Word: montana
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...autumn snow has glazed the Crazy Mountains and left a confectionary dusting on the hills and gullies of Montana's West Boulder valley. Atop his horse, Thomas McGuane is silent for a moment as he surveys the Turkish carpet of prairie juniper, sage, buckbrush and wheatgrass that blankets his 3,700- acre ranch in Big Sky country. "It's funny," he says at last, "but you never know where lightning will strike. You're sort of a moving target for fortune, and you never know when it will befall...
Keep the Change chronicles the cross-country escapades of Joe Starling, a blocked painter who endeavors to "put his old life to an end" by stealing his girlfriend's car and setting out from Florida to reclaim the Montana ranch left to him by his father. As the plot progresses to its ironic denouement, Joe courts his teenage sweetheart, rekindles a love affair with the land and comes to terms with some family ghosts -- both dead and alive. Like most McGuane protagonists, Starling is at a gallop between his past and future, an existential cowboy with good intentions...
Meanwhile, McGuane had used the proceeds from selling the film rights to The Sporting Club to buy a ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana, where he moved with his wife, nee Betty Crockett (a direct descendant of Davy), and his son Thomas IV. The breathtaking scenery and anything-goes ambiance soon attracted a freewheeling constellation of characters that included fellow writer Richard Brautigan, actor Peter Fonda, painter Russell Chatham and director Sam Peckinpah. Before long, stories started coming out of the valley, ribald tales of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll that have become part of the local lore...
...horse competition in Billings. Cutting, a highly stylized ritual in which a horse and rider "work" a cow in much the same way a defensive guard tries to block a basketball, is a dear topic for the McGuanes. They also happen to be formidably good at it. Laurie is Montana's defending cutting- horse champion, Tom was No. 1 the year before, and the two are the leading contenders for the 1989 trophy. "We take turns," Laurie laughs...
...think that every American is touched by it," he says. "It's a by-product of this 20-year wave of narcissism and self-help movements and stuff where people have lost the ability to refer to things larger than themselves, and their reward is solitude. It penetrates Montana as thoroughly as it penetrates Manhattan...