Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry, whose career extended over five decades with more than 30 novels, about 15 works of nonfiction and more than 40 screenplays that included “Lonesome Dove” “Terms of Endearment” and “Brokeback Mountain,” died March 25, 2021. He was 84.

McMurtry was born on June 3, 1936, in Wichita Falls, Texas, to Hazel Ruth and William Jefferson McMurtry. He was raised on a ranch in nearby Archer City, which he described as “a bookless ranch house.” Archer City would become the model for Thalia, a town that often appeared in his fiction.

In 1958 he graduated from North Texas State College in Denton and earned his master’s degree in English from Rice University in 1960. He then traveled west, where he was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and met future novelist Ken Kesey.

As the son of a rancher, McMurtry’s first three novels all drew from his upbringing and were a trilogy of stories – “Horseman, Pass By,” Leaving Cheyenne” and “The Last Picture Show” – all set in the small town of Thalia. While writing “The Last Picture Show,” McMurtry taught English at Texas Christian University from 1961-62 and at Rice from 1963-69.

As his career moved forward, he left teaching behind and moved to the Washington area and opened his first Booked Up store in 1971, dealing in rare books.

McMurtry’s novels quickly attracted filmmakers, and many were adapted into feature films, such as “The Last Picture Show,” Terms of Endearment” and “Horseman, Pass By.”

But after completing “Terms of Endearment,” he entered into a “literary gloom” that lasted from 1975 until 1983.

His most memorable achievement came two years later with the 1985 novel “Lonesome Dove,” a story of a 2,500-mile cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The epic novel sold more than 1 million copies, received the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and became a popular miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall. The miniseries collected seven Emmy Awards and drew an average of 26 million viewers each night.

In 1991, McMurtry suffered a heart attack, which was followed by quadruple-bypass surgery. In the wake of the surgery, he fell into a long depression and did little more than lie on a couch for more than a year. The couch belonged to his longtime writing partner Diana Ossana, whom he met in the 1980s at an all-you-can-eat catfish restaurant in Tucson. After moving into together they collaborated, as McMurtry wrote on a typewriter while Ossana entered her work on a computer, often editing and rearranging each other’s work.

Included among his many books were three memoirs and three collections of essays, including “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen,” published in 1999.

McMurtry also won an Oscar in 2006 for the screenplay adaption of E. Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain,” which he co-wrote with Ossana.

McMurtry relished his role as a literary outsider, and lived much of his life in his hometown, Archer City, and held the same postal box for nearly 70 years.

In addition to his love of writing, McMurtry was an avid book collector and serious antiquarian bookseller. His bookstore in Archer City, Booked Up, was one of the largest bookstores in American that held about 400,000 volumes, once occupying six buildings. In 2012, he auctioned off two-thirds of those books and consolidated his inventory.

In his private collection, McMurtry alone held about 30,000 books that were spread over three houses.

McMurtry was first married to novelist Jo Scott McMurtry, which ended in divorce, but they had a son, singer-songwriter James McMurtry. He later married Faye Kesey, the widow of novelist Ken Kesey, in 2011.