Product Description

The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove showcases the life of Pretty Boy Floyd, the irresistible young gangster who charmed his way into Americans' hearts during the 1920s even as he robbed their banks. 200,000 first printing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1413060 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As plain and affecting as a Woody Guthrie ballad, this re-creation of the crooked career of the Depression-era desperado/folk hero is Pulitzer Prize-winner McMurtry's (Lonesome Dove) first collaborative effort; he and screenwriter Ossana originally wrote this story as a filmscript. In 1925, after foolishly paying with (ill-gotten) cash for a brand-new Studebaker and driving home to visit his teenage wife and infant son, 21-year-old Oklahoma farm boy Charles Arthur Floyd is arrested and imprisoned for armed robbery. Released after four years, Floyd loses his new job because he's an ex-con. Arrested twice for vagrancy, he returns to the outlaw life and meets rodeo rider-turned-bandit George Birdwell when both he and Floyd strut in to rob the same bank at the same time. The outlaws embark on a reckless spree marked by small-town heists and artless women until Floyd-captured and convicted but escaped-kills a deputy and Birdwell is shot dead by a bookkeeper during a bank robbery. Heading north, Floyd eventually becomes the quarry of legendary G-man Melvin Purvis. Told in homely prose that's perfectly wedded to its subject, this engaging tragicomic novel is as much a study of quiet desperation as of crime and punishment. 275,000 first printing; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
McMurtry (The Evening Star, LJ 6/1/92) and screenwriter Ossana initially wrote a screenplay based on the life of Pretty Boy Floyd and then decided to expand the story into a novel. The novel retains the tone of a script: it's heavy on dialog and has little character development. Pretty Boy Floyd took on the status of a folk hero in the 1920s, but here he comes across as a cartoon. He's a petty criminal out of control, surrounded by women who can't resist him and stupid accomplices. The women are mostly whores with hearts of gold or long-suffering wives, eager for a few special moments with their man. While this is certainly not McMurtry's best work, his reputation should elicit demand for this novel in public libraries. [Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.]-Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., N.C.
--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll., N.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry teams with screenwriter Diana Ossana to tell the tale of a Depression-era "Robin Hood." In spite of being a small-town hick bandit, Floyd becomes the FBI's Public Enemy #1 and his mythology quickly surpasses reality. Perhaps because this novel developed from a screenplay, the audio production enhances the story. Dialogue, which seems hokey when read in the book, is more natural and believable when heard here. Gaines's narration is slow and dusty for Floyd, but appropriately twanging, drawling or dripping with honey for other characters. The story moves quickly and is an engaging tale well told. J.L. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Oklahoma Knew Him Well
Yes, I am on a roll in reviewing Larry McMurtry inspired works (this one is co-written with his fellow screenplay writer Diana Ossana), although the subject of this presentation, the tale of Pretty Boy Floyd the Oklahoma dustbowl outlaw from the Depression-era 1930's, has always had a certain personal appeal unlike some previously reviewed McMurtry anti-heroes. The name Pretty Boy Floyd is well known to me from my youth listening to Okalahoma- born Woody Guthrie on a folk music program that I tuned into on the radio in the early 1960's. The tale that Woody told played into (and still plays into) my attraction toward Robin Hood-type figures (whether truly so or not) as part of the American struggle against the old time capitalist bosses and their bankers. Take this line - "Some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen". Sound familiar today?

Of course the reality, as the plot in this book makes abundantly clear, is that these so-called heroic figures tend to either have feet of clay or have been glorified through sheer "trade-puffing" publicity agents, voluntary or otherwise. Nor is Pretty Boy alone in that category. On a scholarly level the late British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn spent the early part of his professional career investigating these types in his seminal work, Primative Rebels, and in other sociological monograms on the subject of social bandits. But enough of the scholarly because what our two authors have attempted to do here is to take a little away from that heroic notion and tell the tale as it more probably happened- including the boredom and monotony of everyday life even for well-known outlaws.

Pretty Boy's tale is standard 1930's stuff. Nothing doing at home except hard words, hard work, no pay and no adventure on the old homestead. That's 1930's Oklahoma in a nutshell. So off to the big city to learn a trade. The trade being robbing banks. Every profession has its rules and etiquette and as the authors tell this tale we are treated to some insights into those customs. But mainly it is set up the job, avoid getting shot and get away fast. If not, then jail, the hangman or shot down in some dark alley. Of course, this would not be a McMurtry-inspired novel if there was not a ton of sex, longings for sex or exasperations with sex. That, I might add, is true as well for those of us who are not social bandits. This is a decent read from a period that kind of marked off the Old West from the new-Tommy guns and fast cars did not figure in those Old West tales, right?

A Good Read
This is worth the read, "Lonesome Dove" it's not but a different era, different attitudes. I still liked it

An unexpected literary masterpiece
The adventures of a doomed hero that makes Bonnie and Clyde tame and the impostor seem honest
kept me interested.
In the 30's era where poverty in a wealthy nation was common being a hero seemed to involve having the nerve to take what you wanted.
Being a bad boy gangster who robbed banks became a folk hero to the downtrodden.
Our own has rapping gangsters of a different color and they have become heroes to a new generation of the hopeless.
This book is well written and like "Zoot Suit" makes you feel like you are there
beside the characters.
It was the comparison to Clive Cussler's ersatz hero Dirk Pitt
that made me realize that this was a gem of a historical novel.