READING OFF THE BEATEN PATH
A Few Words About Larry McMurtry
REFLECTIONS ON A GIANT
I thought it’d be important to say a few words in honor of the wonderful Larry McMurtry, who passed away two weeks ago in Texas at the age of 84. Larry enjoyed a powerful 60+ year career which included such notable works as Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, The Lonesome Dove quadrology (that’s 4 !!), and co-authored the screenplay to Brokeback Mountain. He never owned a computer, writing everything on an old typewriter. In all, he wrote over 60 books and screenplays. Astonishing.
The NY Times and other pubs have lovely articles about his life and work. But to me, as a guy in Arizona whose father-in-law was an honest-to-God actual cowboy himself, McMurtry’s works were extra special. He not only contributed to the Western genre and literature about the West, he advanced it.
I always thought his early stuff (Leaving Cheyanne, Last Picture Show) about life in a small, fictional West Texas town named Thalia, were in a genre of their own, which I call Hillbilly Western. They were anything but cliché depictions of cowboys and Indians. McMurtry usually mixed humor with his drama, through characters who could not avoid drifting downhill paths to lonely failure. His work was gritty, desolate, and often bleak. Fate seems to be relentless, grinding away at survival. There’s not a lot of good luck. He kept things sparse, but in motion. Dry humor. He never wrote the most complicated stories, but they were spellbinding nonetheless with their easy-going style of dialog and description.
One of my monumental reading JOYS in life was taking the time to read the sprawling 4 novel Quadrology that centered around Lonesome Dove. 3,000 pages, and I didn’t want it to end. The Series follows the entire lives of two cowboys. You’ll learn about humanity, Indians, the West, brotherhood, love, desperation, cattle drives. So entertaining. A true tour-de-force. As he became embraced by Hollywood, perhaps his writing became more visual, descriptive. Unfairly, when they make a blockbuster Hollywood mini-series (Lonesome Dove) out of your work, the literary movers and shakers slid him away from literature and into the pop-fiction category. Many wrinkled their noses and de-listed McMurtry from serious literature. If that stigma sticks, that’d be a real shame.
Want to read some truly great books, slightly Off The Beaten Path? Please consider Leaving Cheyanne, Last Picture Show, Dove, and Comanche Moon as must-reads to honor this great writer.
AND HE OWNED BOOKSTORES!
By the way, few know that Larry McMurtry owned several rare book stores over his lifetime. Booked Up, in a small town in the Texas panhandle, once stocked over 800,000 books in four buildings! Just think about that! Often, when a good independent book store closed its doors, LM bought the inventory. He downsized several years ago, but still stocks hundreds of thousands. Personally, he was quite the collector. In his own home he had over 30,000 books.
Larry M was a giant. He moved the ball. Teacher, bookseller, thinker, novelist of vast insight and creativity, Academy Award winner who kept his distance from Hollywood. He held our attention and admiration for 6 decades.
