SOURCE: "The Spirit of the American West," in Bloomsbury Review, Vol. 13, No. 4, July-August, 1993, p. 14.

In the following favorable review of Nothing But Blue Skies, McNamee describes McGuane's novel as "a well-considered study of a man confronting mid-life crisis, and, in the end, overcoming it by sheer force of will."

Thomas McGuane has consciously carved out a niche in American literary history as our contemporary Hemingway, which includes tracing the old man's footsteps from place to place and adopting some of his poses: sports fisherman, footloose journalist. In the sixties and seventies he was associated with Key West, another Hemingway haunt, where McGuane kept a house and produced his earliest novels. He had a reputation as a hell-raiser then, seeking to match his distinguished literary ancestor drink for drink, book for book, spouse for spouse.

Twenty years have since passed, and McGuane has mellowed. He now lives on a...