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Larry McMurtry

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Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox writer Larry Jeff McMurtry (June 3, 1936Template:SpndMarch 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas.<ref name="Rawson">Hugh Rawson Template:Webarchive "Screenings," American Heritage, April/May 2006.</ref> His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations (13 wins). He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.

His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove was adapted into a television miniseries that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins). The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were adapted as three more miniseries, earning eight more Emmy nominations. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2014, McMurtry received the National Humanities Medal.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Tracy Daugherty's 2023 biography of McMurtry quotes critic Dave Hickey: "Larry is a writer, and it's kind of like being a critter. If you leave a cow alone, he'll eat grass. If you leave Larry alone, he'll write books. When he's in public, he may say hello and goodbye, but otherwise he is just resting, getting ready to go write."<ref name=Daugherty>Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty, St. Martin's Press, 2023, page 201. ISBN 978-1-250-28233-0.</ref>

Early life and educationEdit

McMurtry's birth certificate states that he was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, the son of Hazel Ruth (née McIver) and William Jefferson McMurtry.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He grew up on his parents' ranch outside Archer City, Texas. The city was the model for the town of Thalia which is a setting for much of his fiction.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He earned a BA from the University of North Texas in 1958 and an MA from Rice University in 1960.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In his memoir, McMurtry said that during his first five or six years in his grandfather's ranch house, there were no books, but his extended family would sit on the front porch every night and tell stories. In 1942, McMurtry's cousin Robert Hilburn stopped by the ranch house on his way to enlist for World War II, and left a box containing 19 boys' adventure books from the 1930s. The first book he read was Sergeant Silk: The Prairie Scout.<ref name="Books">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

CareerEdit

WriterEdit

During the 1960–1961 academic year, McMurtry was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, where he studied the craft of fiction under Frank O'Connor and Malcolm Cowley,<ref name="MoJo_">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> alongside other aspiring writers, including Wendell Berry, Ken Kesey, Peter S. Beagle and Gurney Norman. (Wallace Stegner was on sabbatical in Europe during McMurtry's fellowship year.<ref name="NYRB_OnTheRoad_2002-12-05">Template:Cite magazine</ref>)

McMurtry and Kesey remained friends after McMurtry left California and returned to Texas to take a year-long composition instructorship at Texas Christian University.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1963, he returned to Rice University, where he served as a lecturer in English until 1969, and a visiting professor at George Mason College (1970) and American University (1970–71).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He entertained some of his early students with accounts of Hollywood and the filming of Hud, for which he was consulting. In 1964, Kesey and his Merry Pranksters conducted their noted cross-country trip, stopping at McMurtry's home in Houston. The adventure in the day-glo-painted school bus Furthur was chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. That same year, McMurtry was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.<ref name="Guggenheim_Foundation_1964">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

McMurtry won numerous awards from the Texas Institute of Letters: three times the Jesse H. Jones Award—in 1962, for Horseman, Pass By; in 1967, for The Last Picture Show, which he shared with Tom Pendleton's The Iron Orchard; and in 1986, for Lonesome Dove. He won the Amon G. Carter award for periodical prose in 1966 for Texas: Good Times Gone or Here Again?<ref name="TIL_Awards">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1984.<ref name="TIL_Awards_Lifetime">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1986, McMurtry received the annual Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award from the Tulsa Library Trust.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He reflected on his 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove, in Literary Life: A Second Memoir (2009), writing that it was the "Gone With the Wind of the West … a pretty good book; it's not a towering masterpiece."<ref name="Guardian_Flood_2021-03-27" />

He described his method for writing in Books: A Memoir. He said that from his first novel on, he would get up early and dash off five pages of narrative. When he published the memoir in 2008, he said this was still his method, although by then, he wrote 10 pages a day. He wrote every day, ignoring holidays and weekends.<ref name="Books"/> McMurtry was a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.<ref name="NYRB_McMurtry">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

McMurtry was a vigorous defender of free speech and, while serving as president of PEN American Center (now PEN America) from 1989 to 1991, led the organization's efforts to support Salman Rushdie,<ref name="Ransom_Center">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> whose novel The Satanic Verses (1988) caused a major controversy among some Muslims, with the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issuing a fatwā calling for Rushdie's assassination, after which attempts were made on Rushdie's life.<ref name="Tomb">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1989, McMurtry testified on behalf of PEN America before the U.S. Congress in opposition to immigration rules in the 1952 McCarran–Walter Act that for decades permitted the visa denial and deportation of foreign writers for ideological reasons.<ref name="Guardian_Flood_2021-03-27">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He recounted how before PEN America was to host the 1986 International PEN Congress, "there was a serious question as to whether such a meeting could in fact take place in this country... the McCarran–Walter Act could have effectively prevented such a gathering in the United States." He denounced the relevant rules as "an affront to all who cherish the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and association. To a writer whose living depends upon the uninhibited interchange of ideas and experiences, these provisions are especially appalling." Subsequently, some provisions that excluded certain classes of immigrants based on their political beliefs were revoked by the Immigration Act of 1990.<ref name="PEN_America_2021-03-26">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Antiquarian bookstore businessesEdit

