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Author: Larry McMurtry

Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Larry McMurtry
    -Larry McMurtry Literary Center
    -PAPERS: Larry McMurtry Collection (Texas State University Libraries)
    -PAPERS: Larry McMurtry (The Wittliff Collection)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Larry McMurtry(1936-2021) (IMDB)
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster)
    -ENTRY: Larry McMurtry (Library of Congress)
    -ENTRY: Larry McMurtry (EBSCO Research Starter)
    -ENTRY: Larry McMurtry American author (Encyclopasedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: Larry McMurtry (Arts & Popular Culture)
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    -ENTRY: Larry McMurtry Screenwriter, novelist (Television Academy)
    -AWARD: Larry McMurtry: National Humanities Medal 2014 (National Endowment for the Humanities)
    -INDEX: Larry McMurtry (Good Reads)
    -INDEX: “larry mcmurtry” (The New Yorker)
    -INDEX: Larry McMurtry (LitHub)
    -INDEX: Larry McMurtry(NY Times)
    -INDEX: Larry McMurtry (NY Review of Books)
    -INDEX: “larry mcmurtry” (Texas Monthly)
    -INDEX: “larry mcmurtry” (Texas Observer)
    -INDEX: “larry mcmurtry” (Texas Highways)
    -INDEX: Larry McMurtry (bookreporter)
    -INDEX: Larry McMurtry (American Heritage)
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    -OBIT: Larry McMurtry, Novelist of the American West, Dies at 84: In “Lonesome Dove,” “The Last Picture Show” and dozens more novels and screenplays, he offered unromantic depictions of a long mythologized region. (Dwight Garner, March 26, 2021, NY Times)
    -OBIT: Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove author (and sly American existentialist), dies at 84. (Jonny Diamond, March 26, 2021, litHub)
    -OBIT: Larry McMurtry obituary: American novelist who wrote Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove and the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (Michael Carlson, 31 Mar 2021, The Guardian)
    -TRIBUTE: Remembering Larry McMurtry: Six writers pay their respects to the late Texas writer, whose work left an indelible impression on them (Texas Highways)
    -TRIBUTE: In Memoriam: Texas Novelist and Essayist Larry McMurtry (1936-2021) (John Nova Lomax, March 26, 2021, Texas Highways)
    -TRIBUTE: Larry McMurtry: A Literary Legacy (Robert J. Duncan, September 1, 2021, Texas State Historical Association)
    -TRIBUTE: Remembering Larry McMurtry and His Friendships With Fascinating Women: The woman to whom Lonesome Dove is dedicated recalls five decades of platonic endearment with an author who wrote like a cowboy but gossiped like Jane Austen. (Maureen Orth, March 26, 2021, Vanity Fair)
    -OBIT: Larry McMurtry, Novelist And Screenwriter Of The West, Dies at Age 84 (Anastasia Tsioulcas, Mar 26, 2021, KQED)
    -TRIBUTE: Larry McMurtry (Field Ethos, April 2, 2021)
    -OBIT: ‘Lonesome Dove’ Author Larry McMurtry Dies at 84: Winner of Pulitzer Prize was also a screenwriter and independent bookseller, sharing an Academy Award for the screenplay for ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (Associated Press, March 26, 2021)
    -OBIT: Larry McMurtry (LA Times, 3/26/21)
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    -ESSAY: On the Road: The tremors struck Houston on a fine spring morning in 1964, when Ken Kesey called and said they were on a bus and were coming to see me. (Larry McMurtry, December 5, 2002, NY Review of Books)
    -ESSAY: Talking About ‘True Grit’: The story of True Grit is mainly a study of loyalty. Reluctant loyalty, it is true, but loyalty nonetheless. (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, February 8, 2011, NYRB)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Inventing the West (Larry McMurtry, August 10, 2000, NYRB)
    -ESSAY: Lost Booksellers of New York (Larry McMurtry, May 10, 2014, NY Times)
    -ESSAY: Ever A Bridegroom: Reflections on the Failure of Texas Literature (Larry McMurtry, October 23rd 1981, Texas Observer)
    -ESSAY: The Author Who Sold Books: The writer of Terms of Endearment and Lonesome Dove once ran a bookshop here—and found out which congressmen were readers, how to get books from Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter, and other secrets. (Larry McMurtry, August 1, 2008, Washingtonian)
    -ESSAY: A Road They Did Not Know: Our greatest Western novelist deciphers Crazy Horse, Custer, and the hard year of the Little Bighorn (Larry McMurtry, February/March 1999, American Heritage)
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    -INTERVIEW: Larry McMurtry: By the Book (July 10, 2014, NY Times)
    -PROFILE: Larry McMurtry's Dream Job (Mark Horowitz, Nov. 30, 1997, NY Times Magazine)
