Reading Order
Duane's Depressed Reading Order
Duane Is Depressed (1999) by Larry McMurtry is the third novel in the Thalia trilogy — set in Thalia (the thinly disguised Archer City, Texas) in the late 1990s, with Duane Moore now in his early 60s, retired, and depressed in the specific way of a man who has nothing left to do and doesn't know why he kept going so long. The novel opens with Duane parking his pickup truck in his garage and walking everywhere — not driving again, an act of stubborn, inexplicable self-assertion that drives everyone around him crazy and that becomes the novel's organizing metaphor for a man trying to find a different relationship with the world he has always lived in. Duane's depression leads him to see a psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, and to read Proust — the reading of Proust being McMurtry's most sustained comic joke in the novel, as Duane brings a Proust volume to every situation in his life and reports his progress to his uncomprehending family and friends. The novel is quieter and more meditative than Texasville, less chaotic and more focused on a single character's interiority; it is the novel in which McMurtry is most openly thinking about what it means to be an old Texas man in the late 20th century, what reading literature can offer such a man, and what kind of meaning is available to someone who has lived a full life and is not dead yet.
Where to start
Read The Last Picture Show and Texasville first — Duane Is Depressed requires knowledge of all the characters established in the previous novels. Any Simon & Schuster or Touchstone paperback.
Complete Duane's Depressed Book List
- 1Buy
The Last Picture Show
Larry McMurtry·1966·The essential first novel in the Thalia trilogy — Sonny and Duane's senior year in Anarene, Texas, 1951; the foundation for everything that follows in the trilogy. - 2Buy
Texasville
Larry McMurtry·1987·The second Thalia novel — Sonny and Duane in their 50s; the oil boom and bust; Jacy's return; the necessary companion before Duane Is Depressed. - 3Buy
When the Last Leaf Falls
Larry McMurtry·2001·The fourth and final Thalia novel — Duane in his later years; the completion of the Thalia world and the final portrait of Duane Moore. - 4Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece — the companion in his Texas fiction; the frontier Texas of Lonesome Dove is the historical version of the Texas that Duane's world has descended from. - 5Buy
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen·2001·Franzen's National Book Award-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about depression and family dysfunction; Alfred Lambert's Parkinson's is the literary, more extreme version of Duane's depression; both novels are about old men who can no longer manage what they once managed. - 6Buy
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman·2012·Backman's bestselling novel — the Swedish, gentler version of the depressed old man story; Ove's depression and his community's response to it is the international companion to Duane's depression in a small Texas town. - 7Buy
Stoner
John Williams·1965·Williams's novel about a man who lives a quiet, largely unhappy life and finds meaning in literature — the quiet literary companion to Duane's reading of Proust; both novels are about men who find, late, that literature offers something the world does not. - 8Buy
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro·1989·Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning novel — the British, more lyrical companion in the tradition of fiction about a man reviewing his life and its choices; Stevens's inability to feel what he should have felt is the companion to Duane's depression as a form of belated reckoning.
Duane's Depressed — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Duane Is Depressed about?
Duane Is Depressed is set in Thalia, Texas, in the late 1990s. Duane Moore is in his early 60s, has retired from the oil business, and has become depressed — not dramatically, but in the specific way of a man who has nothing he needs to do and can no longer remember why he was always so busy. The novel opens with Duane parking his pickup in the garage and deciding to walk everywhere, which he does for the rest of the novel and which his family and friends find inexplicable and maddening. His psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, suggests he read Proust, and Duane begins working through In Search of Lost Time — reporting his progress to his bewildered family, reading it in situations that are completely incongruous, and using it as a way of thinking about his life.
Why does Duane read Proust?
Duane reads Proust because his psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, assigns him to — it is a therapeutic exercise, a way of finding some interiority he has never had time for. But the joke of Duane reading Proust is that the two things don't fit together in any obvious way: Proust's elaborate, aristocratic, European world of social memory and involuntary sensation has nothing obvious to offer a retired Texas oilman who has never read a book in his life. McMurtry uses the gap between Proust and Duane as a way of thinking about what literature can and can't offer: Duane does get something from Proust — he becomes more thoughtful, more attentive to his inner life — but the comedy of a big Texas guy with a Proust volume at every turn is also genuinely funny. It is McMurtry's most sustained literary joke across a novel.
Is Duane Is Depressed sad?
Duane Is Depressed is funnier than its title suggests — the comedy of Duane walking everywhere and reading Proust is real, and the novel has the dry Texas humor of the whole Thalia trilogy. But there is genuine sadness underneath: Duane's depression is not resolved but managed; Sonny Crawford's mental deterioration continues; the town is still dying. The novel is sad in the specific way of late McMurtry — the sense that things are winding down, that the characters have done what they were going to do, that the world they were born into is over. It is not devastating in the way that terms of endearment is when Emma dies; it is quieter and more resigned, the sadness of old age rather than the sadness of loss.
How does Duane Is Depressed fit in the Thalia trilogy?
Duane Is Depressed is the third volume of what is sometimes called the Thalia trilogy (The Last Picture Show, Texasville, Duane Is Depressed), following the same characters from 1951 to the late 1990s. In The Last Picture Show, Duane and Sonny are teenagers in a dying town; in Texasville, they are middle-aged men in a chaotic oil-bust economy; in Duane Is Depressed, they are old men trying to figure out what to do with the time they have left. The trilogy is unusual in American fiction in following the same characters across fifty years and showing what their lives actually amounted to.
What should I read after Duane Is Depressed?
After Duane Is Depressed, When the Last Leaf Falls (2001) is the fourth and final Thalia novel. For McMurtry's other major work, Lonesome Dove is the masterpiece and Terms of Endearment is the companion in his domestic fiction. For fiction about depression and old age in the same register, A Man Called Ove and Stoner are important companions. For the Proust that Duane is reading, Lydia Davis's translation of Swann's Way is the standard English version.
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