Prior to my recent Larry McMurtry kick, I had not really been aware of his earlier volumes of memoir, including Paradise his 2002 memoir considering his parent’s marriage while on a trip to Tahiti. In rather stark contrast to the first two volumes of his “summing up” trilogy, McMurtry reveals a fair amount of personal information. Where the summing up books seem to consist largely of scenes with and comments about other writers and book sellers, Paradise talks in detail about McMurtry’s parents and their rather constrained lives in west Texas. Neither Jeff McMurtry nor his wife Hazel ever traveled very far from their isolated rural home in Archer City, Texas. Much like the “achievers” in Hollowing Out The Middle, Larry went off to college and traveled all over the world, although given that he made his home and established his huge bookstore in Archer City, I suppose he would be more accurately classified as a “returner”.
In Tahiti, McMurtry travels via supply ship to the remote Marquesas Islands and much of Paradise is given over to a travelogue of his interactions with his fellow passengers on the boat and with the Tahitians he meets and interacts with on the various islands. Given my high level of interest in Oceania (as well as my strong interest in McMurtry), I found this memoir fascinating and a quick and easy read. Paradise provided me with a good bit of the personal back-story that I so missed in Books and Literary Life. If you, too, are a McMurtry fan or have an interest in the islands of the South Pacific, Paradise is Highly Recommended.
