Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Larry McMurtry (1936–2021) was a major American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and bookseller. Known for Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and co-writing Brokeback Mountain, his life spanned ranching, Texas small towns, and a passionate devotion to books. Explore his biography, literary legacy, and timeless quotes.

Introduction

Larry Jeff McMurtry (June 3, 1936 – March 25, 2021) stands as one of the most vivid voices of modern American letters, especially in his portrayals of the West, small-town life, and the shifting soul of Texas. Over a career spanning six decades, he produced novels, essays, memoirs, and screenplays—some of which became iconic films or television series. His writings evoke both nostalgia and critique, weaving character, place, and moral complexity into stories that confront identity, change, and the burdens of memory.

McMurtry’s importance today remains strong: he taught us to see the American frontier not as myth alone but as a place of human struggle; he documented the vanishing rural landscapes; and he lobbied persistently for the power of books in a digital era. His life, his craft, and his beliefs continue to inspire readers, writers, and cinephiles alike.

Early Life and Family

Larry McMurtry was born on June 3, 1936, in Archer City, Texas (though some sources record Wichita Falls on his birth certificate) . His parents were William Jefferson McMurtry, a rancher, and Hazel Ruth McIver McMurtry. He grew up on his parents’ ranch outside Archer City, a landscape that would become the model for the fictional town of Thalia in many of his novels.

In his early childhood years, McMurtry recalled that the family home lacked books. Instead, nightly gatherings on the porch involved storytelling—oral traditions that shaped his early sense of narrative. A formative moment came when a cousin passing through left behind about 19 boys’ adventure books, which became Larry’s first exposure to reading beyond the oral ones.

He also had a connection to extended family and the land—his relatives, neighbors, and the environment of rural Texas left deep imprints on his imagination, later blossoming into the setting, characters, and conflicts of his fiction.

Youth and Education

As he matured, McMurtry found himself straddling rural experience and scholastic ambition. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Texas in 1958, and a Master’s degree from Rice University in 1960.

He also held a prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford’s Creative Writing Center during the 1960–61 academic year, studying under literary figures such as Frank O’Connor and Malcolm Cowley. During that time, he overlapped with other rising writers including Ken Kesey and others in that cohort.

After that fellowship, he returned to Texas and engaged in teaching. He served as a lecturer in English at Rice University (until 1969) and later as a visiting professor at George Mason College and American University.

These years solidified his skills, ambitions, and literary networks. His early novels were rooted in the landscape he knew intimately, but filtered through the critical and imaginative sensibilities he honed in academia.

Career and Achievements

Early Novels and the Texas Trilogy

McMurtry’s debut novels were rooted in what he knew best: the rural Texas milieu. His first published novel, Horseman, Pass By (1961), would later be adapted into the film Hud. He followed it with Leaving Cheyenne (1963) and The Last Picture Show (1966), forming what is known as the Thalia: A Texas Trilogy—centered in the fictional small town of Thalia, modeled on Archer City.

The Last Picture Show in particular gained wide acclaim, and its film adaptation became a classic in American cinema.

From the outset, McMurtry’s work was attentive to place, memory, and the encroachment of modernity. His protagonists often wrestled with change, loss, and the tensions between continuity and rupture.

Literary Maturation & Recognition

Over the years McMurtry published dozens of novels—some stand-alone, some series—plus essays, memoirs, and works of history. Among his best-known novels are Terms of Endearment (1975) and Lonesome Dove (1985).

Lonesome Dove earned McMurtry the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1986. That novel’s adaptation into a television miniseries won many Emmy nominations and solidified both the cultural reach of his story and his reputation as a chronicler of the frontier.

Beyond fiction, McMurtry wrote nonfiction essays on Texas, culture, and life. Works like In a Narrow Grave, Film Flam, Roads: Driving America’s Great Highways, and multiple memoirs reveal his reflections on the craft of writing, the shifting literary marketplace, and his own life’s course.

Another major achievement was his work in film and television. McMurtry co-wrote the screenplay (with Diana Ossana) for Brokeback Mountain (2005), winning an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Earlier, multiple of his novels were adapted into films—Hud, The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment—some winning Oscars.

McMurtry also built a parallel identity as a bookseller and book collector. He started and ran bookshops named “Booked Up,” including in Georgetown, Washington D.C., and Archer City. The Archer City store became legendary, housing hundreds of thousands of volumes, until he sold off much of that inventory in 2012 in a major auction he called “The Last Booksale.”

As a public intellectual and literary advocate, McMurtry served as president of PEN American Center (1989–1991) and defended freedom of expression, notably in support of Salman Rushdie during the “Satanic Verses” controversy.

In 2014, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal—a high honor in recognizing his contributions to American cultural understanding.

He continued writing prolifically up until his death in 2021.

Historical Milestones & Context

McMurtry’s life and work straddled a period of transformation in America: the decline of the frontier myth, the growth of urbanization, the shifts in media and entertainment, and the digital disruption of the book industry.

