Lonesome Crowded West

Before I understood who Thomas McGuane was and what he did with his life, which is as much as any writer today could hope to achieve, I found a copy of The Sporting Club at a used book sale in Colorado. The novel, a sort of buddy comedy about two guys who set out to undermine an elitist summer resort for rich Michigan families, was alive with action and comic male bravado, but perhaps too plotted, too character-driven for me at the time — personal narratives and a general rejection of the traditional devices used by most novels. I later realized I was interested in all the wrong things if I wanted to tell compelling stories. I went on to learn that McGuane tells compelling stories.