane's Depressed

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Walker and His Family
Two years into his sixties, Duane Moore; a man who had driven pickups for as long as he had been licensed to drive - parked his pickup in his own carport one day and began to walk wherever he went.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Before leaving to go chase down her husband, Karla put in a call to Mildred-Jean Ennis at the beauty parlor - Mildred-Jean was the person to check with about sudden fatalities in the community, the reason being that her beauty parlor was right across

Chapter 2: Chapter 2, Part 2
'Now Baroque came along in real old-timey times,' she explained one morning, after an evening when they had both underestimated the force of some tequila they were drinking, with the stereo in their bedroom turned up high enough to drown out the sounds

Larry McMurtry's "funny and brutal" (New York Times) landmark novel The Last Picture Show introduced the shrinking oil-patch town of Thalia, Texas, and its teenaged residents Duane, Sonny, and Jacy. In Texasville, the trio grew up to "adultery and madness, bankruptcy and boom times," (New York Daily News). Now McMurtry takes his most colorful characters into their twilight years — in an unforgettable end to the Thalia saga.

Surrounded by his children, all of whom are going through tumultuous transitional times; his promiscuous wife, Karla, who is with her own demons; and his friend Sonny, who seems to be dying, Duane can't make sense of his life anymore. The stark realization that he has spent his whole life in a miserable dust-bowl town throws him into a protracted end-of-life crisis — one that will hurtle him toward unexpected love, profoundly affect old friends, and cause him to embark on outlandish new beginning.

McMurtry's strongest and most appealing contemporary novel since Terms of Endearment, Duane's Depressed is utterly unsentimental, often hilarious, sometimes tragic and shocking, and in the end full of hope.

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received the Academy Award. He lives in Archer City, Texas..

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