36. "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen" by Larry McMurtry

I have yet to read any of Larry McMurtry's fiction--a situation I plan to remedy soon--but I very much enjoyed his nonfiction Roads: Driving America's Great Highways. So I was eager to read Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond. It did not disappoint.

McMurtry discusses Benjamin's essay on storytellers, written in 1936, the year of his (McMurtry's) birth. From there, he discusses the role of Dairy Queen as a community gathering spot for Archer City, the Texas panhandle town where he grew up and lives today. He then delves into his family background, talking about his grandparents' settling of Archer County at the same time Europe was swept by Freudian thought. He analyzes the European literature of madness, the literature of the American West, and the (often silent) stories of madness in the American West. He shares stories of the Texas land and its people, including the old woman who was sold to a trader at age 13 for a winter's worth of skunk pelts. He discusses some of his own books, including the effect The Last Picture Show--which became a movie filmed in Archer City--has had on the town's mythology. Finally, he discusses reading and bookscouting, shares tales from his years in the antiquarian book trade, and explains why he thinks bookselling is a better complement to writing (at least for him) than teaching proved to be.

He reconnects with Benjamin at various points. This sometimes works as a common theme to connect his various tales, but sometimes feel contrived.

Apart from this one shortcoming, however, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen is an excellent, satisfying read on many levels: as literary criticism, as travelogue, as memoir, as history, as a reflection on how a place has shaped this particular writer. Highly recommend.