McMurtry, Larry 1936–

(Larry Jeff McMurtry)

PERSONAL:

Born June 3, 1936, in Wichita Falls, TX; son of William Jefferson (a rancher) and Hazel Ruth McMurtry; married Josephine Ballard, July 15, 1959 (divorced, 1966); children: James Lawrence. Education: North Texas State College (now University), B.A., 1958; Rice University, M.A., 1960; additional study at Stanford University, 1960.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Archer City, TX.

CAREER:

Writer. Houston Post, Houston, TX, reviewer, 1960s; Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, instructor, 1961-62; Rice University, Houston, TX, lecturer in English and creative writing, 1963-69; Washington Post, Washington, DC, reviewer; George Mason College, Fairfax, VA, visiting professor, 1970; American University, Washington, DC, visiting professor, 1970-71; Booked Up Book Store, Washington, DC, Archer City, TX, and Tucson, AZ, owner (with others), 1970—; American Film, New York, NY, contributing editor, beginning in 1975; PEN American Center, president, 1989-91; also worked as a rare book scout and a dealer for book stores in Texas and California.

MEMBER:

PEN American Center (president, 1989-91), Texas Institute of Letters.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Wallace Stegner fellowship, 1960; Jesse H. Jones Award, Texas Institute of Letters, 1962, for Horseman, Pass By; Guggenheim fellowship, 1964; Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award (Oscar) for best screenplay based on material from another medium, 1972, for The Last Picture Show; Barbara McCombs/Lon Tinkle Award for continuing excellence in Texas letters, Texas Institute of Letters, 1986; Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Spur Award from Western Writers of America, and Texas Literary Award from Southwestern Booksellers Association, all 1986, all for Lonesome Dove; Robert Kirsch Award, Los Angeles Times, 2003, for McMurtry's body of work that "grows out of and reflects brilliantly upon the myth and reality of the American West in all of its infinite variety"; Golden Globe award for Best Screenplay, 2005, Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, 2005, and BAFTA award for Best Adapted Screenplay, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, 2006, all for Brokeback Mountain.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Horseman, Pass By, Harper (New York, NY), 1961, Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 1988, published as Hud, Popular Library (New York, NY), 1961.

Leaving Cheyenne, Harper (New York, NY), 1963, Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 1986.

The Last Picture Show (also see below), Dial (New York, NY), 1966, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1989.

Moving On, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1970, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1988.

All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1972, published with a preface by the author and afterword by Raymond L. Neinstein, Scribner Paperback Fiction (New York, NY), 2002.

Terms of Endearment, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1975, reprinted with new preface, Scribner (New York, NY), 1999.

Somebody's Darling, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1978.

Cadillac Jack, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982.

The Desert Rose, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1983.

Lonesome Dove, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1985, reprinted, Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Texasville (sequel to The Last Picture Show; also see below), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1987.

Anything for Billy, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1988.

Some Can Whistle (sequel to All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1989.

Buffalo Girls, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1990.

The Evening Star (sequel to Terms of Endearment), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Streets of Laredo (sequel to Lonesome Dove), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Diana Ossana) Pretty Boy Floyd, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

Three Bestselling Novels (contains Lonesome Dove, Leaving Cheyenne, and The Last Picture Show) Wings Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Dead Man's Walk (prequel to Lonesome Dove), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

The Late Child, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Diana Ossana) Zeke and Ned, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

Commanche Moon (prequel to Lonesome Dove), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

Duane's Depressed (sequel to The Last Picture Show), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

Sin Killer: The Berrybender Narratives, Book One, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

The Wandering Hill: The Berrybender Narratives, Book Two, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

By Sorrow's River: The Berrybender Narratives, Book Three, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

Folly and Glory: The Berrybender Narratives, Book Four, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

Loop Group, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

Telegraph Days, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2006.

When the Light Goes, (sequel to Duane's Depressed), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.

ESSAYS

In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas, Encino Press (Austin, TX), 1968, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1989.

It's Always We Rambled: An Essay on Rodeo, Frank Hallman (New York, NY), 1974.

Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1987.

Sacagewea's Nickname: Essays on the American West, New York Review of Books (New York, NY), 2001.

SCRIPTS

(With Peter Bogdanovich) The Last Picture Show (screenplay; based on McMurtry's novel of same title; produced by Columbia, 1971), B.B.S. Productions, 1970.

Montana (teleplay), Turner Network Television, 1990.

Falling from Grace (screenplay), Columbia, 1992.

(With Cybill Shepherd) Memphis (teleplay; based on a novel by Shelby Foote), Turner Home Entertainment, 1992.

(With Diana Ossana) Streets of Laredo (teleplay, based on McMurtry's novel of the same title), CBS, 1995.

(With Diana Ossana) Dead Man's Walk (teleplay, based on McMurtry's novel of the same title), ABC, 1996.

(With Diana Ossana) Johnson County War (teleplay; based on the novel Riders of Judgement by Frederick Manfred), Hallmark Channel, 2002.

(With Diana Ossana) Brokeback Mountain (based on the short story by Annie Proulx), Focus Features, 2005.

OTHER

(Author of foreword) Frederick L. Olmsted, Journey Through Texas: or, A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1978.

(Author of foreword) John R. Erickson, Panhandle Cowboy, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1980.

(Author of introduction) Dan Flores, Canyon Visions: Photographs and Pastels of the Texas Plains, Texas Tech University Press (Lubbock, TX), 1989.

