As seen on this week’s episode of Mad Men.
“Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken-fried steak.”
- Larry McMurtry
The best books I read in 2011, listed chronologically
Another list and y’all can just suck my butt.
1. The Human Stain by Phillip Roth
2. What Hetty Did by J.L. Carr
3. Comet In Moominland by Tove Jansson
4. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
5. The Tiger by John Vaillant
6. Moving On by Larry McMurtry
7. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
8. My Antonia by Willa Cather
9. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
10. Trust Me by John Updike
11. A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
12. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
13. Herzog by Saul Bellow
14. The Wife Of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis
15. The Adventures Of Augie March by Saul Bellow
16. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (my favorite favorite of the year)
17. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
18. Blue Nights by Joan Didion
McMurtry.
photo by Michael O’Brien.
"All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed we live and what they lived we dream."
—
—Larry McMurtry (via leyendecker)
I hate to be That Guy for a second, but this quote actually comes from a book of critical essays called Study Out The Land by a guy named T.K. Whipple. Regardless, I copied this quote by hand from my paperback copy of Lonesome Dove and taped up the slip of paper on the wall of my bedroom in San Angelo last summer. It’s a good thing to keep in mind.
