FOR REASONS I can’t fathom, and perhaps don’t really need to fathom, both as reader and writer I have long been attracted to tetralogies. Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet was probably the first to really grab me, perhaps because of the huge success of the first book, Justine .
Then, by accident, I happened on to the Ford Maddox Ford Tietjens books, which I liked very much in spots, but only in spots; the author, it seemed to me, had carried his story one volume too far, which still puts him with a slight edge on Anthony Powell, whose A Dance to the Music of Time is at least two books too long, and now very dated to boot.
Powell’s long novel is in twelve parts, as is his friend (if he had friends) James Lees-Milne’s wonderful Diaries , which is nearly as novelistic as A Dance , as I hope to argue someday.
Lately, to my own surprise, my own Last Picture Show sequence (The Last Picture Show, Texasville, Duane’s Depressed , When the Light Goes , and Rhino Ranch ) unexpectedly turned itself into a quintet. The last two books, When the Light Goes and Rhino Ranch , are about the coming of age. They carry Duane—just eighteen when I first took an interest in his life—on to his end.
The novelist, when he sets out to judge his own output, has no special authority—this has been pointed out by many writers.
Probably most strangers, coming to my work, would follow popular opinion and declare Lonesome Dove their favorite.
It’s certainly a book with some power, and part of the power comes from the fact that we’re retracing a myth—the myth of the cowboy, or of the American West as a whole. My father and his brothers, all cattlemen, served that myth all their lives, and I, as a descendant of cattlemen, was always aware of it but long ago fled from it.
I don’t dislike Lonesome Dove and I was not surprised that the book did so well from the prize point of view, not to mention the sales point of view. The book has reinforced the myth by being made into an extremely appealing and successful miniseries, which will achieve its twentieth anniversary this year. It got a grip on the public imagination like no other Western of its time.
What I learned from writing it was that myth is tenacious. Any attempt to deromanticize the cowboy will only boomerang and end up striking whatever it attempts to debunk. If Lonesome Dove satisfies its huge public emotionally, then the author should just stand back and let it happen. It does no harm, and may even provide a kind of security.