Three Beautiful Things 06-07-2026: All Day Reading, Introspection, The Summer of 1992

 1. With breaks now and then, I spent almost the entire day reading Lonesome Dove and am increasingly gob smacked by how adroitly Larry McMurtry expands this story, introducing new characters, intersecting story lines, and creating fresh conflicts and frightening dangers. All the while, he keeps moving us deeper and deeper into the inner life of these characters, unfolding their memories, doubts, sources of trauma, guilt, regrets, pleasures, and more. 

2. One of Lonesome Dove's prominent characters, ex-Texas Ranger Captain Woodrow F. Call, is introspective. He often separates himself from the rest of the cattle drive crew in the evening and finds a quiet place to be alone and contemplate things. 

In the part of the book I read today, Call can't keep back his memories and regrets and disappointment in himself as he thinks about Maggie, a prostitute who was strongly attracted to Call and Call did not respond to her feelings, nor has he owned up to the strong possibility that he fathered Maggie's son, Newt, now seventeen years old and a part of the book's epic cattle drive. 

I stopped reading and meditated quite a while upon this sentence from Call's inner thoughts: "[Call] wondered if all men felt such disappointment when thinking of themselves."

3. Having a nearly all-day reading session like today transported me back to the summer of 1992. I had that summer to myself and for one stretch I read books almost non-stop. I was especially enthralled by Robertson Davies' brilliant Deptford Trilogy and read it with such vigor that I barely ate. I also read Brideshead Revisited, introduced myself to the hilarious stories of P. G. Wodehouse, and read more, but the titles escape me these thirty-four years later. 

My reading spell was broken when I took off from Eugene in August and drove to Kellogg the long way around via Eastern Oregon, Boise, Sun Valley, Stanley, Salmon, and on into western Montana where I visited Wisdom, Butte, and other towns that were settings for Richard Hugo poems. I accidentally discovered upon arriving in Bozeman that Leo Kottke and David Lindley had a concert that night and it was among the best shows I've ever been to. 

As I drove, I listened to the entirety of Bill Moyers' interviews with Joseph Campbell entitled, The Power of Myth. Mile after mile I was blown away and then, starting in 1993, these lectures became a central part of the classes Rita Hennessy and I taught together as a team for about three and half school years. 

I arrived in Kellogg for the KHS Class of 1972 20-year reunion, one of the very best parties I've ever been to and drew the summer to a close in September by spending eight days in Cambridge, MA, staying with Craig and Jill Thomas, and, among other things, seeing a baseball game in Fenway Park. 

What a summer that was! 

I'll keep reading, as best I can, as if it's July 1992 again. I doubt I'll do a Richard Hugo road trip this summer, but we'll see. And I know, in August, I'll enjoy another reunion with members of the Class of 1972 as we celebrate that this year the members of the Class of '72 have or will turn 72 years old.