The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel

Larry McMurtry

Jun 2014 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Seattle Times

The Last Kind Words Saloon marks the triumphant return of Larry McMurtry to the nineteenth-century West of his classic Lonesome Dove.

In this "comically subversive work of fiction" (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books), Larry McMurtry chronicles the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Tracing their legendary friendship from the settlement of Long Grass, Texas, to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, and finally to Tombstone, Arizona, The Last Kind Words Saloon finds Wyatt and Doc living out the last days of a cowboy lifestyle that is already passing into history. In his stark and peerless prose McMurtry writes of the myths and men that live on even as the storied West that forged them disappears. Hailed by critics and embraced by readers, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of our most original American writers.

Ratings and reviews

If you are a Larry McMurtry fan you will likely not enjoy this book. Too short and it really doesn't live up to the preface, something like, when writing a book and choosing between fact and legend, go with the legend, LM didn't do this. The OK corral is glossed over with scant words spent. The ending is abrupt and dissatisfying in a very UN-Larry McMurtry way.

I have read all of McMurtry's books...and this was a fun one...yes a quick read, but a great romp thru the West...thanks for a fun story!

A good book but not near long enough to be a novel. More like a short story.

About the author

Larry McMurtry is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and avid bookseller and collector, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay of Brokeback Mountain with cowriter Diana Ossana. Awarded in 2014 the National Humanities Medal for his body of work, his novels include Lonesome Dove and, most recently, The Last Kind Words Saloon. He lives in Archer City, Texas.