Reading Order
The Last Picture Show Reading Order
The Last Picture Show (1966) by Larry McMurtry is the novel that established him as a major American writer and one of the definitive literary portraits of small-town American life in decline — set in Anarene, a fictional dying oil-patch town in North Texas, during 1951–52, the last year before the town's movie theater closes. The novel centers on Sonny Crawford and Duane Moore, two high school seniors who are best friends, football players, and the kind of boys who will define themselves in relation to this town or leave it for the rest of their lives. The Last Picture Show is memorable for several things: its unsentimental portrait of small-town life (the town is bleak, the people are often cruel or self-destructive, the landscape is flat and windswept), its frank treatment of sexuality (it was controversial on publication for its scenes involving a middle-aged woman and a teenager, and its portrait of high school sexual culture in 1950s Texas), and its central elegiac register — the closing of the movie theater is the novel's organizing symbol, the moment when the last thing that connected Anarene to the larger world is shutting down. The novel was adapted into a landmark Peter Bogdanovich film in 1971, in black and white, that is considered one of the great American films of the 1970s.
Where to start
The Last Picture Show — any Simon & Schuster or Touchstone paperback. Short (under 250 pages) and reads quickly. The two sequels (Texasville and Duane's Depressed) follow the same characters in later decades; the original novel works as a standalone.
Complete The Last Picture Show Book List
- 1Buy
The Last Picture Show
Larry McMurtry·1966·The novel — Sonny and Duane's senior year in dying Anarene, Texas, 1951; McMurtry's definitive portrait of small-town Texas decline; the closing movie theater as organizing symbol. - 2Buy
Texasville
Larry McMurtry·1987·The sequel — Sonny and Duane in 1987 Anarene, 35 years later; the oil boom and its bust, the characters middle-aged; the companion in McMurtry's portrait of the same community across time. - 3Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece — the companion in his Texas fiction; Anarene's small-town decline is the 20th-century Texas counterpart to the frontier Texas of the Lonesome Dove world. - 4Buy
Terms of Endearment
Larry McMurtry·1975·McMurtry's companion novel in his Texas-to-Houston mode — Aurora Greenway and Emma's relationship is the domestic, female-centered companion to the male friendship at the center of The Last Picture Show. - 5Buy
Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson·1919·Anderson's linked stories — the most important predecessor in American small-town fiction; the Winesburg grotesques and their trapped lives are the Midwestern version of the Anarene characters' trapped lives; The Last Picture Show is McMurtry's Texas Winesburg, Ohio. - 6Buy
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis·1920·Lewis's great small-town novel — the companion in the American tradition of the small-town-as-trap; Carol Kennicott's Gopher Prairie is the Midwestern version of Anarene, both novels about the spiritual and cultural poverty of small-town American life. - 7Buy
Carrie
Stephen King·1974·King's debut — the horror-mode companion in the tradition of the small-town high school social hierarchy as a system that crushes certain people; Carrie's Maine high school is the Gothic version of Anarene's high school social world. - 8Buy
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates·1961·Yates's great novel about suburban American dreams — the companion in the tradition of American fiction about the spiritual poverty of ordinary life; the Wheelers' Connecticut suburb is the metropolitan version of what Anarene is in the small-town mode.
The Last Picture Show — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Last Picture Show about?
The Last Picture Show is set in Anarene, a dying North Texas oil-patch town, in 1951–52. Sonny Crawford and Duane Moore are high school seniors — best friends, football players, beginning their adult lives. The novel follows their year: their loves (Sonny has an affair with Ruth Popper, the unhappily married wife of the football coach; Duane is obsessed with Jacy Farrow, the town beauty; Jacy manipulates both of them and others), the community's dissolution (Sam the Lion, who owns the movie theater and pool hall and is the town's moral center, dies; the theater closes), and the general atmosphere of a place that is slowly dying. The novel's title refers to the last film shown at the Anarene movie theater before it closes: Red River (a John Ford Western), a pointed irony — the last connection to the West's mythology is a Western film that plays to an empty house.
Who is Sam the Lion and why is he important?
Sam the Lion is the owner of Anarene's movie theater, pool hall, and café, and the town's moral center — a taciturn, decent man with a mysterious past and a genuine dignity that no one else in the novel quite achieves. He is dying of a stroke during the novel, and his death in the middle of the book is the turning point: after Sam is gone, the town has no moral center, and the dissolution accelerates. McMurtry has said that Sam the Lion (whose real name is not Sam) is the character he most loves in his early fiction, and the character functions as a way of measuring everyone else in the novel — Sonny is the character most like Sam in his potential for decency. Sam's death is the moment when Anarene stops being a community and becomes just a collection of people living in the same place.
Why was The Last Picture Show controversial?
The Last Picture Show was controversial on publication primarily for its frank treatment of sexuality — particularly the relationship between Ruth Popper (the football coach's wife, in her late 30s) and Sonny (a teenager), and the general portrait of high school sexual culture in 1950s Texas as casual, exploitative, and largely joyless. The novel is also frank about the cruelty that small-town communities can practice toward those who are different or vulnerable (the retarded boy Billy, who is a kind of community mascot and victim), and about the misogyny and racism of the culture it portrays. The Bogdanovich film adaptation was also controversial for its nudity and sexual content, though it is now considered a classic.
How does the novel relate to the Western genre?
The Last Picture Show is not a Western, but it is in constant dialogue with the Western genre. The final film shown at the Anarene theater is Red River — a classic John Ford Western — and the fact that the last movie this dying Texas town watches is a mythologized version of its own past is one of McMurtry's central ironies. The novel's portrait of Texas in 1951 is the portrait of a place that was once the frontier and is now just a place — the cowboys' descendants work in the oil fields, the open range is fenced, the Indians are gone, and what remains is a town with nothing left to distinguish it from any other dying American small town. McMurtry's career-long project is to replace the Western myth with what actually happened to Texas.
What should I read after The Last Picture Show?
After The Last Picture Show, Texasville (1987) is the direct sequel, following the same characters 35 years later. Lonesome Dove (1985) is McMurtry's masterpiece and the essential companion in his Texas fiction. For small-town American fiction in the same tradition, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Sinclair Lewis's Main Street are the most important predecessors. Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road is the companion in American fiction about the spiritual poverty of ordinary life.
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