• His early novels capture the mid-20th century Texas still tied to ranching, local economies, and tight-knit social mosaics.

• He witnessed and chronicled the decline of rural economies, the rise of highways and automobile culture, and the cultural dislocations that followed.

• In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, McMurtry became a symbol of an older sensibility in literature—rooted in place and human scale—even as publishing and readership changed dramatically.

• His massive book auction in 2012, as the Internet and e-commerce reshaped bookselling, was in part a realization that the prosperity of the old book trade was fading.

• Posthumously, efforts are underway to preserve his legacy. His Archer City bookstore, Booked Up, is being converted into a Larry McMurtry Literary Center to exhibit his work, host writers, and preserve his collection of some 27,000 books.

In literary criticism, McMurtry’s portrayals of Texas and the West have provoked debates: did he perpetuate stereotypes or dismantle them? Did he romanticize or demythologize the frontier? New biographies like Tracy Daugherty’s Larry McMurtry: A Life address these tensions.

Legacy and Influence

Larry McMurtry’s legacy is multi-faceted:

• Cultural Bridge: He bridged the frontier and modern America—showing both the allure and the ache of change.

• Genre Expansion: He broadened the scope of western fiction, blending it with realism, introspection, and emotional depth.

• Film & Television Impact: His stories reached vast audiences through adaptation, influencing perceptions of rural life, love, loss, and moral ambiguity.

• Books and Literary Community: As a bookseller and collector, he nurtured book culture, preserved rare literature, and mentored younger writers.

• Advocacy: His defense of free speech and his leadership with PEN underscored his belief in literature’s role in public life.

• Inspiration to Writers: Many novelists cite his work—his characterizations, his sense of place, and his moral subtlety—as formative influences.

• Ongoing Preservation: The Larry McMurtry Literary Center and the continuous study of his works ensure that his voice remains audible and influential.

In literary studies, his blending of regionalism and universal human concern offers a model for writers who want to root stories in place without becoming parochial.

Personality and Talents

McMurtry was often described as a stoic, private, and disciplined man—a “word herder” more than a showman. He upheld a writing routine: from early on he committed to writing a fixed quota daily—initially five pages, later up to ten—even on holidays.

Though he lived in the public eye through his works and bookstore, he shunned constant publicity; his persona was more reflective than flamboyant. The stories he told about women, relationships, longing, and regret reveal a deep emotional sensitivity, masked at times by laconic speech or rugged settings.

As a conversation partner, he was known to value authenticity and literary honesty. His lifelong friendships with many women—platonic and supportive—are also noted in memoirs and tribute essays, giving glimpses of his relational depth.

Finally, his bookishness was central: he saw libraries, books, and reading as sacred. Running Booked Up was not just a business, but a mission. He called it his “Temple of Books.”

Famous Quotes of Larry McMurtry

Here are some especially resonant quotes by McMurtry—on life, love, writing, and the human condition:

“If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.”

“If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.”

“A woman’s love is like the morning dew. It’s just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.”

“You can scare off a lot of cowboys just by looking mean, I guess.”

“It is sometimes the minor, not the major, characters in a novel who hold the author’s affection longest.”

“Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around.”

“The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.”

“Through my college years, topping that ridge had always given me a great sense of being home, but time had diminished the emotion and I had begun to suspect that home was less a place than an empty page.”

These quotations illustrate McMurtry’s mixture of tenderness, wry realism, and metaphoric thinking. Many relate to the small-grain textures of life—loss, love, longing, and the passage of time.

Lessons from Larry McMurtry

From McMurtry’s life and work, we can draw several enduring lessons:

1. Root your fiction in what you truly know. McMurtry drew powerfully from the landscapes, histories, and social textures of his childhood Texas—but always with a critical lens that avoided nostalgia alone.

2. Discipline matters. He believed in writing daily, steadily hour after hour. Talent without sustained work is incomplete.

3. Care deeply about books. His ceaseless advocacy for books, libraries, and reading reminds us of literature’s irreplaceable value—even in a digital age.

4. Adapt without surrendering vision. McMurtry engaged with film, TV, and contemporary culture without losing his literary core.

5. Acknowledge complexity. His characters rarely fit simple molds; they bear contradictions, regrets, and ambiguity—because real people do.

6. Legacy is built in many ways. Beyond books, McMurtry’s bookstore, his mentorship, his cultural activism, and the preservation of his own work show that a writer’s legacy can be as much communal as textual.

Conclusion

Larry McMurtry was more than a writer of the American West—he was a witness, a custodian, a storyteller whose narratives understood change, longing, and the fragility of memory. He taught us to look deeply into place, to honor what vanishes, and to keep turning pages even as the world changes.

Through his fiction, essays, screenplays, and bookstore, he shaped American letters and nurtured literary culture. As you explore Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, or his quieter memoirs, you touch part of his heart—and part of the evolving American story.

Explore more of McMurtry’s timeless quotes, read his books, and let his voice challenge and comfort you across generations.