NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State
University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
February 26, 1998
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1997 Plains Folk
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JACY FARROW? Besides being a good question, that's the title of a new book from the University of North Texas Press. You remember her—Cybill Shepherd played Jacy Farrow in the Peter Bogdonavich film, "The Last Picture Show," based on the Larry McMurtry novel. Speaking of McMurtry—most people know him for his Pulitzer Prize-winner, "Lonesome Dove," but I expect to live long enough to hear others agree that his important work came much earlier. His two gritty Texas novels, "Horseman, Pass By" and "Last Picture Show" make everything after that seem fluffy. They are exhibits of a generation on the plains.
Set in Thalia (read Archer City, McMurtry's home town), northwest Texas, these are men's stories, or boys' stories, in which women appear as two-dimensional cut-outs. Jacy, the fickle sweetheart of Thalia High School, makes a striking cut-out. Seen through the eyes of teenage male characters, however, she is only a desirable object with no thoughts. What was she thinking, and whatever happened to her?
The answers are in Ceil Cleveland's book. She went to high school with McMurtry in Archer City, and was the girl people said was the basis of the Jacy Farrow character. This attribution she resisted at first, but after accepting it, she made it the basis of her book. A book that people on the plains can read with profit, for two reasons.
First, and this is a surprise only to us male readers, there was a lot going on in the mind of Jacy Farrow. Her father was strict and traditional, but her grandmother modeled self-respect, and her mother lived the life of the mind. So Jacy worked her way through a shelf of great books, but remained entangled in the expectations of (male) others. "I tried to keep my eyes closed and my mouth shut," Cleveland says. "Boys liked girls better that way. And so did fathers."
"And just for the record," she lets us know, "I never went to a motel room with Duane."
"LIFE" magazine and movies showed her there was something more to life, but it was an ill-defined fantasy, and one to which no one could show her the way. So she dropped out of college, married young and followed her husband. (I know this must sound familiar to a lot of people, and that's why the book hits the mark.) During and after marriage and motherhood she went back to school, eventually going on to a Ph.D. in English. The marriage broke up. Ceil Cleveland worked in public relations; got an academic job; now is vice president for university affairs at State University of New York-Stony Brook; and lives on Long Island. Which not only shows the potential that was in the cut-out Jacy Farrow but also brings me to my second point about the importance of Ceil Cleveland's book. It was foregone this girl was going to leave Thalia/Archer City. She would leave partly because of lack of economic opportunity in such a place. She would leave, more definitely, because there was no place for the woman she wanted to be in that town on the Texas plains. When we talk about the Last Picture Show generation of young people who left their home towns on the plains, we generally consider the phenomenon in terms of lack of jobs, meaning jobs for men. The compounding factor was this was the very time when American women were pursuing and assuming ambitions and roles new to the rest of the country, and certainly not built into the plans of communities on the plains. So the young women left, one way or another. And that's something to think about in the present generation, too.
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Barry Brissman (701) 231-7866