Reading Order
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers Reading Order
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers (1972) by Larry McMurtry is his most autobiographical novel and one of the strangest — the story of Danny Deck, a young Houston writer whose first novel has just been sold and published, who drives across Texas and California and who finds himself unable to stop moving and unable to write anything else. The title is the key to everything: Danny has a quality that will later become famous as a McMurtry theme, the inability to attach to anything or anyone for long enough to build a life. All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is the novel in which McMurtry is most explicitly processing his own experience of early literary success and the way it isolated him — the young writer who becomes famous too fast, before he knows who he is or what he wants to write about, and who finds that the fame makes connection harder rather than easier. The novel is also a road novel and a Texas novel, moving across the state with an energy and a sadness that is characteristic of McMurtry's best early work. Danny Deck would return in Some Can Whistle (1989), showing what became of a man with this quality of unattachment after thirty more years.
Where to start
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers — any Simon & Schuster paperback. The companion novel Some Can Whistle (1989) follows the same character twenty years later. Moving On (1970), the first of the Houston trilogy, shares some characters and world.
Complete All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers Book List
- 1Buy
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers
Larry McMurtry·1972·The novel — Danny Deck's first literary success, his drive across Texas and California, his inability to stop moving; McMurtry's most autobiographical novel and the defining statement of his early theme of unattachment. - 2Buy
Some Can Whistle
Larry McMurtry·1989·The companion sequel — Danny Deck twenty years later, a rich hermit on his Texas ranch, his daughter's phone call; the essential continuation for readers who want to know what Danny Deck became. - 3Buy
Moving On
Larry McMurtry·1970·The first Houston trilogy novel — shares some characters with All My Friends; McMurtry's comprehensive portrait of the Houston academic world that Danny inhabits in the early sections of All My Friends. - 4Buy
Terms of Endearment
Larry McMurtry·1975·The third Houston trilogy novel — Aurora and Emma's relationship; the companion in McMurtry's domestic fiction; the world of All My Friends is the bachelor writer version of the world Terms of Endearment inhabits from the domestic side. - 5Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece — the companion in his full range; the epic Western is the opposite pole from All My Friends' restless autobiographical mode. - 6Buy
On the Road
Jack Kerouac·1957·Kerouac's defining road novel — the Beat companion in American fiction about the young man who cannot stop moving; Sal Paradise's drives across America are the earlier, more famous version of Danny Deck's Texas drives; both novels are about men who move because they cannot be still. - 7Buy
The Sportswriter
Richard Ford·1986·Ford's novel about a former novelist turned sportswriter — the companion in American fiction about the man who was supposed to write the great American novel and found he could not; Frank Bascombe is the nearest contemporary literary character to Danny Deck in his later mode. - 8Buy
Humboldt's Gift
Saul Bellow·1975·Bellow's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in the tradition of the American writer thinking about fame, failure, and what literary success actually delivers; Charlie Citrine's meditation is in the same register as Danny Deck's restlessness, at a higher philosophical altitude.
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers — Frequently Asked Questions
What is All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers about?
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers follows Danny Deck, a young Houston writer whose first novel has just been sold (and is clearly based on McMurtry's own experience with Horseman, Pass By). Danny collects his advance, drives to San Francisco, has a relationship with a woman named Jill, drives back to Texas, gets married, fathers a child, and eventually drives his manuscript into the Rio Grande — a gesture of renunciation that ends the novel. The novel's subject is not the plot but the quality of Danny's experience: his inability to attach to anything, his constant movement, the sense that every place and person is becoming a stranger before he has had time to know them.
How autobiographical is All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers?
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is McMurtry's most autobiographical novel — Danny Deck's first novel (called The Restless Grass) is clearly based on McMurtry's Horseman, Pass By, and the experience of early literary success, the drive from Houston to California, the Houston academic world, all draw on McMurtry's own experience in the late 1960s and early 1970s. McMurtry has said that the novel is not autobiography in the strict sense — the events are not literally true — but that Danny Deck is the character who is closest to the man he was in his early 30s. The novel has the quality of autobiographical fiction where the feelings are true even when the events are invented.
What does the title mean?
The title comes from a McMurtry sense that this is what happens to a certain kind of person — someone who is always moving, always looking at what's ahead rather than what's alongside, and who consequently finds that everyone they were close to has become a stranger. Danny Deck has this quality: he cannot attach for long to anyone or anything, not because he doesn't feel (he clearly does) but because the attachment always loosens before it can become something durable. The title is also a lament — it is not an observation Danny makes without regret, but a description of what he fears and what he cannot prevent. McMurtry is diagnosing a specifically American form of loneliness: the loneliness of the man who is always going somewhere else.
Why does Danny drive his manuscript into the Rio Grande?
Danny drives his manuscript into the Rio Grande at the end of the novel as an act of renunciation — he has written a second novel, but it is not good enough, and rather than publish something he knows is inadequate, he destroys it. The gesture is also about something larger: Danny's inability to complete the second act that success demands. He could write the first novel when he had the material of his own young life to draw on; he cannot write the second novel because he does not know yet who he is or what he has to say. The destruction of the manuscript is both a recognition of this failure and an act of integrity — he would rather have nothing than publish something false.
What should I read after All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers?
After All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Some Can Whistle (1989) is the companion novel showing Danny Deck twenty years later. Moving On (1970) and Terms of Endearment (1975) complete the Houston trilogy. For American road fiction in the same tradition, Jack Kerouac's On the Road and John Steinbeck's East of Eden are important companions. For American fiction about writers and fame, Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift and Richard Ford's The Sportswriter are the most important.
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