    -PROFILE: Shelf-Possessed (James Campbell, July 27, 2008, NY Times Book Review)
    -INTERVIEW: Larry McMurtry on the Power of the Plains (Kenan Christiansen, May 13, 2014, NY Times)
    -PROFILE: A Texan Who Likes to Deflate The Legends of the Golden West (Mervyn Rothstein, Nov. 1, 1988, NY Times Book Review)
    -PROFILE: Larry McMurtry: Reluctant Legend (Chuck Thompson, August 24, 2020, Cowboys & Indians)
    -PROFILE: Inside the ‘Vibrant Intellectual Ecosystem’ of Larry McMurtry’s Home Library: McMurtry on the Few Books He Would Never Give Up (Nina Freudenberger and Sadie Stein, February 18, 2020, LitHub)
    -INTERVIEW: Larry McMurtry: The 68-year-old novelist and screenwriter on leaving Archer City, working in Hollywood, eating in Tucson, and whether the cowboy myth is dead or alive. (Evan Smith, September 2004, Texas Monthly)
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    -PODCAST: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Hosted by John J. Miller, March 25, 2025, Great Books)
    -PODCAST: How the West was written : Geoff Dyer on Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove; the black contralto Marian Anderson and the twists and turns behind a moment when the history of Civil Rights intersected with that of classical music. (TLS, July 17, 2020)
    -PODCAST: Last Picture Show Love Triangle: Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman Part 3 (You Must Remember This, June 8, 2020)
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    -ESSAY: True West: It’s our Gone with the Wind—a hugely popular adventure tale, a fierce depiction of frontier life, and an enduring portrait of a complicated friendship. When Lonesome Dove was published in 1985, it transformed Larry McMurtry’s career overnight and revived the fortunes of the western itself. A quarter century later, we go behind the scenes for a look at the book—and the beloved miniseries—that forever changed the image of Texas. (John Spong, July 2010, Texas Monthly)
    -ESSAY: Why Is Everyone Reading 'Lonesome Dove,' an 858-page Western From 1985?<./a>: Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic is experiencing a renaissance. This makes more sense than you might think. (Michael Sebastian, Mar 20, 2025, Esquire)
    -ESSAY: A Tale of Two Westerns: Two classics of an eclipsed American genre turn forty. (David Polansky, 7/08/25, Hedgehog Review)
    -ESSAY: McMurtry and Cervantes (Kevin Rosero, July 7, 2021, Classics and Comets)
    -ESSAY: Lonesome Dove and Adam Bede (Kevin Rosero, June 22, 2022, Classics and Comets)
    -ESSAY: Theology and morality in Laredo (Kevin Rosero, July 26, 2021, Classics and Comets)
    -ESSAY: Don Quixote and Lonesome Dove (Kevin Rosero, June 22, 2021, Classics and Comets)
    -ESSAY: A Tale Of Two Endings: Though the television adaptation of Lonesome Dove hewed closely to the novel’s spirit, it struck a very different note in its final moments. Below, an annotation of the last pages of the book and the script reveals how and why Bill Wittliff strayed from Larry McMurtry’s design. (Jeff Salamon, July 2010, Texas Monthly)
    -ESSAY: The Lonesome Writing Guru: How author Larry McMurtry—and George Getschow, editor of a new book about McMurtry—helped shepherd a Lone Star literary community. (Lise Olsen, October 4, 2023, Texas Observer)
    -ESSAY: The Essential Larry McMurtry: The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter explored the myths and legacies of the West in his work. (Tina Jordan, March 26, 2021, NY Times)
    -ESSAY: Ghosts of Archer City (Michael Mooney, Texas Highways)
    -ESSAY: After the Hurricane Winds Die Down, Larry McMurtry’s Houston Trilogy Lives On (Douglas Brinkley, Sept. 14, 2017, NY Times)
    -ESSAY: Fixer Upper: Larry McMurtry’s Library (Colin Ainsworth, February 29, 2024, Paris Review)
    -ESSAY: Art Imitates Life: On the Making of Larry McMurtry, The Writer: Tracy Daugherty on the Chronicler of the American West (Tracy Daugherty, September 18, 2023, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: True West: How Larry McMurtry defined and undermined the idea of Texas. (Rachel Monroe, September 18, 2023, The New Yorker)
    -ESSAY: Larry McMurtry and the American West: Larry McMurtry has written 29 novels, five collections of essays, several screenplays. (Douglas A. Jeffrey, Spring 2007, Claremont Review of Books)

In Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond (1999), McMurtry lamented that his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove (1985), a saga of two legendary retired Texas Rangers, had failed in its purpose. He had intended the book to “demythicize” the West. “[I]nstead,” he complained, it “became a kind of American Arthuriad.”

