Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, Pass By!
William Butler Yeats
Larry McMurtry, known as one of the great American novelists, was born on the third of June, 1936, in Witchita Falls, Texas. The dusty backdrop of his childhood was somewhat illustrated later on within the settings of his novels, as his father and eight of his uncles were cowboys and/or ranchers. The high school from which he graduated in nearby Archer City was immortalized as the setting for the 1971 film The Last Picture Show. He focused upon writing after graduating from Rice University in 1960 and moving to Washington, D.C.
McMurtry's work deals mainly with the American Southwest in which he grew up, particularly Texas. Though he is known as the quintessential writer of "western" novels, only seven of his books actually dealt with the frontier. The most famous of these novels, Lonesome Dove, earned him the 1988 Pulizer Prize and spawned, in an unfortunate illustration of the lingering death of American intellectual culture, two hugely popular television miniseries.
Those of McMurtry's novels that actually do have ties to the frontier do a fair job of stripping away the pop-culture mystique associated with the era. McMurtry didn't write no traditional cowboys and injuns--one of McMurtry's Comanches could pluck an unwary white man from the dry prarie earth and scalp him clean, while simultaneously riding bareback on a speeding equine monster and wielding a bone-crushing lance.
In writing, McMurtry both broke away from and honored his genetic obligation to the ranching business.
In addition to owning status in authorship, Larry McMurtry is also a prominent dealer of antique books. Currently, he sells over three-hundred thousand volumes from four installments of his store, called Booked Up.
"The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsman tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching. Instead of herding cattle, I herd books."
McMurtry is the author of over twenty books, two collections of essays and over thirty screenplays. He currently resides in Archer City, Texas.
- Horesman, Pass By, 1961; adopted for the screenplay of the movie Hud.
- Leaving Cheyenne, 1963.
- The Last Picture Show, 1966.
- In a Narrow Grave, 1968; extremely rare due to a misprint: "skycrappers," instead of "skyscrapers."
- Moving On, 1970.
- All My Friends are Going to be Strangers, 1972
- Terms of Endearment, 1975; another famous work translated to the silver screen.
- Somebody's Darling, 1978
- Lonesome Dove, 1985
- Texasville, 1987
- Anything for Billy, 1988
- Some Can Whistle, 1989
- Buffalo Girls, 1990
- The Evening Star, 1992
- Streets of Laredo, 1993
- Pretty Boy Floyd, 1994; done in collaboration with Diana Ossana
- Dead Man's Walk, 1995
- The Late Child, 1995
- Comanche Moon, 1997; I've only read three of McMurtry's books, but this one's my favorite.
- Zeke and Ned, 1997; also a collaboration with Ossana
- Duane's Depressed, 1999
- Crazy Horse: A Penguin Life, 1999
- Boone's Lick, 2001
- Sacagawea's Nickname: Essays on the American West, 2001
- Cadillac Jack, 2001
- Sin Killer, 2002
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