Lonesome Dove--A Pulitzer Prize Winner

I found Lonesome Dove at the Salvation Army and got it as part of 8 for a dollar. So the price was right. And the read was fun. It was long, with lots of different characters, set in the west and most of it was about a camping trip. Well, it was really a cattle drive, but they did have to camp all the way from the Texas-Mexico border area to the Montana-Canada border area. So the setting was a big plus. I sort of knew the story, because I had seen some bits of the movie, but there was way more than enough I didn't remember and wanted to find out to keep me going from chapter to chapter. I stayed up late several nights to read and read instead of doing other things several other times. The book left me sad. Gus, who was easy-going and ready for fun and adventure liked to talk and he liked to argue. He also liked women. Call, who was the leader, could get men to do things but could not understand much about women or himself. He couldn't own up to the reality that Newt was his son. But he cared for him and really helped raise him as part of the 'outfit'/family. He could hardly say his name and called him "the boy". But then he had trouble being able to call the mother by name as well. Maybe the silent type fit the wild west well, but Call was relationally a cripple. When Clara told him off on his way back to Texas, he couldn't answer her and dwelt long on her words as he carried Gus' body back to Texas. I guess what hit me was that someone could write a 900+ page book that included such intriguing characters and leave them so superficial. It makes me wonder if the 'old west' was really like that in terms of personhood, or if it was Larry McCurty. Maybe it was because Lonesome Dove grew out of a 1972 screenplay and so it carried a Hollywood stamp from the start and entertainment was the focus. Entertaining it was. A fun read. I looked up places on the maps and Google Earth. I would have liked to been there (sort of). This was my second Pulitzer Prize winner I have read in the past two years. It was definitely more fun than The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. But neither of them compare to the two other Pulitzer Prize winning novels that I have under my belt (The Caine Mutiny and To Kill a Mockingbird).