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> 20 Minutes : https://www.20minutes.fr/livres/1161623-20130502-20130525-et-tous-amis-inconnus-...
> Les Inrocks : https://www.lesinrocks.com/livres/et-tous-mes-amis-seront-des-inconnus-nous-fait...

> ET TOUS MES AMIS SERONT DES INCONNUS, de Larry McMurtry, Gallmeister, 330 p., 32,95$. — Et tous mes amis seront des inconnus est l’histoire du primo - romancier Danny Deck en perpétuelle quête de confort. Tant en amour que dans la vie, Deck ne se sent jamais vraiment à sa place. Campé dans son Texas natal au tournant des années 70, il décide de tourner la page sur les premières années de sa vie et de répondre aux appels de la côte ouest, où commencera un réel parcours initiatique dans une Amérique elle-même en quête d’identité. La force de McMurtry réside principalement dans le ton qui réussit à ne jamais tomber dans des lieux communs lorsqu’il relate la période hippie. Grâce au talent de l’auteur, on s’amourache d’un personnage qui est toujours à côté de ses pompes, un personnage qui ne demande rien et à qui tout arrive. —Jérémy Laniel Carcajou (Rosemère)
—Les Libraires, (80), Déc. 2023/Janv. 2024, (p. 17)

Desperate to break from the "mundane happiness" of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, "El Chevy," bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naive troubadour's pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully "normal" friend. Since the novel's publication in 1972, Danny Deck has "been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life" (McMurtry), a testament to the author's incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.

An interesting story which was obviously the precursor to "Terms of Endearment". Characters are unique as I expected though at its core it's a sad story. Regardless I enjoyed reading it and recommend to others keeping in mind that it's not uplifting. ( )

Boy this book is pretty bad, it does not stand the test of time. On the other hand I am also biased as I never liked any of Larry McMurtry's books. I have read several essays about this book and I think the writers of these essays may have partaken of some of the mushrooms mentioned in this book.
The writing is pretty sophomoric and the author's favorite word is fuck. The use of this word is not shocking today and was not too shocking when the book was first written. Also calling a woman a cunt is definitely not acceptable then nor is it today. ( )

“The door to ordinary places was the door that I had missed. ... I would live in the other places, among the exiled ping-pong players and the old ladies with dogs on their arms, and my true companions would be Godwin and Jenny and all those who had missed the same door.” — Larry McMurtry, “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers”

Danny Deck, the young Texas writer who sells his first novel early in Larry McMurtry's “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers” (1972), feels sorry for himself, but readers may not feel sorry for him. If he has missed the "door to ordinary places," it is because he himself has chosen other doors that lead nowhere.

McMurtry's title sounds like that of a comic novel, and for a number of pages that appears to be what we have here. Then the title turns out to be the literal truth. All his relationships are bridges burned by the end. Mostly those relationships are with women — usually married women, a Mexican prostitute he asks to run away with him, a beauty who wants his baby but not him. "I have no real resistance to temptation," he says early on. He can resist neither women nor alcohol, and both lead him where he really doesn't want to go.

McMurtry refers again and again to borders and rivers, his other metaphors of choice. His novel ends with Danny "drowning" his second novel in the Rio Grande, the border between the United States and Mexico. Danny seems stuck on the border, or just on the wrong side of the border, that separates the ordinary life he craves from the restless, purposeless life he has fallen into.

In a preface to this edition, McMurtry says he wrote the novel in a rush immediately after finishing “Moving On.” He calls it a kind of afterbirth to that much longer novel. Of Danny Deck, he writes, "He wasn't me, but there was no large gap between his sensibility and my own." What this suggests is that Danny is. in fact, him: a young Texas writer with early success struggling to discover whether that was a fluke or whether he really does have talent worth cultivating. McMurtry found his own way across the border, across the river and through the door to ordinary places. It is left unclear whether Danny Deck can do the same. ( )