Product Description

Not since the publication of his own beloved classic Lonesome Dove has there been a novel like this one -- another big, brilliant, unputdownable saga of the West from Larry McMurtry. Telegraph Days is at once a major work of literature and a completely absorbing read, not just great fiction, but fiction on a great scale, encompassing many years, many characters, real and fictional, and the whole vast landscape of place, time, life, and heart, which has served for more than one hundred thirty years as the background for "the Western" in fiction and on the screen. Nobody writes, or has ever written, better about the West than Larry McMurtry, and nobody has caught better in words its myths, its often brutal reality, its overwhelming size, and the way it captured both the imagination and the hopes of those who settled there, only, as was so often the case, to dash those hopes.

Told in the voice of Nellie Courtright, a spunky, courageous, attractive young woman whose story this is in part, Telegraph Days is the big novel of the Western gunfighters that people have been hoping for years Larry McMurtry would write.

When Nellie and her brother Jackson are unexpectedly orphaned by their father's suicide on his new and unprosperous ranch, they make their way to the nearby town of Rita Blanca, where Jackson manages to secure a job as a sheriff's deputy, while Nellie, ever resourceful, becomes the town's telegrapher.

Together, they inadvertently put Rita Blanca on the map when young Jackson succeeds in shooting down all six of the ferocious Yazee brothers in a gunfight that brings him lifelong fame but which he can never repeat because his success came purely out of luck.

Propelled by her own energy and commonsense approach to life, Nellie meets and almost conquers the heart of Buffalo Bill, the man she will love most in her long life, and goes on to meet, and witness the exploits of, Billy the Kid, the Earp brothers, and Doc Holliday. She even gets a ringside seat at the Battle at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight in Western history, and eventually lives long enough to see the West and its gunfighters turned into movies.

Full of life, love, shootings, real Western heroes and villains, Telegraph Days is Larry McMurtry at his epic best, in his most ambitious Western novel since Lonesome Dove.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #441933 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
McMurtry's latest skips through western lore with a wry smile. Marie Antoinette "Nellie" Courtright and her brother, Jackson, bereft of family after their Virginia clan dies off one by one, arrive in Rita Blanca in 1876, in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle, to remake themselves. Jackson is made a deputy sheriff and Nellie takes over the telegraph office. In short order, Jackson shoots down an entire gang of outlaws, and Nellie promptly writes it up to launch a lucrative literary career. Other adventures await: she becomes manager of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, boldly faces down Jesse James's attempt to rob her and witnesses the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. She becomes mayor of Rita Blanca, a mother of six and, later, friends with Lillian Gish and William B. Mayer. Beautiful and sexually insatiable, Nellie is a witty, sophisticated, accomplished, cunning, impudent and highly improbable woman—more than a match for any man she meets, which isn't saying much, since they're all idiots. She also is little more than a reworking of several previous McMurtry heroines, especially The Berrybender Narratives' Tasmin. This tale is contrived, episodic and lacks cohesion, and its constant comedy is self-conscious. But most readers won't be able to help cracking a smile over McMurtry's 38th book, as purposely over-the-top as an episode of South Park. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Easterners write literature; Southerners write literature; Westerners write Westerns. For years, that adage was a burr under the saddle of writers west of the Mississippi -- until Larry McMurtry won the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove and moved the Western out of the genre category.

With Telegraph Days, the prolific Texas writer of fiction and nonfiction, who also won an Academy Award for the script of "Brokeback Mountain," has done a bit of backsliding. Telegraph Days is no Pulitzer contender, but it's still a darn good read: an entertaining spoof about the Wild West that brings alive the romance of outlaws, gunfighters and shootouts.

McMurtry parts with the real West right there, of course. Dying in the West was no more romantic than dying anywhere else. The real West was a sober place, peopled by fortune hunters, psychopaths, charlatans and a few decent people. But how much fun is that? In Telegraph Days, McMurtry puts aside the history of greed and conquest to recreate the West of the dime novels and Wild West shows, the land of bigger-than-life characters -- an era more Cat Ballou than Clint Eastwood.

The heroine is Nellie Courtright, a very forward young lady -- actually, a bit of a slut. (She's already canoodled with Wild Bill Hickok and George Custer.) In her own words, she's "twenty-two, kissable, and of an independent disposition." Nellie and her brother Jackson, 17, are orphaned after their father "hung himself to death." This is not an introspective book, so we're not sure why their father committed suicide, but the deaths of a wife, six children and various servants in the days since they all left Virginia for a better life in the Cimarron country might have had something to do with it. Besides, death is no stranger in Texas. When a neighbor hears of their father's demise, he says, "Damnit! I expect you'd welcome breakfast." The orphans spend little time mourning. Instead, they rush off to the nearest town, Rita Blanca, where Nellie convinces the sheriff, one of her paramours, to make her brother a deputy. Nellie takes over the telegraph office.

