It's sort of surprising that it took Larry McMurtry this long to write a novel about the shootout at the O.K. Corral. The famous 30-second gunfight that broke out on Oct. 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Ariz., has become short hand for roughly delivered, vigilante-style justice.
Mr. McMurtry, author of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Lonesome Dove," has tackled just about every other major myth about the Old West in the course of his 53-year literary career. He's taken on revered 19th-century American figures including Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Crazy Horse, Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody and George Custer, and has often made it his mission to brush off the romanticism and mythology that clings to the Old West.
In his new novel, "The Last Kind Words Saloon," Mr. McMurtry, 77, unleashes his cynicism on the ornery gunslinger Wyatt Earp and his sidekick, the dentist Doc Holliday. They're portrayed not as bold frontiersman, but trigger-happy drunks who stumble into the historic shootout.
Read Full Article »