    -ESSAY: Larry McMurtry : An Accidental Feminist? (Diana Finlay Hendricks)
    -ESSAY: The Midnight Rodeo: Larry McMurtry, Me, and Our Abject Failure to Feud (Patty L: Limerick, 4/1/2021, Center of the American West)
    -ESSAY: Cowboy Character: Cheerfulness (Derrick Jeter, Jul 18, 2024, Y’allogy)
    -ESSAY: Larry McMurtry at the Strip Mall: The legendary author’s voluminous private book collection landed at an unassuming spot off the Tollway. (Brandon Kennedy, April 12, 2024, Dallas)
    -EXCERPT: The Lasting Power of Larry McMurtry’s Not-So-Secret Texas Truths: In a new book, writers pay homage to his words. Read an exclusive excerpt here (Erik Calonius, September 1, 2023, Garden & Gun)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Last Man in the West: ‘A Texas Trilogy’ by Larry McMurtry (Paul Wilner, 9/13/17, zyzzyva)
    -ESSAY: What If I’m Actually a Character in a Larry McMurtry Novel?: On the Beautiful Losers of Texas, and Returning to Where You Came From (Claudia Smith, July 20, 2016, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: Geoff Dyer: ‘Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is like the gift of reading itself’: The author and critic on ‘total bore’ Saul Bellow, how Nietzsche changed his mind, and laughing and crying over Jean Rhys (Geoff Dyer, 16 Apr 2021, The Guardian)
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    -REVIEW INDEX: Larry McMurtry (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW INDEX: Larry McMurtry (Publishers Weekly)
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    -REVIEW: of The Last Picture Show (Kevin Rosero, Classics and Comets)
    -REVIEW: Sex Wasn't Everything (W.t. Jack, Nov. 13, 1966, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: Larry McMurtry’s Enduring Brilliant Twist in ‘The Last Picture Show’ : The Small Town Lives (David Hinckley, Apr 2, 2021, Medium)
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    -REVIEW: of Texasville by Larry McMurtry (Michiko Kakutani, 4/08/87, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Texasville (Louise Erdich, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Duane’s Depressed by Larry McMurtry (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, 1/07/99, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Duane’s Depressed (Robert Houston, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: Proust in Texas : a review of Duane’s Depressed (Don Graham, January 22, 1999, Texas Observer)
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    -REVIEW ESSAY: Ranging across Texas: On first looking into Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (Geoff Dyer, 7/17/20, TLS)
    -REVIEW: of Tall in the Saddle : a review of Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (NICHOLAS LEMANN, 1/10/99, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Lonesome Dove (Luke Harkness, Luke’s Blog)
    -REVIEW: of Lonesome Dove (Nathan Eberline Brevity & Reason)
    -REVIEW: of Lonesome Dove (Washington Post)
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    -REVIEW: of Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry (Wayne Gard, June 18, 1961, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: An Overlooked Novel: a review of Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry (Walter Clemons, Aug. 15, 1971, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: Texas Triptych: a review of Leaving Cheyenne (MARSHALL SPRAGUE, October 16, 1963, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: of All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers by Larry McMurtry (Jim Harrison, 3/190/72, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Streets of Laredo (Kevin Rosero, July 9, 2021, Classics and Comets)
    -REVIEW: of Streets of Laredo (Noel Perrin, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Streets of Laredo (Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: of Dead Man’s Walk (Kevin Rosero, July 28, 2021, Classics and Comets)
    -REVIEW: of Dead Man’s Walk (Thomas Flanagan, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Comanche Moon (Kevin Rosero, July 29, 2021, Classics and Comets)
