Horseman passes by

[Long Run]

Perhaps the greatest writer of the last 60 years passes on.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry dies at 84
By JAMIE STENGLE, Associated Press 27 mins ago


DALLAS (AP) — Larry McMurtry, the prolific and popular author who took readers back to the old American West in his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lonesome Dove” and returned them to modern-day landscapes in works such as his emotional tale of a mother-daughter relationship in “Terms of Endearment,” has died. He was 84.

His death was confirmed Friday by a spokesman for his publisher, Liveright. Further details were not immediately available.

McMurtry, who had in his later years split his time between his small Texas hometown of Archer City and Tucson, Arizona, wrote almost 50 books, including novels, biographies and essay collections. He simultaneously worked as a bookseller and screenwriter, co-writing the Oscar-winning script for the movie “Brokeback Mountain.”

Several of McMurtry’s books became feature films, including the Oscar-winners “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment.” His epic 1986 Pulitzer winner “Lonesome Dove,” about a cattle drive from Texas across the Great Plains during the 1870s, was made into a popular television miniseries that starred Robert Duvall.

“’Lonesome Dove’ was an effort to kind of demythologize the myth of the Old West," McMurtry told The Associated Press in a 2014 interview. But, he added, "They’re going to twist it into something romantic no matter what you do.”

“The Last Picture Show,” his third novel, became a classic with its coming-of-age story set in a small Texas town. He and director Peter Bogdanovich were nominated for an Academy Award for their script for the movie, filmed in Archer City, located about 140 miles northwest of Dallas.

McMurtry was born on June 3, 1936, into a family of ranchers. McMurtry attended what is now the University of North Texas in Denton and Rice University in Houston and was member of Stanford University’s Stegner writing fellowship.

He wrote his first novel, “Horseman, Pass by,” at the age of 25 in 1961. It was made into the movie “Hud” starring Paul Newman that came out two years later.

McMurtry opened his first used and rare bookstore in 1971 in Washington, D.C., and later opened other stores in Houston, Dallas and Tucson.

In the mid-1980s, lured by cheap real estate, he opened his Booked Up store in Archer City. Eventually, the store in Archer City was the only one remaining. He downsized the store — both in volume and storefronts — in an effort dubbed The Last Book Sale, but retained about 200,000 volumes.

He had about 28,000 books in his nearby home in Archer City. “I’m very attached to the books. I need them. I need to be among them,” he told The AP in 2014.

McMurtry’s writing collaboration with Diana Ossana began after she helped him get out of a slump following quadruple bypass heart surgery in 1991. They won the Academy Award for their screenplay for the 2005 movie “Brokeback Mountain,” based on an Annie Proulx short story about two cowboys who fall in love.

He told the Associated Press in 1994 that his life throughout the 1980s had been peripatetic — traveling between his bookstores across the country and a home in Los Angeles. Then the surgery forced him to stop moving. “It just so happened that I stopped at Diana’s kitchen table,” he said.

The two, both divorced, had met at a Tucson catfish restaurant and struck up a friendship. After the surgery, McMurtry spent his time sleeping in Ossana’s guest room, writing “Streets of Laredo” on a typewriter in her kitchen, or staring out the window.

She helped edit “Streets of Laredo” and then began encouraging him to accept screenwriting offers. “I was getting lots of offers then from the movies. I was very popular, but I didn’t feel confident. I’d had real serious heart problems. I got a lot of offers and I think that she just got tired of me turning them down,” he said.

When the offer came in for a script on the Depression-era bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd, Ossana and McMurtry tackled it together and then wrote the novel “Pretty Boy Floyd.” After that they collaborated on more than 40 screenplays.

He married Josephine Ballard in 1959 and three years later, the couple had a son, singer-songwriter James McMurtry. In 1966, they divorced. In 2011, he got married for a second time: to Faye Kesey, the widow of longtime friend Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” They held their marriage ceremony in the Archer City bookstore.

Don Graham, a professor of English and American literature at the University of Texas in Austin, said in a 2014 interview with the AP that McMurtry is “pre-eminently a storyteller.” “He’s a great creator of characters and dialogue. That’s one of the reasons he’s had so much success in Hollywood,” Graham said.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I've never read any of his books and although I've heard of them (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment) I'm not sure that justifies the 'greatest writer of the last 60 years' appellation.

Candidates among American novelists in my view:

Ken Kesey (his buddy)
Joseph Heller
Saul Bellow
Michael Onondaatje (OK he's Canadian)

Honorable mentions:
Harper Lee (OK just one book but it was a pretty good one) (I just looked it up: published in 1960 TKAM is just outside the 60 years window but I'll leave her here anyway)
John Kennedy Toole (again just one book)
David Foster Wallace (Not sure about him. His writing is so rich I can take it only in small doses like fruit cake. Like Salman Rushdie in that regard.)
Robert Caro (OK not a novelist but you can't exclude him. LBJ biography of course.)
Donna Tartt (Secret History; I haven't read her other books.)
Amor Towles (I recommend A Gentleman in Moscow followed by Rules of Civility)

[Gob]

Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy?

[Long Run]

I've never read any of his books and although I've heard of them (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment) I'm not sure that justifies the 'greatest writer of the last 60 years' appellation.

Everyone is going to have their favorite, but it helps if they've actually been heard of. On your list, Saul Bellow is the only one who I would consider for a list of the best fiction writers of our lifetime. Since you have no idea what Larry McMurtry's body of work looks like:

His great novels:
Lonesome Dove (made into the greatest miniseries of all time)
Horseman Pass By (made into a excellent movie, Hud)
Leaving Cheyenne (made into a forgetable movie)
The Last Picture Show (made into an Academy Award winning movie)

Very Good Novels:
Terms of Endearment
Sin Killer
Cadillac Jack
The Desert Rose
All My Friends Are Going to Strangers
The Evening Star
Duane's Depressed
Some Can Whistle
The Late Child

And a couple of dozen other good books that are all compelling stories, well-written and readable, but not what I would call high novel art. And then he has his share of pure commercial efforts (similar to other writers who need to make a living from their work -- Tom Sawyer Detective anyone?) And then, of course, all of the screen writing. I can't think of another writer who had so many very good to great novels, so much commercial and critical success, and such a wide variety, over such a period of time. But, again, everyone is going to have their favorites.

[Long Run]

Perhaps the more interesting question is where did all the literary giants go. The first half of the 20th Century had a continuation of giants -- Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Lewis, etc. -- that was started in the 1800s (Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Cather, Poe, Emerson, et al.). Why do these figures seem so much greater than more recent novelists? I think of a few "recent" novels that are all-time greats, but I don't think of the writers as being overall in the same class. Was the advent of movies, radio, and television sucking too much of the talent, and too much of the public's attention?

[ex-khobar Andy]

You're right and I hadn't meant to imply that just because I hadn't read him, he wasn't a good writer. Times have moved on: there was a time when I tried to read the annual Booker Prize winner but I gave that up after so many (IMHO) duds. Some obvious exceptions: The English Patient (Ondaatje), Possession (AS Byatt); but Booker was a bit Brit-centric until the qualifications were expanded to all novels in English.

Next time I'm in B&N I'll look for Lonesome Dove. I like a book to tell a story as its first goal and it looks as if LD might qualify.