Horseman, Pass By by McMURTRY, Larry - (1961)

NY: Harper. (1961). McMurtry's first book, one of A.C. Greene's "50 best books on Texas," basis for the movie Hud, and winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for the best novel of the year. Horseman, Pass By, which takes its title from the closing lines of William Butler Yeats's poem "Under Ben Bulben" (as did Mary McCarthy's first novel, Cast a Cold Eye), was a breakthrough in Texas literature and in regional literature in general: by telling a raw, unadulterated story entirely fitting to its contemporary West Texas setting, McMurtry not only brought the regional novel out of its quaint gentility but gave it a universality it could not have had otherwise; it has been called a West Texas Catcher in the Rye, with the caveat that the lives of Texans in general were a little more crude than those of the Easterners in Salinger's novel. Faint foxing to foredge and endpages; still a very near fine copy in a very near fine, lightly rubbed, price-clipped dust jacket. Unless otherwise noted, our first editions are first printings. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine.