Thomas McGuane

Thomas Francis McGuane III (b. 1939) was born on 11 December 1939 in Wyandotte, Michigan. He studied at Michigan State University, the Yale School of Drama, and Stanford, where he was a Stegner Fellow. He has lived on a ranch in McLeod, Montana, since the 1970s. He is an accomplished horseman, cutting-horse trainer, and fly fisherman.

Life and Career

His early novels — The Sporting Club (1969), The Bushwhacked Piano (1971), Ninety-Two in the Shade (1973) — were wild, comic, linguistically exuberant books about Americans behaving badly. Ninety-Two in the Shade — about two fishing guides in Key West whose rivalry escalates to murder — was nominated for the National Book Award and adapted as a film directed by McGuane himself (1975).

The 1970s were chaotic: McGuane directed films, was briefly married to Margot Kidder and Elizabeth Ashley, and acquired a reputation as “Captain Berserko.” Panama (1978) captured the era’s excesses.

His later fiction — Nobody’s Angel (1981), Something to Be Desired (1984), Keep the Change (1989), Nothing but Blue Skies (1992) — matured into quiet, precise novels about Montana ranchers, failed marriages, and the Western landscape. His prose became leaner and more controlled while retaining its wit.

His story collections — To Skin a Cat (1986), Gallatin Canyon (2006), Crow Fair (2015), Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories (2018) — are among the finest in contemporary American fiction.

Major Works and Themes

McGuane writes about the modern West — people trying to live authentically on the land while the land is being developed, sold, and transformed around them. His prose is funny, sad, and exact.

His early novels belong to a tradition of wild American comedy — they’re closer to Pynchon and Brautigan than to the Western realism he later practised. The Bushwhacked Piano is a picaresque about a young man who crosses the country causing havoc; Ninety-Two in the Shade escalates a fishing rivalry in Key West into something approaching Greek tragedy. These books are linguistically dazzling, packed with one-liners and set pieces that veer between slapstick and violence.

The shift that occurred in the 1980s — from manic comedy to quiet realism — mirrors McGuane’s own settling into Montana ranch life. The later novels are about middle-aged men trying to hold together ranches, marriages, and identities in a West that is being overtaken by developers, divorcees from the coasts, and the general entropy of American life. Nothing but Blue Skies — about a Montana businessman whose wife leaves him, triggering a comic spiral of bad decisions — is his most fully achieved novel: funny and desolate in equal measure.

His short stories, particularly those collected in Gallatin Canyon and Cloudbursts, are masterworks of compression. McGuane can establish a character, a landscape, and a moral predicament in a single paragraph. His story “Gallatin Canyon” — about a couple driving to a real-estate closing while their relationship disintegrates — is one of the best American stories of the twenty-first century.

McGuane is also one of America’s finest writers about fishing, horses, and the outdoors. His non-fiction — An Outside Chance (1980), The Longest Silence (1999), Some Horses (1999) — is written with the same precision as his fiction, and his essays on fly fishing are regarded as classics of the genre.

Critical Reception and Legacy

McGuane has never received the canonical recognition his work deserves. His early reputation as “Captain Berserko” — the hard-drinking, motorcycle-riding Hollywood writer married to movie stars — created a perception that his fiction was a sideshow to his lifestyle. The opposite is true: the fiction is the permanent achievement, and the lifestyle was a phase.

He is consistently named by other writers — Jim Harrison, Richard Ford, Annie Proulx — as one of the most underrated novelists of his generation. His influence on contemporary Western fiction is pervasive, even when unacknowledged. Writers like Kent Haruf, Maile Meloy, and Smith Henderson are working in territory that McGuane mapped.

Key Works

• The Sporting Club (1969)
• The Bushwhacked Piano (1971)
• Ninety-Two in the Shade (1973) — NBA nominee
• Nobody’s Angel (1981)
• Nothing but Blue Skies (1992)
• The Longest Silence (1999, non-fiction)
• Gallatin Canyon (2006, stories)
• Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories (2018)

Collecting McGuane

The Sporting Club (1969, Simon & Schuster) — his debut — brings $100–$400 for fine copies in dust jacket. The jacket art is distinctive and the book is scarce in fine condition.

The Bushwhacked Piano (1971, Simon & Schuster) is comparable. Ninety-Two in the Shade (1973, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) — his most celebrated novel — brings $50–$250.

The later Montana novels — Nobody’s Angel through Driving on the Rim — are more available and generally bring $20–$100.

McGuane signs at Montana events and is accessible through regional bookshops. His non-fiction titles — An Outside Chance, The Longest Silence, Some Horses — are collected by the sporting-literature audience and can bring premiums in fine condition.