A young writer hits the dusty Texas highway for the California coast in this “brilliant . . . funny and dangerously tender” (Time) tale of art and sacrifice. Hailed as one of “the best novels ever set in America’s fourth largest city” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry’s “comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension” (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the “mundane happiness” of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, “El Chevy,” bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naive troubadour’s pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully “normal” friend. Since the novel’s publication in 1972, Danny Deck has “been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life” (McMurtry), a testament to the author’s incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.
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In honor of McMurtry's recent passing, I decided to read a novel of his I'd never read before. This picaresque novel follows the shenanigans of young novelist Danny Deck, who lives in Houston and has sold a novel as well as screenplay rights to it for a pile of cash, while weaseling his way into the hearts and pants of several women in his life. When he impetuously marries Sally, a woman he met while sleeping on the floor of a friend's house after a party, the couple escapes to San Francisco—where their marriage falls apart—and we readers follow Danny from one bad decision to the next, eventually leading him back to Houston.
McMurtry has a gift for turning a phrase, particularly when describing a place he loves. For example, he writes, “Houston was my companion on the walk. She had been my mistress, but after a thousand nights together, just the two of us, we were calling it off. It was a warm, moist, mushy, smelly night, the way her best nights were. The things most people hated about her were the things I loved: her heat, her dampness, her sumpy smells. She wasn't beautiful, but neither was I.” But this book also finds McMurtry laying down some lazy passages, too, with annoying alliteration like this. “Leon actually has to affect affectations” and “the puppet of remote but very powerful powers.” He does this often throughout the novel and it is very distracting.
Danny is not a likeable character either. He suffers from almost debilitating case of imposter syndrome, even though enormous financial success from his novel falls in his lap time and time again, as simple for him as plucking grapes from a fruit bowl. But once I gave up on the hope that I would eventually like Danny, the novel becomes much more enjoyable and entertaining. If taken as an opportunity to observe a buffoon fail at being a decent human being, then the tale becomes much more fascinating, and even enjoyable in a sadistic way. There were some very funny scenes and interactions between Danny and his neighbor in San Francisco, Wu, who has spent 19 years writing an unpublishable novel and accompanies Danny to Ping Pong tournaments. Turns out Danny's wife Sally is insufferable, but Danny is no saint. He passive-aggressively snakes his way into the hearts of Jill and friend Emma, getting into their pants and making quick carnage of their lives.
It's hard to say if the ending is satisfying or not, but either way, I did enjoy reading this humorous novel about this novelist / underdeveloped young man whose friends (mostly women) become strangers totally by his own selfish undoing.
Overall, I enjoyed this novel from 1972 and would give it 4 stars.