(Author of introduction) Donna A. Demac, Liberty Denied: The Current Rise of Censorship in America, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1990.

(Author of foreword) Clarus Backes, editor, Growing Up Western, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.

Crazy Horse (biography), Viking (New York, NY), 1999.

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond (memoir), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West, 1950 to the Present, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

Roads: Driving America's Great Highways (memoir), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

Boone's Lick (stories), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

Paradise (memoir), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West, 1846-1890, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Annie Proulx and Diana Ossana) Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, Scribner (New York, NY), 2006.

(Author of foreword) Bill Wittliff, A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 2007.

Also contributor to Texas in Transition, Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs, 1986, and Rodeo: No Guts No Glory, Aperture (New York, NY), 1994. Contributor of numerous articles, essays, and book reviews for magazines and newspapers, including Atlantic Monthly, Gentleman's Quarterly, New York Times, Saturday Review, and Washington Post. Contributing editor of American Film, 1975—.

ADAPTATIONS:

Hud, a motion picture starring Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, and Melvyn Douglas, based on Horseman, Pass By, was produced by Paramount, 1962; Lovin' Molly, based on Leaving Cheyenne, was produced by Columbia, 1974; Terms of Endearment, based on the novel of the same title, was produced by Paramount, 1983; Lonesome Dove, based on the novel of the same title, was produced as a television miniseries, CBS, 1989; Texasville, based on the novel of the same title, was produced by Columbia, 1990; Return to Lonesome Dove, based on characters from Lonesome Dove, was produced as a television miniseries, CBS, 1993; The Evening Star, based on the novel of the same title, was produced for Paramount, 1996; Desert Rose was adapted for film by Columbia Pictures from a script by Nora and Delia Ephron.

SIDELIGHTS:

In the decades since he published his first novel, Larry McMurtry has emerged as one of Texas's most prominent fiction writers. Though he lived outside Texas for two decades, McMurtry has drawn themes for many of his novels from the uneasy interaction between his native state's mythic past and its problematic, ongoing urbanization during the later decades of the twentieth century. His earliest works, such as the critically acclaimed Horseman, Pass By and The Last Picture Show, expose the bleak prospects for adolescents on the rural ranches or in the small towns of west Texas, while his novels written in the 1970s, including Terms of Endearment, trace Texas characters drawn into the urban milieus of Houston, Hollywood, and Washington, DC. His 1986 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove, received high praise for its realistic detailing of a cattle drive from the late nineteenth century, a transformation into fiction of a part of Texas history the author previously approached in his essays on cowboys, ranching, and rodeos. As Si Dunn noted in the Dallas News, McMurtry's readers find him "a writer who has made living in Texas a literary experience."

As a spokesman for the status of modern Texas letters, McMurtry has been known to criticize some Texas writers for their tendency to overlook the potentially rich material to be found in Texas's modern, industrialized society and growing urban areas. In In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas, he concluded: "Texas writers are sometimes so anxious to avoid the accusation of provincialism that they will hardly condescend to render the particularities of their own place, though it ought to be clear that literature thrives on particulars. The material is here, and it has barely been touched. If this is truly the era of the Absurd, then all the better for the Texas writer, for where else except California can one find a richer mixture of absurdities? Literature has coped fairly well with the physical circumstances of life in Texas, but our emotional experience remains largely unexplored, and therein lie the drama, poems, and novels."

In The Ghost Country: A Study of the Novels of Larry McMurtry, Raymond L. Neinstein expressed the belief that McMurtry "has journeyed from an old-fashioned regionalism to a kind of ‘neo-regionalism,’ his characters, and the novels themselves, turning from the land as the locus of their values to an imaginary, fictive ‘place.’ But they, characters and novels both, are finally not able to manage there, at least not comfortably. McMurtry clearly does not trust ‘living in the head’; the pull of the old myth is still strong."

The son and grandson of cattle ranchers, McMurtry grew up in sparsely populated Archer County in north central Texas. From childhood he was more interested in reading than ranching, but the family stories he heard as a youth exerted an enormous influence on his sense of identity. He wrote in In a Narrow Grave: "It is indeed a complex distance from those traildrivers who made my father and my uncles determined to be cowboys to the mechanical horse that helps convince my son that he is a cowboy, as he takes a vertical ride in front of a laundrymat." If he felt pride and nostalgia for the ranching way of life which was vanishing even as he came of age, McMurtry was far less enthusiastic about tiny Archer City, where he attended high school as an honor student. He found little to nourish his imagination within the confines of the town, noting in In a Narrow Grave: "I grew up in a bookless town, in a bookless part of the state—when I stepped into a university library, at age eighteen, the whole of the world's literature lay before me unread, a country as vast, as promising, and, so far as I knew, as trackless as the West must have seemed to the first white men who looked upon it."

Interestingly, in creating his own fiction, McMurtry has drawn many of his themes from his bookless, "blood's country" of Texas. His early works portray a fictional town and countryside with a strong resemblance to Archer County. In Horseman, Pass By, his first novel, McMurtry introduces the adolescent narrator Lonnie Bannon, who describes a series of tragic events that occur on his grandfather's ranch when an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease is discovered. Nearing manhood himself, the orphaned Lonnie is confronted with several role models whose behavior he must evaluate: his step-uncle Hud, an egotistic and ruthless hedonist; his grandfather's hired hand Jesse, a storytelling drifter; and his grandfather, Homer, who, Charles D. Peavy stated in his Larry McMurtry, "epitomizes all the rugged virtues of a pioneer ethic." Lonnie's frustration is additionally fanned by the presence of Halmea, the black housekeeper who Peavy suggested is both "love object and mother surrogate" to the young man. John Gerlach noted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography that the relationship between Lonnie and Halmea, based on "tenderness, lack of fulfillment, and separation due here to differences in age and race," marks "the beginning of what becomes an essential theme in [McMurtry's] later works—people's needs do not match their circumstances." Peavy saw Horseman, Pass By as the first chronicle of another recurring McMurtry theme: "the initiation into manhood and its inevitable corollaries—loneliness and loss of innocence."

