Larry McMurtry

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Larry Jeff McMurtry (born June 3, 1936) is an American novelist, essayist, bookseller, and screenwriter whose work is primarily set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas.

Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), both of which were adapted into films earning 26 Oscar nominations (ten wins).

Lonesome Dove, his 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, was turned into a television miniseries with 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins), with the other three books in his Lonesome Dove series converted into three more Emmy nominations.

Brokeback Mountain, a writer and cowriter, received eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Early life and education

McMurtry was born in Archer City, Texas, 25 miles from Wichita Falls, Hazel Ruth (née McIver) and William Jefferson McMurtry. He grew up outside of Archer City on his parents' ranch. The city was the model for Thalia, which is a setting for a lot of his fiction. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1958, a M.A. was born at the University of North Texas, and he earned his M.A. In 1960, Rice University was founded.

McMurtry wrote in his memoir that there were no books in his grandfather's ranch house during his first five to six years, but his extended family would sit outside every night and tell stories. Robert Hilburn, McMurtry's cousin, stopped by the ranch house on his way to enlist in World War II in 1942 and discovered a box containing 19 boys' adventure books from the 1930s. Sergeant Silk: The Prairie Scout was his first book he read.

Personal life

Jo Scott, an English professor, was married by McMurtry, who has written five books. Before divorcing, the couple had a son together, James McMurtry. Both he and his son (Larry's grandson) Curtis McMurtry are singer-songwriters and guitarists.

McMurtry underwent heart surgery in 1991. He suffered with severe depression during his recovery. He recovered at the home of his future writing partner Diana Ossana and wrote his book "Streets of Lavelle" at her kitchen counter.

McMurtry married Norma Faye Kesey, the widow of writer Ken Kesey, on April 29, 2011 in a civil ceremony in Archer City.

McMurtry died in Archer City, Texas, on March 25, 2021. He was 84 years old.

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Career

McMurtry was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, where he researched the craft of fiction under Frank O'Connor and Malcolm Cowley, as well as other aspiring writers, including Wendell Berry, Ken Kesey, Peter S. Beagle, and Gurney Norman. During McMurtry's fellowship year, Wallace Stegner was on sabbatical in Europe.

After McMurtry left California and returned to Texas to begin a year-long composition instructorship at Texas Christian University, McMurtry and Kesey remained friends. He returned to Rice University, where he worked as a lecturer in English until 1969. He entertained some of his early students by relating to Hollywood and Hud's filming, for which he was acting. Kesey and his Merry Pranksters made their memorable cross-country journey in 1964, stopping at McMurtry's house in Houston. Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test chronicled the adventure in Furthur's day-glo-painted school bus. McMurtry received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the same year.

McMurtry received numerous awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, including one in 1962 for Horseman, Pass By; in 1967, for The Last Picture Show, which he shared with Tom Pendleton's Lonesome Dove; and 1986, for Lonesome Dove. In 1966 for Texas, he received the Amon G. Carter award for periodical prose. Good Times Gone or Here Again? In 1984, the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement was given. The Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award from the Tulsa Library Trust was given to McMurtry in 1986. In Literary Life: A Second Memoir (2009), he wrote about his Nobel Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove, in 1985, not a towering masterpiece.

In Book: A Memoir, McMurtry explained his writing process. He said that he would get up early and strip off five pages of plot from his first book to five pages of text. He wrote ten pages a day when he first published the book in 2008. He wrote every day, avoiding holidays and weekends. McMurtry was a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.

McMurtry, a vocal defender of free expression, served as president of PEN American Center (now PEN America) from 1989 to 1991, and the group's chief, Ayatollah Khomeini, called for Rushdie's assassination after which claims were made on his life.

McMurtry testified before the US Congress in 1989 against migrant asylum laws in the 1952 McCarran–Walter Act, which allowed visa refusal and deportation of foreign writers for ideological reasons. "There was a genuine doubt as to whether such a meeting would take place in this country," McCarthy explained before the 1986 International PEN Congress, "the McCarran-Walter Act would have effectively blocked such a gathering in the United States." He described the relevant laws as "an affront to all who believe in constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and association." These guidelines are especially triggering for a writer who lives on the uninhibited exchange of thoughts and experiences. Any provisions that barred certain classes of immigrants based on their political convictions were subsequently repealed by the Immigration Act of 1990.

McMurtry, a Stanford scholar, became a rare-book hunter. The Bookman was a book store in Houston during his time as president. In 1969, he moved to Washington, D.C. He opened a bookshop in Georgetown in 1970 with two partners, which he referred to as Booked Up. In 1988, he opened another Booked Up in Archer City. It became one of the country's biggest antiquarian bookstores, selling between 400,000 and 450,000 titles. McMurtry came close to closing the Archer City store in 2005, but decided to keep it open after gaining a lot of public assistance.

In early 2012, McMurtry decided to downsize and sell off the majority of his inventory. The collection, he said, was a disgrace to his heirs. Addison and Sarova Auctioneers of Macon, Georgia, conducted the auction on August 10 and 11, 2012. This epic book auction sold books by the racket and was branded "The Last Booksale" in keeping with McMurtry's The Last Picture Exhibition. Thousands of people from around the country attended this historic auction, including dealers, collectors, and gawkers. "I've never seen so many people lined up in Archer City over the weekend, and I'm sure I never will again," McMurtry said on the weekend.

McMurtry's film adaptations of his work were seen by many viewers, especially Hud (from the novel Horseman, Pass By), starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal; and James L. Brooks' Terms of Endearment, which gained five Academy Awards, including Best Picture (1984); and Lonesome Dove, which became a famous television miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall.

In 2006, he was co-winner (with Diana Ossana) of both the Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx. While wearing a dinner jacket over jeans and cowboy boots, he accepted his award. He promoted books in his address, reminding the audience that the film was based on a short tale. He paid tribute to his Swiss-made Hermes 3000 typewriter in his Golden Globe acceptance address.

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