    -REVIEW: of Comanche Moon (Andy Solomon, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Boone’s Lick by Larry McMurtry (Karen Karbo, Nov. 26, 2000, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry (Jack Butler, 10/16/88, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Paradise by Larry McMurtry (John Vernon, June 10, 2001, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Buffalo Firls by Larry McMurtry (Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Oct. 7, 1990, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Buffalo Girls (MIchiko Kakutani, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: of Custer by Larry McMurtry (Timothy Egan, 12/02/12, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of The Evening Star by Larry McMurtry (Michiko Kakutani, May 12, 1992, NY Times))
    -REVIEW: of The Evening Star (Robert Plunket, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of When the Light Goes by Larry McMurtry (John Leland, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of The Late Child by Larry McMurtry (Verlyn Klinkenborg, May 21, 1995, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Late Child (Richard Bernstein, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: of Some Can Whistle by Larry McMurtry (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Oct. 16, 1989, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Some Can Whistle (Barbara Kingsolver, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: The Treasure Hunter: a review of Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Michael Dirda, August 14, 2008, NY RB)
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    -REVIEW: of By Sorrow's River.: The Berrybender Narratives, Book 3 by Larry McMurtry (Verlyn Klinkenborg, Dec. 7, 2003, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of Loop Group by Larry McMurtry (Janet Maslin, Dec. 14, 2004, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: of TELEGRAPH DAYS by Larry McMurtry (Chelsea Cain, June 18, 2006, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: of FILM FLAM. Essays on Hollywood. By Larry McMurtry (Michiko Kakutani, 6/27/87, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: of Pretty Boy Floyd A Novel By Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Pretty Boy Floyd (Sidney Zion, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: Perspectives on McMurtryville: A Memoir by Archer City's Flaubert (Don Graham, July 23, 1999, Texas Observer)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: The Real Texas: People go to Texas seeking fortunes, hoping to find a place somewhere between what is real and what is myth; it is strange and disturbing that this hope resembles the feeling that brought Anglo settlers, along with the people they enslaved, into the region so long ago.: includes In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas by Larry McMurtry (Annette Gordon-Reed, October 24, 2019, NYRB)
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    -REVIEW: of WALTER BENJAMIN AT THE DAIRY QUEEN: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond by Larry McMurtry (Thomas Mallon, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Walter Benjamin (Richard Bernstein, NY Times)
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    -REVIEW: of Roads: Driving America's Great Highways by Larry McMurtry (Michiko Kakutani, 7/07/20, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Roads (Timothy Foote, NY Times Book Review)
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    -REVIEW: Did Larry McMurtry Really Like Texas All That Much?: A new biography makes clear that the acclaimed writer had an intense love-hate relationship with his home state. Which may have been the secret to his success.: a review of Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty (Andrew R. Graybill, September 2023, Texas Monthly)

But most poignantly, as Daugherty insists, McMurtry was out of step with the geography and topography of far North Texas itself. Whereas many have embraced the majesty of its yawning blue horizon and sea of undulating green grass, McMurtry saw only a dun-colored bleakness, underscored by the region’s economic and cultural impoverishment. Daugherty cites a formative episode from the novelist’s boyhood when McMurtry was traveling with Jeff Mac across the Great Plains on Route 66. “I thought my father was driving us into the sky,” he later wrote. “The image always haunted him,” Daugherty writes, “a vision of escaping emptiness by heading into an even greater blank, as clean as a piece of paper.” Nomadism became McMurtry’s way of papering over the void: contrary to the pithy bumper sticker, he may have been born in Texas, but he got away as fast—and as often—as he could, spending much of his life in Arizona, California, and the Washington, D.C., area.

The Last Picture Show (1966) - Larry McMurtry (6/03/1936 -3/25/2021) (Grade:C)