Horseman, Pass By was published when its author was twenty-five. While not an immediate commercial success, it established McMurtry's reputation within the Western genre. In an article in Regional Perspectives: An Examination of America's Literary Heritage, Larry Goodwyn called McMurtry "one of the most interesting young novelists in the Southwest—and certainly the most embattled in terms of frontier heritage." While McMurtry claimed in In a Narrow Grave that "the world quietly overlooked" Horseman, Pass By, and that he himself viewed it in retrospect an immature work, the book was not only significant enough to warrant an Academy Award-winning movie adaptation, but also of sufficient literary merit to garner McMurtry a 1964 Guggenheim award for creative writing. Peavy quoted a letter critic John Howard Griffin wrote to McMurtry's agent after reading Horseman, Pass By: "This is probably the starkest, most truthful, most terrible and yet beautiful treatment of [ranching country] I've seen. It will offend many, who prefer the glamour treatment—but it is a true portrait of the loneliness and pervading melancholy of cowboying; and of its compensations in nature, in human relationships."

Leaving Cheyenne, McMurtry's second novel, is also set in ranching country. The story revolves around Molly Taylor and the two men she loves throughout her lifetime: Gid, a rancher, and Johnny, a cowboy. Each of the three central characters narrates a section of the book; their intertwined lives are traced from youth to death. "McMurtry is psychologically precise in tracing this three-sided relationship," wrote Walter Clemons in the New York Times Book Review. "Odd as the roots of this friendship may seem, there's enduring consideration and feeling in it. The story takes so many years to tell because feelings that last a lifetime are the subject." Gerlach noted that Leaving Cheyenne explores a new aspect of the theme of "mismatching and the isolation it brings…. The expanded time scheme and number of narrators enrich the themes of the novel." Clemons, who called McMurtry "one of the two best writers to come out of Texas in the [1960s]," claimed that Leaving Cheyenne is "a rarity among second novels in its exhilarating ease, assurance and openness of feeling."

When evaluating McMurtry's early works, critics tend to group Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Cheyenne together due to their similarities of setting and theme. According to Goodwyn, "McMurtry's first two novels … were promising efforts to put the materials of frontier culture to serious literary use…. [Both books] are in-the-grain novels of people striving to live by the cultural values of the legend…. McMurtry speaks through a narrator who is frontiersman enough to move with ease through the tall-in-the-saddle milieu, but sensitive enough to note the ritualized energy and directionless fury surrounding him…. Relying … on the literary device of the provincial narrator, McMurtry found a voice that seemed to serve well as a strengthening connection between himself and his sources."

The fictional town of Thalia figures peripherally in both Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Cheyenne. In The Last Picture Show, McMurtry's third novel, Thalia becomes the primary setting and the debilitating monotony of small-town life one of the primary themes. Thomas Lask in the New York Times described McMurtry's Thalia: "A sorrier place would be hard to find. It is desiccated and shabby physically, mean and small-minded spiritually. Mr. McMurtry is expert in anatomizing its suffocating and dead-end character." The novel's action once again revolves around a group of late adolescents who are struggling to achieve adulthood in the town's confining atmosphere. Peavy wrote of McMurtry: "He examines the town's inhabitants—the oil rich, the roughnecks, the religious fanatics, the high school football stars, the love-starved women—with an eye that is at once sociological and satiric. For the first time he abandons the first-person narrative in his fiction, and the result is a dispassionate, cold look at the sordidness and hypocrisy that characterize the town."

When it was first published in 1966, The Last Picture Show raised some controversy in McMurtry's hometown of Archer City and elsewhere for its graphic detailing of teenage sexuality—including exhibitionism, bestiality, petting, masturbation, and homosexuality. "On the surface," Peavy noted, "McMurtry's treatment of small-town sexuality may seem quite sensational; actually, it is accurate. In the cloying confines of Thalia, the only outlet for frustrations, loneliness, boredom, even hatred—for both adolescents and adults—is sex…. Some of McMurtry's sexual scenes are highly symbolic, all are important thematically, and none should be taken as sensationalism." W.T. Jack expressed the same opinion in the New York Times Book Review: "Offensive? Miraculously, no. McMurtry is an alchemist who converts the basest materials to gold. The sexual encounters are sad, funny, touching, sometimes horrifying, but always honest, always human." Peavy felt, in fact, that "neither Updike nor Salinger has been as successful as McMurtry in describing the gnawing ache that accompanies adolescent sexuality."

