[.ca] The Cadence of Grass (ISBN 0679767452)

From Amazon.com:
Thomas McGuane's The Cadence of Grass is a brawling, barrel-chested novel full of irreverent humor and outrageous characters and situations. Set in Montana, the story begins with the funeral of Jim Whitelaw, the family patriarch, who has cunningly crafted a will that ties up the assets of his bottling company until his older daughter reconciles with her estranged rogue of a husband. With Jim's ditzy yet determined widow; his wild younger daughter and her sweet but unbalanced husband; a cross-dressing rancher; a missing kidney; and a mysterious Bengali, it all adds up to a wild ride. But it's Bill Champion, Jim Whitelaw's old ranching partner, who wins our hearts. A throwback to the old days, Bill is full of Western wisdom and pungent sayings--he defines a "coyote breakfast" as "a piss and a look around." Eventually, Bill reveals a surprising secret as well as the identity of Red Wolf. Like his previous novels, including Nothing but Blue Skies, Panama, Ninety-Two in the Shade, and The Bushwhacked Piano, McGuane's The Cadence of Grass is a ripsnorting read indeed. --Susan Biskeborn

McGuane's Continued Growth, one of his best:
I first discovered Thomas McGuane in a Paris Review interview in 1985. He is a man of eloquence of the type that answers to questions posed to him about his writing were so fascinating that I began immediately reading his entire body of work. So cherished are these novels in my cannon that I did not read them one right after another, but spread them out over years to properly savor each one. I would read Nobody's Angel, and delight in reliving it for a time, referring to it, quoting it, then when a year or so had passed, I read Panama, Bushwhacked Piano, Ninety-two In the Shade, etc., until I reached the point at which I was ready to read whatever new book came out. In 1992 McGuane turned away from the usual cast of kooky loners and boot-clad bon vivants and wrote about a family man, and his family, in Nothing But Blue Skies. This was a new step for a man who knew how to enjoy and savor the wilder side of life, but also was able to use dinstinct technical language in an entertaining way to describe cutting horses, fly fishing, or sundry ranching, as well as metaphorically tying the changes of the modern west into the changes of modern westerners, casting sentences and forging paragraphs that stand with the greatest of American literature. In The Cadence of Grass, McGuane shows another step in his growth and finally, much to his chagrin, and despite all his attempts to demand otherwise, he shows us that age has brought him wisdom, as well as contemplation of mortality. Is this his novel about death? No, death was dealt with face-to-face in Nobody's Angel, McGuane's cathartic wrestling with his sister's death in real life. The Cadence of Grass is about the events leading up to death. That we all die is of course a given, and although a patriarch's death is the McGuffin for this story, it is the events that lead up to and directly lead to death that he deals with for the first time in his writing. Until now, there was always a pervasive sense of immortality in McGuane's characters, even when some of them died. Cadence takes us up close to the events, and even the moments, that precede death, including the acknowledgement of those about to die that they are living those preceding moments. McGuane exposes his own vulnerability, his own personal weaknesses through his characters in this book, and one gets the feeling that unlike other of his novels, in which his feelings usually occupy only one character, in Cadence he spread out his feelings among all the characters, perhaps as a way of making the expression of those feelings less burdensome. I feel that if he graced one character with all this contemplation it would have made the character too intense and maudlin to let the story breathe. As it is, McGuane keeps honed his clever, sometimes cryptic dialogue and hilarious descriptive powers, but lets more of the weaknesses of humanity come through and rather than using them for comic effect, he sympathizes with those who show weakness and vulnerability, as if to finally say "I know I've made fun of all of you in the past, but I really do know how you feel." In his ealier novels McGuane often wrote of characters on the verge of great changes, and carried us through the changes with the character. In The Cadence of Grass, the changes have happened, the transitions are over, and we are allowed to see something McGuane has not dealt with so much before, and that is what the changes have wrought, how the characters carry on, and what lies at the end of the trail.

Disappointing:
I found this book to be very diappointing. The plot was not interesting and the characters were dull. I feel like I must have read a different book than that described in the positive reviews below. In any event, the writing at times is quite good , so maybe I'll try one of McGuane's prior works. This one certainly does not live up to its billing or his reputation.

Disappointing Finish:
I read this book while spending some time out west. It has been awhile since I had read anything by McGuane. I enjoyed the characters and his prose. The story was compelling but the ending was disappointing. I'm not sure why he headed in that particular direction.

Becoming Unbottled:
Becoming Unbottled THE CADENCE OF GRASS moves through the lives of the Whitelaw family who own a bottling company in Montana. After the death of the patriarch, Sunny Jim (who never smiled), the lives of the rest of the family shift as unpredictably as prairie grass in the wind. The uneven beat of the action and the jarring, Kafkaesque characters contribute to the uniqueness of the book. The characters are both weirder than life yet touchingly real, and McGuane is often laugh-out-loud funny. Stuart, the disparaged and underestimated son-in-law is described as "simple enough to hide his own Easter eggs." For a person who has been on a horse three times in her life and who has stood in a working barn once for five minutes (phew) the descriptions of such are a delight. I loved reading about draft horse stanchions, snaffles, Kelly Brothers grazers, offside billet straps and coppermouth John Israels, even though I have only the haziest idea as to what they are. And reading how Evelyn maneuvers her pony to work the cattle is as good as watching a gold medal figure skater. McGuane is a first rate writer, a keen observer of humankind, and lover of the Montana country. THE CADENCE OF GRASS: a memorable read.

A Master of Description and Character:
Mr. McGuane is a true American genius. He is in the category of Twain, Hemmingway, and Williams, to mention a few. The setting is Montana. The characters are chiseled with a diamond cutter. The theme is human survival among adults who seem to eat their young. With the exception of Bill-a rugged kindness spreads across the pages. He accepts life at it comes. Excellent read. Yep.