Even when you know it's coming, it's always tough to cope with the death of an artist you cared about. As I wrote about previously, I started reading Larry McMurtry in high school, and he's one of the few authors from back then that I continue to read as I head into late middle age. I used to idenfity with his younger characters, and then his somewhat older ones...often the same characters in different books. Although he is better known for Lonesome Dove and the other Westerns, I seldom read those. I've written about the Thalia cycle, and another of my favorites is All of My Friends Are Going to be Strangers. His three book memoir about book dealing, screenwriting, and novel writing are gems. I am sad that he is gone, though I'd had difficult with his later work. But it is sad when you know that a body of work has come to an end, that there is a limit to the number of works out there.
Reading MOVING ON, which is like his contemporary version of LONESOME DOVE in that it's a very long book. In his preface he writes about how he couldn't come up with a title and initally named it after its main character, Patsy Carpenter, but the publisher wouldn't go for it. I am looking forward to revisiting it in the coming days, it's one that I haven't read since college, and might appreciate it more now that I've been married/divorced.