Some critics felt that certain characterizations in The Last Picture Show approach stereotype. "McMurtry has said that part of the concern of The Last Picture Show is to portray how the town is emotionally centered in high school—in adolescence," stated Peavy. "As a result, the protagonist of the book is somewhat inadequately developed." According to Peavy, some of the difficulties in McMurtry's novel were surmounted in the film script of The Last Picture Show through the added perspective of director and cowriter Peter Bogdanovich. "The film script … is a much more sympathetic portrait of McMurtry's hometown than is the novel," Peavy suggested. "The combination of the two young writers [McMurtry and Bogdanovich] was fortunate." Filmed in black and white on location in Archer City, The Last Picture Show was a commercial and critical success, winning three Academy Awards, including an award for best screenplay based on material from another medium. In an Atlantic Monthly review, David Denby stated that the movie "reverses many of the sentimental assumptions about small towns that were prevalent in the movies of the forties, but it never becomes a cinematic exposé. It's a tough-minded, humorous, and delicate film—a rare combination in an American movie." Writing for Newsweek, Paul D. Zim- merman called the film "a masterpiece" with "a finely tuned screenplay." Zimmerman also claimed that The Last Picture Show "is not merely the best American movie of a rather dreary year; it is the most impressive work by a young American director since Citizen Kane."

McMurtry followed The Last Picture Show with what is sometimes referred to as his "urban trilogy": Moving On, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, and Terms of Endearment. These novels represent a radical departure in setting and tone in detailing the lives of Houston urbanites, some of whom travel across the country in various, seemingly aimless pursuits. In her Western American Literature study on McMurtry's work, Janis P. Stout wrote of Moving On and All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: "None of the characters in these two novels has any sense of a usable past, and none is purposefully directed toward the future. They inhabit the burgeoning cities of Texas with no apparent means of orienting themselves and nothing to engage them but endless, unsatisfying motion—as the title Moving On well indicates." McMurtry uses a revolving set of characters as the cast for all three books. The supporting troupe in one novel may evolve to primary importance in another volume, as is the case with Emma Horton, who appears briefly in Moving On and All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers before becoming the protagonist in Terms of Endearment. R.C. Reynolds noted in the Southwest Review: "Though time sequences often fall out of order in the three novels, key events and characters are repeated often enough to maintain a continuous theme which, not surprisingly, has three parts: sex and its frustrations, academics and its frustrations, and something like culture and its frustrations which McMurtry has branded Ecch-Texas."

Considered as a group, Moving On, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, and Terms of Endearment did not achieve the favorable critical response that quickly followed McMurtry's earlier books. Stout claimed that "the journey pattern so insistent in McMurtry's first three novels has in [Moving On and All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers] become dominant, as the characters drive endlessly and pointlessly around the country chiefly between Texas and California. Not surprisingly, novels so constituted lack cohesive form; or rather, their forms may be described as being imitative to a radical and destructive degree…. Unfortunately, this expressive form, by its very nature, is destructive of the overall novelistic structure and renders the work a chronicle of tedium." Goodwyn sensed an ambiguity at work in the novels: "The frontier ethos, removed from the center of [McMurtry's] work, continues to hover around the edges—it surfaces in minor characters who move with purpose through novels that do not."

Reviewers were not unanimously disappointed with the "urban trilogy," however. In a review of Moving On for the New York Times, John Leonard wrote: "McMurtry has a good ear: [the characters] talk the way people actually talk in Houston, at rodeos, in Hollywood. Mr. McMurtry also has a marvelous eye for locale: the Southwest is superbly evoked. It is a pleasure … to escape claustrophobic novels that rely on the excitation of the verbal glands instead of the exploration of social reality." "It is difficult to characterize a talent as outsized as McMurtry's," suggested Jim Harrison in the New York Times Book Review. "Often his work seems disproportionately violent, but these qualities in All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers are tempered by his comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape and place, and an interior intellectual tension that resembles in intensity that of Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet. McMurtry … has a sense of construction and proper velocity that always saves him." A Times Literary Supplement reviewer likewise concluded: "There are few books one remembers with a real sense of affection, but All My Friends is indisputably one of them. Mr. McMurtry's talent for characterization and the evocation of place—together with his ability to blend them convincingly, so that they seem almost to interdepend—makes [the protagonist's] near-indefinable yearnings for a past which seems close enough to grab at wholly understandable."

Terms of Endearment, first published in 1975, has since become the most popular segment of the "urban trilogy." The story concerns Aurora Greenway, a New England-born widow who lives in Houston, and her married daughter, Emma. The greater portion of the novel deals with Aurora's relationship with her several "suitors," including a retired armored corps commander and an oil millionaire, but the final chapter follows Emma through a deteriorating marriage to her ultimate death from cancer. New York Times critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt observed that "maybe what keeps one entertained [with the book] is the sympathy with which Mr. McMurtry writes about these people…. One laughs at the slapstick, one weeps at the maudlin, and one likes all of Mr. McMurtry's characters, no matter how delicately or broadly they are drawn." Gerlach found Aurora "loveable because she can turn a phrase…. Her story has endless permutations but no motion; she is timeless." Though some critics felt that the tragic ending strikes a jarring note following the light comic adventures of Aurora, they nonetheless found the section moving. Robert Towers, writing in the New York Times Book Review, noted: "The final scenes between the dying Emma and her stricken boys are the most affecting in the book."

