Larry Mcmurtry

THE EVENING STAR.Larry McMurtry.Simon & Schuster.635 pages. $23. Watching "Lonesome Dove" again on TV reminded me how much I liked it and the Larry McMurtry novel on which it's based. While I once more mourned Gus' death, I couldn't help but be thankful Mr. McMurtry chose to kill off the old guy. That way, he won't be tempted into writing a sequel.I should say a bad sequel, because Mr. McMurtry has written a couple of good ones. In its own cheery, haphazard way, his 1987 novel "Texasville" was as much of a lament for the passage of time and the passing of a way of life as its predecessor, 1966's elegiac but unsentimental "The Last Picture Show."

William Butterfield Decker, 73, a novelist and former New York editor, died Thursday in Ashland, Ore., of complications from a stroke. He wrote two novels -- "To Be A Man" in 1967 and "Holdout" in 1979 -- and edited such authors as Earnest Gaines ("The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman"), Larry McMurtry ("The Last Picture Show"), and Pulitzer Prize-winner Wallace Stegner. Jerome Goldstein,, 77, who began selling Scott's Liquid Gold furniture polish from his garage and turned it into a nationally known brand, died Wednesday in Denver after a long battle with large-cell lymphoma.

Lillian Hellman said it in her best Hammett-esque voice: Biography -- as distinct from the memoirs she was writing, which could omit anything -- is the whole life, from beginning to end. Biographers have their own cliche: "from cradle to grave." Alas, too many biographies of the past decade have been tomes of undigested flesh, unified by neither purpose nor conviction. To the biographer is granted the sacred task of weighing the achievement, judging what is extraordinary against the detritus of flawed everyday life.

HOLLYWOOD -- The rights to novelist Larry McMurtry's new novel "Evening Star," the sequel to his best-selling "Terms of Endearment," will probably end up at Paramount Pictures, the studio that made the Oscar-winning 1983 film. "Terms of Endearment" starred Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson and Debra Winger and won Oscars for MacLaine, Nicholson and writer-director James L. Brooks.A studio source confirmed that although the deal has not been completed, it would be shortly. Mr. McMurtry's agent also confirmed the imminent sale to Paramount.

Utterly unsupported by advertising or any publicity mechanism, John Mellencamp's "Falling From Grace" has opened on a single screen at the Harbor Park Theater. Yet those fans who love the young Hoosier's hard-rock sound will certainly be the most disappointed in the film.Though Mellencamp, who also directed, plays a singer, it's not of the rocking variety; he's Bud Parks, a leading country-western star come home to southern Indiana with beautiful young wife Alice (Mariel Hemingway) in tow for his grandpa's birthday and to make some kind of peace with his own rather massively tangled family.

Two PBS documentaries, "Nova" and "Frontline," take a turn down criminal paths tonight, while two network miniseries, "The Invaders" and "Streets of Laredo," conclude on Fox and CBS.* "Nova: Hunt for the Serial Arsonist" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., MPT, Channels 22, 67) -- The science of crime-scene investigation is scrutinized through the solving of a 1991 rash of arson fires at Los Angeles stores. PBS.* "The Invaders" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) -- In the original series (1967-68), Roy Thinnes never had much luck persuading people that aliens had invaded the Earth.

Go ahead, start putting your summer-reading list together. If nothing else, it'll at least convince you that your vacation is just around the corner. Some like to use their summers to dive into old and not-so-old classics. Satisfaction is guaranteed in Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, Anna Karenina, Catch-22 or Lonesome Dove. However, if your summer means taking chances, here are some of the notable new books that will be on shelves this summer: The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson. A New York Times correspondent writes a thriller about a CIA operative who infiltrates al-Qaida.

Assuming events in the Middle East allow, CBS plans to repeat one of television's greatest miniseries this weekend as "Lonesome Dove" starts Sunday night at 9 o'clock on Channel 11 (WBAL). It continues Jan. 22-24 from 9 to 11 p.m. each night.Based on a Larry McMurtry book, 1989's "Lonesome Dove" works on every level -- superb acting, compelling plot, great characters, excellent direction, stunning visuals.Robert Duvall hands in a can't-miss performance as the philosophical cowboy Gus McCrea who joins his taciturn friend Woodrow F. Call, played by Tommy Lee Jones, on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana that's an attempt to find the spirit of the frontier that had formed most of their shared life.

The late-night ratings race should be an easy win for "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" tonight. English actor Hugh Grant is scheduled to make his first televised appearance since his arrest last month with a Los Angeles prostitute.* "The Nanny" (8 p.m.-8:30 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Grace (Madeline Zima) invites the president for a visit but gets brother Roger Clinton instead, in this repeat. Meanwhile Fran (Fran Drescher) tries to help Maxwell (Charles Shaughnessy) land the rights to a play.

CLINT Eastwood's "Unforgiven," which relentlessly deglamorizes the heroic myth of the Old West, already seemed destined for classic status before it was nominated for a bevy of Oscars this year.The film, purportedly based on a real historical figure, stars Mr. Eastwood as William Munny, a reformed gunslinger who teams up with a black sidekick named Ditty, played by Morgan Freeman, to carry out a contract killing in a godforsaken prairie town.Until recently, black cowboys were virtually invisible in American Westerns.