I liked this book, the characters, the setting, the drawl. Larry McMurtry writes like a man from Texas would. What's more, is he is completely aware of the class, race and gender inequity in his language. He is most truthful in this way and I think it's what makes his voice so distinct, along with his excellent insight on the complexities of friendship and aging. Quite bittersweet.

The way Duane and Sonny see women, or worse, the way the townsmen see women (sans Sam the Lion) was off-putting and at times a little enraging, but I think that was the point. I think a real life "Jacy" must have affected McMurtry so much he immortalized her as an attention-loving, shortsighted brat, yet he tended to her character with delicacy, adding flairs of careful girlish-ness. Her character seems to have been written with a keen love/hate in mind.

The movie version is a precise diorama of the world within the book, with attention paid to every detail right down to the inner-conflict and overwhelming restlessness. Bogdanovich made a good choice in not including the Mexico scenes. It is best to leave the viewer his or her own imaginings of those events. Out of all the characters in the book, Sonny is my favorite onscreen. I'll probably read Texasville in the future, just because I'm curious to see where McMurtry envisions the characters decades later.