Terms of Endearment, according to McMurtry, marked a turning point in his fiction writing. As he told Dunn, "I lived in Texas quite a while, and for my own creative purposes had kind of exhausted it. Texas is not an inexhaustible region." Having himself moved from Houston to Washington, DC, in 1970, McMurtry began to seek new regional settings for his books. The three novels McMurtry published between 1978 and 1983 all have primary settings outside of Texas. Somebody's Darling centers on the Hollywood career of a young female film director, Cadillac Jack follows the cross-country ramblings of an aging antiques dealer, and The Desert Rose provides a fictional portrait of a good-hearted Las Vegas showgirl. Critical appraisals of these works concentrate on McMurtry's ability to create appealing characters who are independent of his traditional regional setting. In a Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook essay, Brooks Landon suggested that Somebody's Darling contains "two of [McMurtry's] most mature and most fully realized characters." Washington Post Book World contributor Jonathan Yardley similarly stated of Somebody's Darling: "Mr. McMurtry's characters are real, believable and touching, his prose has life and immediacy and he is a very funny writer." Less successful, according to reviewers, is Cadillac Jack, a novel based in Washington, DC. Peter Prince wrote in the Nation that the principal character "is the man to squelch everything down to the level of his own deep ordinariness," while Yardley stated in the Washington Post Book World that "the city as it emerges in the novel is a mere caricature, like too many of the characters in it." Of the three books, The Desert Rose received the most commendation for its sympathetic characterization. Yardley claimed in the Washington Post Book World: "In her innocent, plucky, unaffected way [the protagonist] is as courageous a character as one could hope to meet." As Larry McCaffery observed in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, McMurtry "flirts with being unbearably cute … but his lack of condescension toward characters and situation makes his depictions ring true."

McMurtry's ability to transcend caricature and present his characters as real, living people has earned him a reputation as a mythbreaker. Nowhere is this reputation better supported than in his triptych of historical westerns, Lonesome Dove, Anything for Billy, and Buffalo Girls, which together successfully debunk the myths of the Old West—with its hardy cowboys, ruthless gunslingers, and savage Indians—recasting them as the sad inhabitants of a dying era.

Lonesome Dove, McMurtry's 800-page, 1985 release, not only returns to the author's native state for its setting—a locale he had consciously avoided for five years—but also concerns the brief cattle drive era that has proven the focus of much of the Western romantic mystique. McMurtry told a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review that the novel "grew out of my sense of having heard my uncles talk about the extraordinary days when the range was open," a subject the author had previously addressed only in his nonfiction. According to the reviewers, a strong advantage to the book is the author's objective presentation of frontier life. As George Garrett explained in the Chicago Tribune Book World, Lonesome Dove contains "the authority of exact authenticity. You can easily believe that this is how it really was to be there, to live, to suffer and rejoice, then and there. And thus, the reader is most subtly led to see where the literary conventions of the Western came from, how they came to be in the first place, and which are true and which are false." New York Times Book Review contributor Nicholas Lemann-Haupt also wrote of Lonesome Dove: "Everything about the book feels true; being anti-mythic is a great aid to accuracy about the lonely, ignorant, violent West." This anti-mythic foundation in the novel, according to Lemann, "works to reinforce the strength of the traditionally mythic parts … by making it far more credible than the old familiar horse operas."

Lonesome Dove achieved best-seller status within weeks of its release and was a critical success as well. "McMurtry is a storyteller who works hard to satisfy his audience's yearning for the familiar," stated R.Z. Sheppard in Time. "What, after all, are legends made of? The secret of his success is embellishment, the odd detail or colorful phrase that keeps the tale from slipping into a rut." Newsweek reviewer Walter Clemons claimed that the novel "shows, early on, just about every symptom of American Epic except pretentiousness." Clemons concluded: "It's a pleasure … to be able to recommend a big popular novel that's amply imagined and crisply, lovingly written. I haven't enjoyed a book more this year." "The aspects of cowboying that we have found stirring for so long are, inevitably, the aspects that are stirring when given full-dress treatment by a first-rate novelist," explained Lemann-Haupt. Lonesome Dove was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1986.

McMurtry's contrasting of the "popular" Old West to the "real" Old West is more heavy-handed in his 1988 novel Anything for Billy. Cast in the role of narrator is Benjamin Sippy, a depressed Easterner fascinated by the cowboy adventures he reads and writes about in such dime novels as Orson Oxx, Man of Iron and Solemn Sam, the Sad Man from San Saba. Fed up with his oppressive wife and his nine horrible daughters, Sippy heads west to live the life of an outlaw. The western plains that await him, though, are not those of his precious dime novels; there are more bugs than buffalo. After a disastrous attempt at train robbery, Sippy meets a buck-toothed simpleton named Billy Bone who, though never having pulled a trigger, has somehow built a reputation as a gunfighter—a reputation he is determined to live up to. With the help of Sippy's writing and a sawed-off shotgun, Billy Bone transforms himself into Billy the Kid.

McMurtry's retelling of the story of Billy the Kid is unique, a portrayal Julian Loose of the Times Literary Supplement warned "will certainly upset anyone nostalgic for Hollywood's version of the boy who never grew old." Missing from its pages is the Lincoln County war, mentor-turned-adversary John Chisum, or the traitorous Pat Garrett. The Kid himself is ugly, crude, and ignorant; he is afraid of thunder and lightning; possessing poor vision and bad aim, he compensates by shooting his victims at close range with an oversized gun, often without provocation. "There is nothing heroic or even accomplished about this Billy," lamented Loose, "yet he exudes an irresistible boyish charm" that "attracts followers and lovers who will do ‘anything for Billy’ but [who] cannot stop him wandering on to his premature and pointless doom."

