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An essay called "The Storyteller" by Walter Benjamin prompted Larry McMurtry
to ponder the role of the oral storyteller in our modern world and in the lonely world of
Texas his pioneer grandparents faced in the late 1800s. These ponderings, along
with his thoughts on memory, writing, his grandparents and his parents, his upbringing,
reading, book collecting, and the American West, give us a compelling look into the mind
of one of America's more original writers.
A storyteller himself, although not of the oral variety, McMurtry finds it fitting that
his first foray into Benjamin's work took place at the local Dairy Queen:
"Dairy Queens, simple drive-up eateries, taverns without alcohol, began to appear in
the arid little towns of west Texas about the same time (the late sixties) that Walter
Benjamin's work began to arrive in the English language --- in the case of Illuminations,
beautifully introduced by Hannah Arendt. The aridity of the small west Texas
towns was not all a matter of unforgiving skies, baking heat, and rainlessness, either;
the drought in those towns was social, as well as climatic. The extent to which
it was moral is a question we can table for the moment. What I remember clearly
is that before the Dairy Queens appeared the people of the small towns had no place to
meet and talk; and so they didn't meet or talk, which meant that much local lore or
incident remained private and ceased to be exchanged, debated, and stored as local lore
had been during the centuries that Benjamin describes."
McMurtry undertakes a critical look at Benjamin's theory on the role of oral
storytelling. A culture vastly different from the European forum with which
Benjamin was used to dealing, the thinly settled American West was not especially suited
to storytelling. " . . . what kind of stories arise in a place where
nothing has ever happened except, of course, the vagaries and vicissitudes of individual
life?" Using that question as a springboard for other discussions,
McMurtry begins to recall the stories he heard as a child.
These essays flow into one another, sometimes individually reasoned and presented,
sometimes seeming more like chapters in a book that merely continues a theme from one
context to another, but always fleshed out with memory and experience. The
essays provide glimpses into Larry McMurtry as he was formed by his childhood, his family,
and his determination not to be a cattleman like his father and his
grandfather. As for his present situation, McMurtry refreshingly offers little
in the way of titillation. While he discusses his community and his role in it
as an antiquarian bookseller, as well as his experiences as a heart patient, McMurtry
eschews patently private areas, including discussions of his children or the women in his
life.
Written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, WALTER BENJAMIN AT THE DAIRY QUEEN is
not without the trademark McMurtry plain speaking. Some of the more interesting
pieces focus on the romanticism of the American West, which he abhors and to which he
feels other writers and photographers have contributed.
"Despite photographic evidence, economic evidence, and human evidence, it was in the
main the poeticized, pastoral West that registered in the public
eye. Realistic, even naturalistic evidence was ignored when
possible. The increasing poverty and marginality of the tribal people is fully
documented, and yet, as has so often been the case in America, reality has proven to be no
match for salesmanship."
Rare book hunting, book shelving a la Susan Sontag, the reading of Proust and Virginia
Woolf, and McMurtry's realization that with "word herding" he hasn't come so far
from cattle ranching at that, help personalize the book even further without trivializing
it.
WALTER BENJAMIN AT THE DAIRY QUEEN is a reflective look at life and storytelling by
arguably the best storyteller of the American West to date. Thought-provoking
and insightful, this is a collection of essays that will forge its way into the hearts and
minds of McMurtry fans, aficionados of the American West, and readers and book lovers of
all types.
--- Reviewed by Jami Edwards
© Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
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