File:Booked Up In Archer City.JPG
One of McMurtry's bookstores in Archer City, Texas

While at Stanford, McMurtry became a rare-book scout.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> During his years in Houston, he managed a bookstore called the Bookman. In 1969, he moved to the Washington, D.C., area. In 1970 with two partners, he started a bookshop in Georgetown, which he named Booked Up. In 1988, he opened another Booked Up in Archer City. It became one of the largest antiquarian bookstores in the United States, carrying between 400,000 and 450,000 titles. Citing economic pressures from Internet bookselling, McMurtry came close to shutting down the Archer City store in 2005, but chose to keep it open after great public support.

In early 2012, McMurtry decided to downsize and sell off the greater portion of his inventory. He felt the collection was a liability for his heirs.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The auction was conducted on August 10 and 11, 2012, and was overseen by Addison and Sarova Auctioneers of Macon, Georgia. This epic book auction sold books by the shelf, and was billed as "The Last Booksale", in keeping with the title of McMurtry's The Last Picture Show. Dealers, collectors, and gawkers came out en masse from all over the country to witness this historic auction. As stated by McMurtry on the weekend of the sale, "I've never seen that many people lined up in Archer City, and I'm sure I never will again."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In April 2006, McMurtry was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.<ref name="americanantiquarian">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Film and televisionEdit

McMurtry became well known for the film adaptations of his work, especially Hud (from the novel Horseman, Pass By);<ref name=hud/> Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show;<ref name=lastpictureshow/> James L. Brooks's Terms of Endearment, which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture (1984);<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Lonesome Dove, a popular television miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall.<ref name=LonesomeDove1989/><ref name=LonesomeDove2010withcreds/>

In 2006, he was co-winner (with Diana Ossana) of both the Best Screenplay Golden Globe<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, adapted from a short story by E. Annie Proulx. He accepted his Oscar while wearing a dinner jacket over jeans and cowboy boots.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In his speech, he promoted books, reminding the audience the movie was developed from a short story. In his Golden Globe acceptance speech, he paid tribute to his Swiss-made Hermes 3000 typewriter.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

McMurtry married Jo Scott, an English professor who has authored five books.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Before divorcing, they had a son together, James McMurtry. Both James and his own son, Curtis McMurtry, are singer/songwriters and guitarists.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1991 McMurtry underwent heart surgery.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> During his recovery, he suffered severe depression. He recovered at the home of his future writing partner Diana Ossana and wrote his novel Streets of Laredo at her kitchen counter.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

McMurtry married Norma Faye Kesey, the widow of Ken Kesey, on April 29, 2011, in a civil ceremony in Archer City.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

McMurtry died on March 25, 2021, at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He was 84 years old.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

It was announced in early 2023 that McMurtry's personal property, including his writing desk, typewriters and personal book collection would be sold at public auction by Vogt Auction in San Antonio, Texas, on May 29, 2023.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

FictionEdit

Stand-alone novelsEdit

Thalia: A Texas TrilogyEdit

Larry McMurtry's first three novels, all set in the north Texas town of Thalia following World War II.

Harmony and Pepper seriesEdit

The books follow the story of mother/daughter characters Harmony and Pepper.

Duane Moore seriesEdit

The books follow the story of character Duane Moore.

Houston seriesEdit

The books follow the stories of occasionally recurring characters living in the Houston, Texas, area.

Lonesome Dove seriesEdit

File:The Contrabando, a ghost town within Big Bend Ranch State Park, west of Lajitas, Texas, on Texas State Highway 170 LCCN2014630277.tif
The Contrabando, a ghost town and movie set within Big Bend Ranch State Park, used for making the "Dead Man's Walk" and "Streets of Laredo" parts of the Lonesome Dove miniseries

The Berrybender NarrativesEdit

As editorEdit

Other writingsEdit

NonfictionEdit

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FilmEdit

File:Paul Newman and Melvyn Douglas Hud.jpg
Paul Newman (left) and Melvyn Douglas in Hud (1963)

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  • 2010: Empire of the Summer Moon (unproduced; co-wrote screenplay with Diana Ossana and adapted from the novel by S. C. Gwynne)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2012: Duane's Depressed (unproduced; based on novel from 1999)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • 2020: Joe Bell (co-wrote screenplay with Diana Ossana)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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TelevisionEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

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