LONESOME DOVE

    By Larry McMurtry

      Introduction

Writers, singers, and prolific artists of many stamps have sometimes found, to their bafflement, that they have been more or less trapped by the unexpected and unrelenting popularity of a work to which they themselves had initially attached little importance. Henry James was pestered all his life by fans of what was, to his mind, a slight story, Daisy Miller. Bing Crosby grew very, very tired of having to sing, over and over again, a little ditty called "White Christmas." In my case the culprit is Lonesome Dove, a book which now seems as remote from me as the Arthuriad, or the Matter of Troy, but which blooms eternally--a living myth-fl````