No question about it, Larry McMurtry's shaggy new novel Dead Man's Walk (Simon & Schuster; 477 pages; $26) passes the all-important "Call me Ishmael" test. Its first line is "Matilda Jane Roberts was naked as the air." After that start, the narration wafts aloft into further elegant absurdity, as follows: "Known throughout south Texas as the Great Western, she came walking up from the muddy Rio Grande holding a big snapping turtle by the tail. Matilda was almost as large as the skinny little Mexican mustang Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call were trying to saddle-break."
McCrae and Call? We've heard those...
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