The theme of Anything for Billy is age-old: Do not believe everything you read. By making Sippy both a writer and reader of pulp fiction, McMurtry points his finger at those who perpetuate the myths of the Old West. "The book's greatest strength," added Village Voice reviewer M. George Stevenson, "is in Sippy's accounts of how his dime novelist's expectations of the West were either too grand or too mundane." Robert Gish, reviewing Anything for Billy in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, proclaimed the novel "a tall tale that outdoes any previous telling about Billy the bandito boy of old New Mexico," and which forces readers to "think again about the real and the imagined West and the rendering of them in words."

As with Anything for Billy, 1990's Buffalo Girls features a cast of historical characters: Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Sitting Bull. Unlike young Billy Bone, though, the characters in Buffalo Girls are depicted at the end of their careers; tired, old and drunk, they travel together in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, emulating the adventures that made them into legends. The dwindling lives of McMurtry's characters mirror the approaching demise of the Wild West itself: the once-untamable land is now settled, the animals slaughtered, the bloodthirsty Indians relegated to small parcels of land. "Almost everyone in Buffalo Girls knows himself and his world to be on the verge of extinction," Susan Fromberg Schaeffer observed in the New York Times Book Review. "They begin to understand that they have outlived their time. The question then becomes whether they can find a new way to live, or at least a new meaning that will justify their lives. That most of them fail to do so should be no surprise, because the Wild West, as Mr. McMurtry seems to conceive it [is] the childhood of our country and, like all childhoods, it must pass."

In his historical Westerns, New York Times Book Review critic Jack Butler maintained that McMurtry alternates "the Old Wild West with the West of the present or near-present" in order to counterpoint the overly romanticized myths that permeate American literature. "I'm a critic of the myth of the cowboy," McMurtry explained to Mervyn Rothstein in the New York Times. "I don't feel that it's a myth that pertains, and since it's a part of my heritage I feel it's a legitimate task to criticize it." The reason for the popularity of the cowboy myth—that of the tough-but-fair rogue who adheres to the "code of the West"—is, he believes, rooted in the American psyche. "If you actually read the biography of any of the famous gunfighters … they led very drab, mostly very repetitive, not very exciting lives. But people cherish a certain vision, because it fulfills psychological needs. People need to believe that cowboys are simple, strong and free, and not twisted, fascistic and dumb, as many cowboys I've known have been."

Though McMurtry told Rothstein that he is "simply having fun reinventing" the myth of the Wild West, critics have found greater significance in his historical novels. Schaeffer described Buffalo Girls as "a work of resurrection, a book that rescues an important era of our country's saga both from that taxidermist, the history book, and from that waxwork beautifier, the myth machine." Butler, too, praised McMurtry's efforts as "doing something with the American West that is very much like what William Faulkner did with Mississippi. He is re-(not de-) mythologizing it…. None of this would matter if he were not a poet, a resonant scene-setter and a master of voice, but he is; and since the West figures so strongly in our vision of what it means to be American, Mr. McMurtry's labor is, I think, essential literature."

Perhaps because of the success of such films as The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment, as well as the television miniseries Lonesome Dove, during the late 1980s McMurtry became known more for his screenplays and the cinematic adaptations of his novels than as a novelist. Reviewers often criticized his books in Hollywood terms, as if they had already been translated to the screen; The Evening Star, for example, was panned by Mark Starr of Newsweek as "more script than novel," and Robert Plunkett writing in the New York Times Book Review attributed the popularity of the novel's main character, Aurora Greenway, to the performance of Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment.

A number of McMurtry's later works—including Texasville, Some Can Whistle, The Evening Star, The Streets of Laredo, and The Late Child— are sequels to earlier novels. McMurtry also penned a sequel to Texasville, titled Duane's Depressed. "More than any other writer I know of, McMurtry is inclined to return to his earlier books and spin off sequels," observed H.H. Harriman in the Detroit News. "It is hard to say exactly what the motivation is here—genuine and fond nostalgia, what could pass for a genuine preoccupation with unfinished business, or more darkly, the less than genuine and never gentle persuasion of a publisher's greed." McMurtry also wrote two prequels to Lonesome Dove: Dead Man's Walk and Comanche Moon.

Of his sequels, one that weathered the critical storm is Texasville. Though it reintroduces the city of Thalia, Texas, and the characters of The Last Picture Show, its tone is far different from that of its predecessor. Set thirty years after the events of the first novel, Texasville shows Thalia's residents as middle-aged men and women who, having made their fortunes during the oil boom of the 1970s, are now systematically going bankrupt. The town is as stifling and monotonous as ever, but the once-idealistic adolescents of The Last Picture Show have ceased to struggle against it. "They have stopped having thoughts," wrote Louise Erdrich in the New York Times Book Review. "They simply act out their emotions by destroying things…. Waste is celebrated." While the observations of Texasville's main character render the decline of Thalia in a humorous light, it is humor of the darkest, most cynical variety. "If Thalia … can stand for modern America," John Clute wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, "then for Larry McMurtry modern America is terrifyingly like hell."

As the townspeople go rapidly insane, they once again turn to sex—and lots of it—to keep their minds off their moral and financial deterioration. "But there's something sadder and more irrevocable" about the promiscuity in Texasville, according to Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times. "Everyone is older now, sinking into the disappointments and weariness of middle age, and for most of them, familial security and enduring love are no longer dreamed-of possibilities but lost opportunities, consigned to a receding past." Erdrich, too, noted the difference between the two novels' use of frequent sex: "In The Last Picture Show, the quest was not only for sex, but sex linked to tenderness and mystery, to love. In Texasville, sex is just sex. It happens everywhere and often."

