All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel

Larry McMurtry

May 2018 · Liveright Publishing

About this ebook

A young writer hits the dusty Texas highway for the California coast in this “brilliant . . . funny and dangerously tender” (Time) tale of art and sacrifice. Hailed as one of “the best novels ever set in America’s fourth largest city” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry’s “comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension” (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the “mundane happiness” of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, “El Chevy,” bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naive troubadour’s pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully “normal” friend. Since the novel’s publication in 1972, Danny Deck has “been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life” (McMurtry), a testament to the author’s incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.

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.