Remember the Alamo

Sitting in the laundry room while my underwear tossed around in the drier, I picked up an old copy of Texas Monthly Magazine and read an interview with author Larry McMurtry, whom the magazine called “Our Leading Unsentimentalist.”  .

The author of “Lonesome Dove” commented on Custer’s Last Stand: “. . . defeat in a major battle seems to resonate more than victory.  If he’d won the same battle, it probably wouldn’t have had the dramatic force that it has.”

McMurtry continued, “If the Texans had won, the Alamo wouldn’t be a big deal.”

After talking about Custer’s foolhardiness, the author said, “There was an abundance of folly in the Old West, that’s for sure.”

He added, “I set out to demythologize it, but you can’t.  The readers want the myth.  They’ll turn it into the myth, no matter what I do.  Look at Lonesome Dove.  I thought of Lonesome Dove as a book that would demolish the myths.  But instead it just enhanced them.”

I sighed, put the magazine down, and got up to take my stuff out of the drier. 

People believe what they want to believe, no matter how ridiculous.