 Jonathan Yardley in the "New York Times" called the 31-year-old McGuane “a talent of Faulknerian potential,” while Saul Bellow described McGuane as “a language star.” The novel won the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.McGuane's third novel, "Ninety-Two in the Shade" (1973), is perhaps his best known.It was nominated for a National Book Award

In 1973, he also crashed his Porsche on an icy Texas highway.