Jackson has barely strapped on his gun before the six dreaded Yazee brothers ride into town, murder the sheriff and are about to club Nellie and Jackson. When Nellie commands her brother to shoot, he fires six bullets, each one striking the heart of a Yazee. "That makes you the biggest hero in the whole West!" Nellie tells him. Journalists and others, including Buffalo Bill Cody, descend on Rita Blanca to interview the boy-hero. The showman wants to hire Jackson, but the boy's shooting luck has deserted him, so Cody employs Nellie to oversee his far-flung investments. From there her adventures continue, to Tombstone and the OK Corral and eventually out to Hollywood, where the Old West is celebrated and romanticized on the new silver screen.

"Once is enough to live your life through, ain't it?" a friend asks toward the end of the book. Nellie agrees. After all, who could live that life twice? With Telegraph Days, McMurtry has created a modern-day dime novel, a romantic knock-up of the West -- proof that an old-fashioned oater can be as much fun to read as a literary work.

Reviewed by Sandra Dallas
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
In his latest novel, McMurtry returns to his familiar theme of the mythology versus the reality of the West. Here the closing decades of the western frontier are viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright, who is likely to endure as one of McMurtry's most memorable and endearing heroines. As a young, orphaned girl in her early twenties, Nellie finds work as a telegraph operator in the tiny town of Rita Blanca, situated in the "no man's land" that eventually became Oklahoma. She witnesses a gunfight in which her younger brother, by pure luck, wipes out a gang of notorious outlaws. When she decides to pen a dime novel recounting the event, it launches an odyssey during which she encounters many of the icons of frontier lore. She carries on a decades-long platonic relationship with Buffalo Bill. She has repeated encounters with a surly Wyatt Earp, and she witnesses the gunfight at the OK Corral. When the frontier closes, she carves out a new life as owner of a California newspaper. This rollicking epic is filled with excitement and humor, tinged with sadness and a longing for the past. In his striving to demythologize the West, McMurtry's vision of the reality is compelling. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

McMurtry's attempts to destroy the western myth, only seem to make it stronger!
I have always been a big fan of McMurtry's western novels, though his most recent efforts have not been his best. MrMurtry likes to tell us he is demythologize the west, yet his best books seem to resonate with readers because they have the exact opposite effect. Folks loved "Lonesome Dove" because it gave them every thing they wanted in a western (the myth) and more. In "Telegraph days" we are shown the final days of the frontier (when most of these myths were born) and we are introduced to Nellie Courtright, a telegraph operator in Rita Blanca, in the then outlaw territory of Oklahoma. Nellie's fortunes change when she writes a dime novel about her younger brother single handedly wiping out a gang of desperate outlaws (something he did do, but only through dumb luck). The story follows Nellie's life as she meets many of the iconic figures of the American west from Buffalo Bill to Wyatt Earp (Even witnessing the shoot out at the OK Corral, and of course McMurtry puts his spin on this very mythic event of the old west!). As in his best works McMurtry deftly mixes humor with a sadness for things past, that in the end only seems to create his own myth of the west-one I enjoyed very much! If you like McMurtry, Check out "Across the High Lonesome" a modern day western that I purchased after seeing McMurtry had given the book high marks----and he was right, great story!Across the High Lonesome

Dangerous Ground
It is always dangerous for a man to write in the voice of a woman, and this is an exhibit of those dangers. The main charactger and narrator is Nellie. Her voice did not come off as genuine. Her entire personality seemed to be what a man would like to see in a woman - an aggressive woman who loves men. This was true for her entire personality, not just her admitted obsession with "copulation" (the frequent references became dull).

The fictitious supporting characters in the book were interesting and the best part of the book. They were actually more interesting than the narrator. The famous supporting cast included Wild Bill Hickcock and Buffalo Bill, with a cameo by Billy the Kid. They seemed contrived. It was the unknown fictitious characters that gave any genuine western flavor to the book.

There was some good humor and spoofing of the old western novels, but all in all, the plot lacked depth and at times approached tedium. Although the book was not awful, there was little to recommend it. Nellie has an interesting life, but it did not seem the author was that invested in it. Therefore neither is the reader.

A quick light read, but nothing great.

A Great Read!
It started a little slow, but quickly pulled me into the story. In short order, I had a connection with the characters. The writing is detailed enough to make you feel like you are there, but isn't so heavy that it distracts from the story line. It was no Louis L'Amour, but Telegraph Days belongs on anyone's "must read" list. A great read!