Larry McMurtry
June 3, 1936–March 25, 2021
Author Larry McMurtry’s unsentimental writing subverted the mythology of the American West.
Born in 1936, McMurtry grew up listening to storytellers on the porch of his family's ranch house in Archer City, Texas. He described his "path to authorship . . . [as] a long, stutter-step affair," entailing studies at Rice and Stanford and teaching jobs in Texas, Virginia, and Washington, DC.
In 1961, his first novel, Horseman, Pass By, earned critical acclaim for its unsparing depiction of life on a Texas cattle ranch.
McMurtry’s subsequent books depicted small-town drama, larger-than-life characters, and landscapes that seemed to swallow readers whole, immersing them in the myth and reality of Texas.
Many of his books became films, including The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment. His coauthored screenplay for Brokeback Mountain earned him an Oscar in 2005. But it was Lonesome Dove that cemented McMurtry's reputation as chronicler of an unromanticized West. The 1985 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about an epic but ill-fated cattle drive became a television phenomenon: an Emmy-winning miniseries with twenty-six million viewers.
McMurtry added the National Humanities Medal and honors from the Texas Institute of Letters to his Oscars, Emmys, and Pulitzer. After his passing in 2021, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission unveiled a Literary Landmark in his hometown of Archer City, recognizing McMurtry's indelible impression on Texas literature.
For More about Larry McMurtry
Lonesome Dove, McMurtry’s most beloved work, revitalized the western genre. The television miniseries is the subject of the Lonesome Dove permanent exhibition at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos. Visitors can view costumes, props, and production artifacts from the original miniseries.
The Wittliff Collections are also the source of the Lonesome Dove traveling exhibition, produced in partnership with Humanities Texas. This set of fifty-five images, taken by photographer and screenwriter Bill Wittliff, document the extraordinary landscapes and imagery of the original miniseries. The collection is on display at museums and cultural centers across Texas through 2024.
Archival materials related to Larry McMurtry and his work can be found in numerous collections throughout Texas. The Harry Ransom Center houses typed manuscripts and correspondence dating from the 1960s and 70s, primarily acquired from McMurtry’s agent, Dorothea Oppenheimer. Additional materials can be found at the University of Houston’s Special Collections, the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University, and the Woodson Research Center at Rice University’s Fondren Library.
Selected Bibliography
Busby, Mark. Larry McMurtry and the West: An Ambivalent Relationship. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1995.
Duncan, Robert J. "McMurtry, Larry Jeff." Handbook of Texas Online.
Hollandsworth, Skip. "The Larry McMurtry I Knew." Texas Monthly, May 2021.
Graham, Don. "Anything for Larry." In Giant Country: Essays on Texas. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 1998.
Graham, Don. "Catcher in the Raw." Texas Monthly, December 2001.
McMurtry, Larry. Books: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
McMurtry, Larry. Literary Life: A Second Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
McMurtry, Larry. Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
"PEN America Mourns Death of Novelist, Former PEN America President Larry McMurtry." Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists. March 26, 2021.
Phillips, Barbara. "Legendary native son Larry McMurtry dies at 84." Archer County News, March 31, 2021.
Spanish Translation
Download the Spanish translation of this Texas Originals script.
Portrait of Larry McMurtry. Courtesy of The Wittliff Collections.
Cover of the first edition of Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, published in 1985.