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| Author | Larry McMurtry |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Houston |
| Set in | Texas |
| Publication date | 1970 |
| Publication place | USA |
| Followed by | All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers |
Moving On is a 1970 American novel by Larry McMurtry. His fourth novel, it focuses on Patsy Carpenter and her husband Jim in contemporary Texas.
Larry McMurtry called it "a book partly about graduate school, partly about rodeo, and partly about the indecision that is likely to afflict young marrieds, particularly those who belonged to what used to be called the Silent Generation." He wrote "Moving On was not the Great American Novel but for a time I thought it was. The only person to share my opinion was my new editor, Michael Korda. By the time I finished it, in 1969, I had a good deal of narrative momentum going," which led to him writing All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers.
McMurtry's first three novels had been about young people leaving the country. Moving On was the first of three novels he wrote about "urbanites", others including All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers and Terms of Endearment.
McMurtry wanted to call the book Patsy Carpenter "and there was ample precedent for naming it after the central character. But the publisher didn’t like it, and they moved publication up to spring, and somebody suggested Moving On."
Reception
Kirkus wrote "it goes on and on in a smoothly styleless, emulsified fashion."
The New York Times wrote a review which stated:
Is Patsy Carpenter worth 794 pages? Patsy is young, pretty, recently married, financially secure and psychologically adrift on a sea of qualms in the American Southwest, circa now. She reads a lot, she cries a lot, she worries a lot about her sex life. But the several years we spend with Patsy seem like just that... several years. Even in the capable hands of Larry McMurtry... Patsy seems elephantiasic. If there were anything meretricious about Moving On, any mechanized grinding out of narrative quick mix, any hard eye scouring the landscape for the main commercial chance, it wouldn't be worth reviewing. It is, however, a novel of monumental honesty, about people as real as your sister, consisting of insights as undeniable as this morning's weather. Attention must be paid.
References
- McMurtry p 47
- McMurty p 77
- McMurtry p 73
- Bennett, Patrick (1980). Talking with Texas writers : twelve interviews. p. 22.
- Review of Moving On at Kirkus
- Leonard, John (10 June 1970). "Books of The Times". New York Times.
Notes
- McMurtry, Larry (2009). Literary Life: A Second Memoir. Simon & Schuster.