I have long, long, long been a fan of Larry McMurtry, so when Narrative Magazine asked if I'd be interested in reviewing LEAVING CHEYENNE for its First and Second Looks series, I was delighted to accept the invitation. 
I confess up front I’m a loyal fan of Mr. McMurtry, so I won’t attempt an unbiased review of Books: A Memoir, except to say this is not a memoir in the traditional sense, but a series of essays detailing Mr. McMurtry’s love of books – reading them and hunting them down, and eventually amassing a collection that numbers in the tens of thousands. The history of his career as a collector and antiquarian bookseller are interesting (and educative: if at some point you begin collecting books and think you might one day sell them, don’t write your name in them; it’s death for resale), but it was the understanding that he’s almost indifferent when discussing the creation and success of his own books that I found not only astonishing but unsettling. He shares a brief anecdote early on about the publication of his first novel, Horseman, Pass By, which, he says, was anticlimactic: “…unfortunately I felt very little, but almost at once, it was sold to the movies and soon produced. The reason for the speedy route to production—which usually takes several years—was that Paul Newman wanted to star in it, and did. The movie was called Hud, and it did well.”
Toward the end of the book he says, “As I went on through life I wrote novel after novel, to the number of about thirty. Most were good, three or four were indifferent to bad, and two or three were really good. None, to my regret, were great, although my long Western Lonesome Dove was very popular—the miniseries made from it was even more popular. Popularity, of course, is not the same as greatness.”
Mr. McMurtry also shares an anecdote, where, in the 1960s he was interested in the writer Gershon Legman, and says he “foolishly” sent Legman a copy of his second novel, Leaving Cheyenne, which he’d inscribed to the man. Legman fired back a rude response, claiming “fiction was shit,” after which there was no correspondence between them for 10 years. Mr. McMurtry says: “That copy of Leaving Cheyenne, by the way, has been on sale on the West Coast for several years. Legman didn’t want it and neither does anyone else.” That’s surprising, considering a quick search on abebooks.com reveals that Between the Covers—Rare Books, Inc. in Gloucester, NJ, is selling his “scarcest novel”—a signed, first edition with dust cover in fine condition—for $4,500. It might as well be $450,000, but if I had it, I’d spend it, and in a heartbeat too.
I was reading The Sacramento Bee recently, which featured a piece on Roger McGuinn, the founding member of the folk-rock band The Byrds. I was interested in the story because McGuinn commented that the folk-music establishment in the '60s viewed the Byrds as little more than “barbarians at the gate” because they weren’t purists. McGuinn attributed the folk establishment's attitude to a “kind of snobbishness.” Which got me thinking that this is sometimes how writers of literary fiction view writers of commercial fiction. Which got me thinking about those of us who fall between those categories; who write commercial fiction with literary qualities. Which got me thinking we need a new category for this genre, and that we ought to call it Litcomm.
I Googled “litcomm” to see what was out there, and it appears the term is most often used as an abbreviation for “literary comments” or “liturgy committee” or “liturgical commission.” A search for “genre litcomm” brought up no hits (none!) while “genre litcom” brought up “literary community” and not much more. There was nothing anywhere about a market inhabited by the likes of Larry McMurtry, Pete Fromm, Ron Carlson, Dennis Lehane, and, well, me. (Why should boys have all the fun?)
And get this. Type in www.litcom.com and you’ll find that the domain name is parked, but available for $4,350. (Why stop there? Why not shoot for $5,000?) Oddly, www.litcomm.com has been purchased by a guy in Wappingers Falls, NY, though this name too is parked. Why? Is he a writer? And if not, what’s he’s going to do with it? Type in www.litcom.net however and you’ll see that it is a parking space reserved (gereserveered) for (voor) a Scandinavian company providing “services.” And then there’s www.litcom.org -- which is ahem, best left alone.
I’m curious about other writers’ feelings on this. Is anyone willing to share? Are you a litcomm writer, and if so, should we band together and form a group and maybe march on Washington? Or at the very least, New York City? Let publishers know we’ve got a voice and wish to be heard and that dammit our numbers are huge? Or are there only five of us, one of us unpublished? In the words of Scout Finch, “Shoot me a beet, Pete,” and let’s see where we go.
