All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

Written by Larry McMurtry

Narrated by John Randolph Jones

An icon of American letters, Larry McMurtry counts a Pulitzer Prize and a screenwriting Academy Award among his numerous accomplishments. Here, Danny Deck-Emma's friend from Terms of Endearment-is a promising young writer losing touch with his talent and drifting from Texas to California because "that's where all the writers are." Set in the early 1960s, this is an uproarious (and raunchy) satire of life in Texas and California and a true American portrait of an artist as a young man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 22, 2009
• ISBN: 9781436182850

Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry (1936–2021) was the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, three memoirs, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays. He lived in Archer City, Texas.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I honestly couldn't decide if I liked twenty-something Danny Dent. When we first meet the young writer, he is explaining how he went to Auston, Texas, and fell in love with a super beautiful woman named Sally. Sally had been the on and off girlfriend of another man but somehow Danny steals her away. From there, Danny's life is a series of drunken ups and downs. Despite his first novel being so wildly successful it gets picked up for a movie deal, he can't say the same for the rest of his life. There is a distinct dissatisfaction with everything. The plot meanders along as Danny tries to make sense of the relationships (mostly with women) in his life. It is nothing but a string of sexual escapades with different women and trying to work on a second novel. I was borderline bored the entire time.

[bobvtreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Boy this book is pretty bad, it does not stand the test of time. On the other hand I am also biased as I never liked any of Larry McMurtry's books. I have read several essays about this book and I think the writers of these essays may have partaken of some of the mushrooms mentioned in this book.
The writing is pretty sophomoric and the author's favorite word is fuck. The use of this word is not shocking today and was not too shocking when the book was first written. Also calling a woman a cunt is definitely not acceptable then nor is it today.

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“The door to ordinary places was the door that I had missed. ... I would live in the other places, among the exiled ping-pong players and the old ladies with dogs on their arms, and my true companions would be Godwin and Jenny and all those who had missed the same door.” — Larry McMurtry, “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers”

Danny Deck, the young Texas writer who sells his first novel early in Larry McMurtry's “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers” (1972), feels sorry for himself, but readers may not feel sorry for him. If he has missed the "door to ordinary places," it is because he himself has chosen other doors that lead nowhere.

McMurtry's title sounds like that of a comic novel, and for a number of pages that appears to be what we have here. Then the title turns out to be the literal truth. All his relationships are bridges burned by the end. Mostly those relationships are with women — usually married women, a Mexican prostitute he asks to run away with him, a beauty who wants his baby but not him. "I have no real resistance to temptation," he says early on. He can resist neither women nor alcohol, and both lead him where he really doesn't want to go.

McMurtry refers again and again to borders and rivers, his other metaphors of choice. His novel ends with Danny "drowning" his second novel in the Rio Grande, the border between the United States and Mexico. Danny seems stuck on the border, or just on the wrong side of the border, that separates the ordinary life he craves from the restless, purposeless life he has fallen into.

In a preface to this edition, McMurtry says he wrote the novel in a rush immediately after finishing “Moving On.” He calls it a kind of afterbirth to that much longer novel. Of Danny Deck, he writes, "He wasn't me, but there was no large gap between his sensibility and my own." What this suggests is that Danny is. in fact, him: a young Texas writer with early success struggling to discover whether that was a fluke or whether he really does have talent worth cultivating. McMurtry found his own way across the border, across the river and through the door to ordinary places. It is left unclear whether Danny Deck can do the same.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read McMurtry’s Some Can Whistle several months ago, after having read all of his western themed novels. This book is a precursor to Some Can Whistle, introducing us to the young Danny Deck who later grew up to be the protagonist in Some Can Whistle.

Danny is something of a free spirit, wandering here and there, hooking up with and losing various women in his travels. He begins as an undergraduate student at Rice University in Houston, spends time in San Francisco before returning in a round about way to Houston, writing and selling a novel along the way.

McMurtry is a magnificent writer. His western novels are without peer. His more contemporary stuff is not as engaging, though equally well written. As always, character development is a strong suit. This novel has some outstanding parts, but begins to drag badly near the end.

[pescatello · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a very good book, is funny and incredibly easy to read. Reading It made me think of what "home" is for me and how it is ultimately defined by your friends and what's familiar.

It also is a good overview of the various types of women and a whole assortment of things that could go wrong with them: (a) she being a total bitch, (b) she being married to your friend, (c) the physical intimacy not being there, (d) the timing being all wrong in each other's lives. Lots of things can go wrong in life and if you're not careful you end up with all your friends being strangers.

Anyway, it's a solid read. I recommend it.