A Pro Strikes Out
DEEMER, CHARLES
A Pro Strikes Out Terms of Endearment By Larry McMurtry Simon and Schuster. 410 pp. $9.95. Reviewed by Charles Deemer Playwright, short-story writer Perhaps I dislike this novel more than I...
...and the eccentric Vernon, a millionaire hillbilly...
...I can't believe a pro like McMurtry doesn't know what he's doing, so I'm convinced we shall be seeing them all soon...
...it concludes in 1976, with a second book of only 50 pages where attention shifts from Aurora to her daughter Emma, whose funeral ends the novel...
...Is this simply a pro's way of covering all of the bases...
...Or a pilot script for a new television show...
...the retired General Hector Scott, still a warrior in his own right: the amorous Alberto...
...The many minor characters cut across all levels of society, giving the audience its cornbread and crab both, even literally, because for some reason a great deal of eating is described...
...With food prices still climbing, I suppose a vicarious meal in front of the tube may be in order...
...If you read this novel, instead of waiting for the inevitable television series, you should read it for the fun and nonsense of the first book, in which Aurora dodges the proposals of her suitors...
...McMurtry's Houston has a great many other oddballs, but there is no need to go into them here...
...Reviewed by Charles Deemer Playwright, short-story writer Perhaps I dislike this novel more than I should...
...I don't see why the second book, with its change of focus and time, is there at all...
...The story begins in Houston in 1962, a time of preassassination innocence...
...the wit, the fun, the sheer entertainment that fills this well, what Is this, anyway...
...Moreover, with the bubbles of plot being blown from the exploits of her many suitors, most of the character actors in TV-land could be employed—no small service in these depressed times...
...They are truly a gallery of oddballs, including Trevor, a great white hunter...
...In addition there is chubby daughter Emma, whose dominance by Aurora is amusing until we are asked to take Emma seriously...
...by a pro: Nuances of character stick in the mind for minutes after the book is put down: zany twists of plot are recalled at least as long...
...Though I do not care for the novel, I admit that the TV series is a natural...
...And let us not forget Flap, Emma's husband, whose habit of reading Wordsworth immediately after intercourse is unquestionably the sanest eccentricity here...
...and Rosie the housekeeper, whose husband Royce dies in a scene gory enough for the movies (though it would be inefficient, so to speak, to make a film from all this when a TV series would get so much more mileage...
...Aurora Greenway, heroine and widow, is the nuttiest protagonist since Auntie Mame and surely her part would be sought after by every middle-aged actress in Hollywood...
...A novel...
...After all, it is written, as they say...
...If McMurtry is trying to say something about the Bicentennial with this device, well, I've missed it...
...Adultery replaces comic wooing, more suitable fare for afternoon than for evening television...
Vol. 59 • March 1976 • No. 6
