Reading Order
Moving On Reading Order
Moving On (1970) by Larry McMurtry is his longest novel — over 800 pages — and the first of what he called his Houston trilogy (Moving On, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Terms of Endearment). The novel follows Patsy Carpenter, a young Houston woman who is intelligent, restless, and increasingly aware that her marriage to Jim Carpenter (a graduate student in English) is not working, across a sprawling narrative that takes her from the rodeo world to Houston academic life to California and back. Moving On is the novel in which McMurtry was most explicitly trying to write the great American novel in the tradition of Tolstoy — a comprehensive portrait of a specific American social world at a specific moment. Moving On is less read than McMurtry's other major novels, partly because of its length and partly because it lacks the plot efficiency of Terms of Endearment or the epic adventure of Lonesome Dove, but it is essential McMurtry — his most sustained portrait of a certain kind of American woman (intelligent, married to an inadequate man, trying to figure out what she wants before she has the vocabulary to want it), and his most detailed portrait of the specific world of Houston academic life in the late 1960s.
Where to start
Moving On — the Simon & Schuster paperback. At 800+ pages it is the longest McMurtry novel, and it reads more slowly than his other work. It is not a prerequisite for Terms of Endearment or the other Houston novels, but it provides the fullest portrait of the world those novels inhabit.
Complete Moving On Book List
- 1Buy
Moving On
Larry McMurtry·1970·The novel — Patsy Carpenter's restless life in the Houston academic world, the rodeo circuit, and California; McMurtry's longest novel and his most ambitious attempt at the comprehensive portrait of a specific American social world. - 2Buy
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers
Larry McMurtry·1972·The second Houston trilogy novel — Danny Deck's first novel and its aftermath; shares characters with Moving On and is the next installment in McMurtry's portrait of Houston intellectual/artistic life in the late 1960s–early 1970s. - 3Buy
Terms of Endearment
Larry McMurtry·1975·The third Houston trilogy novel — Aurora Greenway and Emma's relationship; the companion in McMurtry's Houston domestic fiction; Terms of Endearment's Houston world is the later, more focused version of the world Moving On establishes. - 4Buy
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 Moving On's domestic Houston mode. - 5Buy
The Women's Room
Marilyn French·1977·French's feminist novel — the companion in American fiction about intelligent women trapped in marriages to inadequate men in the 1960s; Mira's experience of academic Cambridge is the feminist, politically explicit version of what Patsy Carpenter experiences in Houston. - 6Buy
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates·1961·Yates's great novel — the companion in American fiction about a marriage that fails because the woman is more intelligent and more desperate for something real than the man; April Wheeler is the earlier, Connecticut version of Patsy Carpenter. - 7Buy
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath·1963·Plath's autobiographical novel — the companion in American fiction about a young woman of intelligence and ambition confronting the 1950s–60s limits placed on female aspiration; Esther Greenwood is the literary, more extreme version of what Patsy experiences. - 8Buy
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor·1955·O'Connor's story collection — the Southern Gothic companion in American fiction about women's lives and the violence and absurdity of the American South and West; O'Connor's grotesque comedy is a counterpoint to McMurtry's realism.
Moving On — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Moving On about?
Moving On follows Patsy Carpenter, a young Houston woman who married Jim Carpenter (a graduate student in English literature) too young and too casually, across several years in the late 1960s. The novel opens with Patsy and Jim following the rodeo circuit (Jim is photographing rodeos for a book project), and Patsy's affair with a rodeo cowboy is the first of several events that reveal how inadequate her marriage is. The novel follows Patsy through Houston academic life, her friendships with other young women, her affair with a graduate student named Hank Malory, Jim's drift into increasingly unsuitable projects, and Patsy's slow realization that she is going to have to figure out who she is rather than waiting for her marriage to tell her.
Why is Moving On less well known than McMurtry's other novels?
Moving On is less well known primarily because of its length — at over 800 pages, it is the longest McMurtry novel and it lacks the plot efficiency of Terms of Endearment or the adventure narrative of Lonesome Dove to sustain reader engagement across that length. It is also a more explicitly social novel than his more famous work, more interested in the comprehensive portrait of a world than in a driving story. McMurtry was consciously trying to write in the Tolstoyan tradition — the great novel of social observation — and Moving On has that ambition but also that slowness. It is essential McMurtry for committed readers of his work, but it is not the entry point.
What is the Houston trilogy?
The Houston trilogy consists of Moving On (1970), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers (1972), and Terms of Endearment (1975). The three novels are set in the same Houston world — academic life, suburban domesticity, the Texas oil culture — and share some characters and the same general social milieu. Moving On is the most comprehensive, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers the most personal (McMurtry's most autobiographical novel), and Terms of Endearment the most focused and emotionally powerful. The trilogy is McMurtry's sustained portrait of Houston life in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Is Moving On a feminist novel?
Moving On is not programmatically feminist — it was published before the women's liberation movement had substantially changed American literary culture — but it is deeply concerned with the situation of a certain kind of woman in the late 1960s: intelligent, educated, married to an inadequate man, without a vocabulary for what she wants and without clear models for what she might become. Patsy Carpenter is frustrated by her marriage, frustrated by the limits that the world places on her, and unable to clearly articulate why. McMurtry's portrait of her situation is sympathetic and perceptive, and the novel anticipates the explicitly feminist fiction (Marilyn French, Erica Jong) that would follow in the mid-1970s.
What should I read after Moving On?
After Moving On, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers (1972) and Terms of Endearment (1975) complete the Houston trilogy. For McMurtry's other major work, Lonesome Dove is the masterpiece. For American fiction about women in inadequate marriages in the same period, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road and Marilyn French's The Women's Room are the most important companions. Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons is the companion in American domestic fiction about a marriage in its middle age.
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