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Trying to have an affair in this town would be nerve-wracking as hell, no matter who you are or who it's with. Monogamy must have been invented for dumps like Amarillo.

When Larry McMurtry published Moving On in 1970, his writing was greeted by an angry mob of women, all seemingly armed with rotten tomatoes. He was then properly pelted with figurative produce and literal hate mail and was forced to pull off his ten-gallon hat to ponder his position.

Larry was so confused! Why didn't the world realize how much he loved his protagonist, Patsy Carpenter? Why didn't women the world over love her as he did? Yes, she cried at the drop of a hat, but all women did that, didn't they?

But, after several years of this novel's terrible reception, Mr. McMurtry was forced to concede, “I had inadvertently left a copiously tearful young woman exposed on a lonely beach, just as the tsunami of feminism was about to crash ashore.�

And, instead of being nominated for the National Book Award (as it should have been), Moving On slipped into an obscurity that is every writer's nightmare. Even now, the book is challenging to casually locate on a Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ search, unless you include McMurtry's name with the title, and my local library had to sweat a little to find an available copy.

This book's near obscurity makes me want to cry as much as Mr. McMurtry's leading lady does.

And, no, Larry, I don't want to cry because of your belief that “virtually all women cry virtually all the time,� but because I hate for this level of fantastic writing to be relegated to the dark shadows of obscure libraries, or worse, to be rendered out of print.

And, Larry, you were wrong. All women do not cry all of the time, or as often as Patsy does, though I have known two women in my lifetime who have been as prone to tears, proving that a Patsy Carpenter can absolutely be true.

But, let me tell you who did cry, you fabulous son of a bitch: me. I cried throughout this whole goddamned, brilliant masterpiece. And, I cried so hard, I felt gutted. Cried so hard over lines like these:

At night, when some embrace on the late show reminded her that in the real world, as on the TV screen, humans did actually kiss and hold each other and make love she felt humiliated and small, for she was a woman, she had had a baby, she was ready to give such plenty as she had, and yet no man was there to touch her.

I cried again, just typing it, you bastard. Larry, why do you do this to me?

People, don't stumble over Texans and rodeos and crying protagonists here. This is a book about men and women, and how their differences in communication and physical preferences can isolate them so profoundly from the ones they love. It's a brilliant and almost incomparable examination of monogamy and it juxtaposes so many combinations of coupling (and living alone), it makes you realize that any happiness you're ever lucky enough to grasp with your two hands should be popped into your mouth immediately and consumed.

This isn't a novel for people who require action or intrigue (or zombies). This is a book about people and relationships and it's ideal for readers who love writers like Ian McEwan, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike and Graham Greene.

Oh. And for people who can handle a good, gut wrenching cry.