Volume 47, Number 2 · February 10, 2000
Lighting Out for the Territory
By Larry McMurtry
On the Rez
by Ian Frazier
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 311 pp., $25.00
I first became aware of Ian Frazier, as a writer to keep an eye on, in the late 1980s, when, flipping through The New Yorker, I read a little two-page piece with his name under it. The piece was called 'The Last Segment,' the last segment being the final episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I expected to be amused but instead was moved—the brief piece touched a chord. One page was devoted to the fond farewells of a bunch of TV characters who were once almost as familiar to Americans as their own families: Mary and Murray, Lou and Ted, Sue Ann and Georgette; the second page, in graceful pastiche, described the immediate crumbling of a typical American family once this stabilizing sitcom was no longer there to hold them together. With a couple of lines from a Bobbie Gentry song and a few other tags from here and there in the culture, Mr. Frazier managed to show, in only a page, how many things can go wrong in a family when there are no good TV shows to watch. I still think 'The Last Segment' is the best two pages ever written about American television; it can be found in a collection of his magazine pieces called Coyote v. Acme, a book not much thicker than a leaf.
Review, 3791 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |