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Chinks appeared in the White Knight's armor. McGuane and Crockett were divorced, and a nine-month marriage to actress Margot Kidder (Superman) came and went. In 1977 McGuane took a third trip to the altar, with Alabama-born Laurie Buffet, who is the sister of his friend country singer Jimmy Buffet. McGuane's reputation bottomed out in 1978 when he received a critical licking for Panama, a caustically humorous novel that limned the dark side of fame. The same year, actress Elizabeth Ashley threw fat on the media fire by sparing few details of her romance with McGuane in her autobiography, which described him as a "psychedelic cowboy" and "aging juvenile delinquent." Meanwhile, the deaths of both his parents and his sister took a heavy toll. "I come from a family that has a lot of alcoholism," McGuane confides. "I became really kind of an unpleasant drinker."
It was only a matter of time before McGuane looked through the bottom of a shot glass and glimpsed his own mortality. Observes longtime friend and fellow novelist Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall): "Like a lot of writers, we started out reading Rimbaud and Dostoyevsky, and you think that in order to write you also have to be partly crazy. And later on it occurs to us that we're going to die unless we behave." Realizing that "my streak of self- destructiveness had to end," McGuane quit drinking and poured himself into writing. Two novels -- Nobody's Angel (1982) and Something to Be Desired (1985) -- were followed by To Skin a Cat (1986), a well-received collection of short stories that helped put McGuane back on the literary track.
McGuane, who has not had a drink in nine years, also credits his healthier frame of mind to the life-affirming influence of his wife Laurie, who is the mother of their daughter Annie, 9. An expert horsewoman in her own right, Laurie helps McGuane deal with his correspondence and critiques his first drafts. If she admits to noticing a change in her husband over the past few years, it is simply that he has become "less cynical."
Yet his Jekyll-and-Hyde-like transformation from well-mannered writer to party animal and back again has led some to wonder which is the real McGuane. Both and neither, answers McGuane, who is irked by the fact that his wild and crazy days have taken on "a kind of monster reality" in the press. "During that period I was supposed to be living in the street, I also wrote ten movies, a novel and about 25 pieces of journalism," he says with annoyance. "Even in the flamboyant period of the '70s, I would say 85% of my waking time was spent on work. The day-to-day boring reality is that I was going to the typewriter and working."
Three years ago, the McGuanes moved out of Paradise Valley to their current spread near McLeod (pop. 5). In the cozy living room of his log-cabin house, McGuane throws another chunk of cottonwood on the fire as Laurie whips up a pot of hearty chicken soup in the kitchen. His lean, 6-ft. 3-in. frame draped across a wing chair, McGuane exudes the tempered confidence of hard-won experience. While many of his erstwhile drinking partners have fallen by the wayside, he has managed not only to survive but to thrive in his role of gentleman rancher and Marlboro Man of letters. "I guess I'm kind of like lip cancer," he says with a wry smile. "I just won't go away."