Cadillac Jack

by Larry McMurtry

Paperback, 1987

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

Simon & Schuster (1987), 400 pages

Description

Larry McMurtry's "big hearted" fiction has been lauded for "taking us places we hadn't known existed" (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books). Cadillac Jack does exactly that, inviting readers into the passenger seat of a pearl-colored Caddy with peach velour-covered seats, joining a rodeo-bulldogger-turned-antique- scout at the wheel. "Superbly comic" (Newsday), this rollicking tale echoes the cultural climate of America today, with the cagey yet charming Jack grappling with the capitol's pretentious elite. As he cruises through relationships with distinctively appealing women--including socialite boutique owner Cindy and discreet mother-of-two Jean--Jack realizes home for him will always be simply barreling down freeways in his Cadillac, wandering the country in search of another obscure treasure.Bolstered with its cast of unforgettable characters, Cadillac Jack entices with the prospect of undiscovered riches around that next bend in the road.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member JenneB
I read this once before when I was pretty young--we'd gone on vacation and I ran out of books so I just moved on to what my mom was reading. I remember thinking it was SCANDALOUS! but now it seems fairly tame.

If you like the show "American Pickers" you'll recognize the title character--he drives
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all over the country seeking out rare and interesting objects to buy and sell--everything from 19th century lightbulbs to religious icons to Rudolph Valentino's hubcaps.

But the main objects in the book are really the women, who are what you might call Magnificent Creatures--terrifying, inexplicable, pitiless, tragicomic, and not quite real. Jack isn't really up to dealing with them as people so he has an elaborate persona that he uses to simultaneously charm and deflect.

The book itself is also charming, and also tragicomic, and also not quite real.
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Language

Original publication date

1982

Physical description

400 p.; 5.5 x 1.25 inches

ISBN

0671637207 / 9780671637200
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