Though Texasville is universally regarded as a very different book from its predecessor, it was still considered by many critics to be a literary success. "While [Texasville] lacks the ambition and epic resonance of Lonesome Dove, it shows off the author at his popular storytelling best, and it attests, again, to his sure feeling for people and place," lauded Kakutani.

With Duane's Depressed, McMurtry returns to the denizens of Thalia, Texas, this time centering on sixty-two-year-old Duane Moore. Oil rich and disillusioned with his life, family, and friends, Duane's dissatisfaction begins to manifest itself in eccentric behavior. He parks his pickup truck and begins walking everywhere. He moves out of his house and chooses to live in a cabin in the woods. Although never of a literary bent, Duane discovers Thoreau and decides to take the philosopher's advice and "live deliberately." Eventually Duane is persuaded to see a psychiatrist, the lesbian Honor Carmichal, with whom he falls hopelessly in love, and who introduces him to Marcel Proust. Discussing the book in the New York Times Book Review, Robert Houston observed: "By the book's end, Duane's beginning a fresh, untried kind of trip, one that is both literal and symbolic. He's on a plane to the Pyramids of Egypt, old passions confronted, the unknown ahead." While considering the plot at times forced and the character of Honor Carmichael "a bit too saintly, a bit too wise," Houston nevertheless concluded that "Duane's Depressed is a worthwhile end to an important trilogy, one that captures vividly and movingly nearly half a century of life in a great swath of America." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly added: "Using barren landscapes and drab interiors to emphasize the subtle, potent drama of Duane's search for himself, McMurtry shines as he examines the issues of alienation, grief and the confrontation with personal mortality."

Unlike his sprawling "urban trilogy," McMurtry's sequels are more static, their characters less prone to travel and external relationships. Receiving mixed reviews were Some Can Whistle, and The Evening Star, each of which reprises a popular set of characters who, now older, attempt to reconcile with their families and, eventually, themselves. While both novels are rife with dark humor and sudden, jarring tragedy, Kakutani considered the combination "contrived and melodramatic," although adding that it is executed successfully through the author's "fluency and poise as a writer." His penchant for sequels has furthered the criticism of McMurtry as a "cinematic writer," Time reviewer Paul Gray noting of Some Can Whistle: "Everything and everyone in the tale reeks of Hollywood." Still, his books remain popular among loyal readers. "While utterly satisfying on their own, [these sequels] also give the longtime reader the pleasure of seeing a character mature through the decades," Kakutani explained. "The result is not unlike growing old in the company of a favorite relative or friend."

If Texasville has fared the best among McMurtry's sequels, Streets of Laredo has probably fared the worst, several critics questioning the wisdom of continuing a tale as well-constructed as Lonesome Dove. "Part of the very bittersweet pleasure of finishing reading a great book is that its story and characters are finite," Harriman commented. "In that respect, they ‘die,’ only to live on in our memories. Sequels then are a kind of exhumation, a dishonor to the memory of the dead." In Streets of Laredo, Harriman concluded, "the tried and true caveats about the built-in, inevitable disappointments of sequels have been overlooked, and a Pulitzer Prize-winner has been reduced to pandering."

Not all reviewers disliked Streets of Laredo. Detroit Free Press contributor Martin F. Kohn lauded the way McMurtry "depicts the wild West on its last legs—more vicious than ever, as if enraged by its own coming demise at the hands of railroads, growing towns and other constructs of civilization." Kohn called the novel "a delicious, though vividly violent, read," wherein "verbal stands of color are planted at many a turn…. relieving the brutal landscape of the main narrative…. As a purveyor of time, place, plot and character [McMurtry] remains our novelist laureate of the old West." New York Times Book Review critic Noel Perrin suggested that, while on many pages Streets of Laredo "is the full equal of Lonesome Dove," "there are also many [pages] on which Mr. McMurtry makes you wish he had left the characters of Lonesome Dove in peace."

Dead Man's Walk, a prequel to Lonesome Dove, finds teens Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call joining their first mission as Texas Rangers under a self-declared colonel. On the mission they are dogged by merciless Indians, saved by a noblewoman in a leper colony, face death repeatedly, and endure a 200-mile "dead man's walk" across New Mexico. Observed Thomas Flanaghan in the New York Times Book Review: "It is a stranger and a more ambitious book than [Lonesome Dove], ruthless in its disposition of characters, sparse and vivid in its creation of the inhuman landscapes of New Mexico and the plains." According to some critics, the novel provides no new insight into the development of the central characters, and the plot is preposterous because so many of the facts on which the story is based have been greatly exaggerated. "It's one thing to demystify Rangers and quite another to invent a comic-book past," remarked Noel Perrin in the Washington Post Book World. "If Dead Man's Walk were not a prequel [to Lonesome Dove]," wrote John Skow in Time, "it would be worth only glancing notice. As things are, it is a satisfactory foothill, with the grand old mountain in view."

In the story chronology of the "Lonesome Dove" series, Comanche Moon follows Dean Man's Walk and precedes Lonesome Dove, filling the twenty-year gap between the end of one book and the beginning of the other. McCrae and Call fight to advance the American frontier in the face of hostile Comanches led first by Buffalo Hump, and later his son Blue Duck. The narrative also explores the love affairs of both men, Gus with a local shopkeeper who marries another, and Woodrow with a prostitute who gives birth to his child. Discuss- ing the novel, a Kirkus Reviews critic noted: "While the last third turns workmanlike in its efforts to set up the opening situation for Lonesome Dove, McMurtry nevertheless delivers a generally fine tableau of western life, full of imaginative exploits, convincing historical background, and characters who are alive." Barbara Perkins of Library Journal wrote: "McMurtry is at his best with a host of characters and painting on this large canvas."

In 2002 McMurtry published Sin Killer, the first book in his four-volume series known as "The Berrybender Narratives." Set in the untamed American West during the 1830s, the darkly comic series follows the exploits of Lord Berrybender, a bumbling, pompous English aristocrat, and his large, ever-changing entourage of family members and servants. According to New York Times Book Review critic David Willis McCullough remarked: "The Berrybenders may seem boorish, cruel and exceptionally unpleasant, but they follow a definite literary tradition—that grotesque behavior exhibited by people with first names like Albany, Bobbety, and Buffum often leads to comedy, or at least entertaining eccentricity." Sin Killer was followed by The Wandering Hill, By Sorrow's River, and Folly and Glory. "As always," observed Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times Book Review, "McMurtry is a natural creator of incident. He knots and unknots stories as easily as can be, and if you went looking for the literary sources of the Berrybender narratives you'd find them not only in the western potboilers of an earlier era but in the yarning that one imagines took place at a rendezvous of trappers and mountain men."

Telegraph Days looks at the waning days of the Old West through the eyes of Nellie Courtright, a feisty young woman who, after penning a best-selling dime novel about her brother's heroic exploits, improbably ends up managing the Wild West Show, fending off a robbery attempt by Jesse James, and witnessing the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. "This rollicking epic is filled with excitement and humor, tinged with sadness and a longing for the past," noted Booklist contributor Jay Freeman, and Texas Monthly contributor Mike Shea described the work as "filled with telling historical detail and atmospheric with choking dust and whiskey-breathed cowhands." "McMurtry could not be more clear in his conviction that the Western ethos must be abandoned as an actual way of life," noted Cheryl Miller, writing in Policy Review. "But he still recognizes the nobility of Western myth. Thus, Telegraph Days, even with its merciless skewering of the Old West, celebrates the beauty of the Western dream—as a dream that never was a reality."

McMurtry returned to a contemporary setting for Loop Group, "a quirky but enjoyable buddy story," stated Freeman. After a hysterectomy has left her feeling low, sixty-year-old widow Maggie Clary, the owner of a small film dubbing company, invites her best friend Connie to accompany her on a road trip to visit Maggie's aunt in the Texas panhandle. Along the way, the women encounter a host of eccentric characters, including a professional hitchhiker and a polite car thief. According to a Kirkus Reviews critic, "there's something here for everyone: An affectionate peek at the workers clinging to Hollywood's lowest rung; campy sex; drama on the highway; and canny insights into the dynamics of family and friendship."

Eight years after the publication of Duane's Depressed, McMurtry resurrected the character of Duane Moore for When the Light Goes, a "piquantly comic celebration of the absurdity of aging," observed Shea. Now widowed, impotent, and in need of a triple bypass, Duane falls for twenty-six-year-old Ann Cameron, the flirtatious new employee of his oil company, competently managed by his son, Dickie. He also enters an affair with Carmichael, whose own lover has recently passed away. "Muddle is what Duane and his male peers do best, aided by Viagra, sexual instruction videos and forgiving women," noted John Leland in the New York Times Book Review. "At 64, Duane is no longer much help to his children or family business. That women fall into his lap is a happy accident. They're a Wild West he doesn't have to tame, just survive." Despite the critical success of McMurtry's previous works about Thalia, When the Light Goes received decidedly mixed reviews. A contributor in Publishers Weekly noted that "this slim novel reads like a short story," and Jerry Eberle, writing in Booklist, remarked that "it's nice to know what ultimately becomes of old Duane—even if it isn't particularly enthralling."

In addition to his many novels, McMurtry has also published the short story collection Boone's Lick, the memoirs Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond and Paradise, the biographies Crazy Horse and The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America, as well as essay collections, nonfiction, and screenplays. In Paradise, the author ruminates on his parent's difficult marriage before moving forward in time to the period of his mother's death in Archer City, Texas, a period during which McMurtry was traveling the South Sea Islands. The book—part travelogue, part memoir—includes "Some characteristically wonderful passages that only McMurtry could write," maintained Book contributor Don McLeese while still expressing disappointment over the brevity of the volume. More enthusiastic, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly commented that "Readers of this excellent travelogue, abounding with literary references from Henry James to [Jack] Kerouac, will likely return to the book often to reread … favorite passages of McMurtry's meditative prose." Calling McMurtry "such a pro he could make laundry seem interesting," Booklist contributor Donna Seaman characterized his approach as "a magnetic blend of irascibility and grace."

Reviewing Crazy Horse for Library Journal, Stephen H. Peters credited McMurtry with "constructing a thoughtful discussion of Sioux culture around the known facts to show how Crazy Horse was shaped by his society and how he reacted to its destruction as whites spread onto the Great Plains." In The Colonel and Little Missie, McMurtry examines the lives of Buffalo Bill Cody, the Army scout, buffalo hunter, and entertainer, and Oakley, the legendary sharpshooter who became the star attraction of Cody's Wild West Show. According to a critic in Publishers Weekly, "the book's aim, to separate fact from folklore, is beautifully accomplished."

In Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, McMurtry combines essay with personal reminiscence to demonstrate, as Richard Bernstein, writing in the New York Times put it, "how he abandoned the cowboy life in Texas where he grew up, and became … a herder of words." The "Walter Benjamin" of the title refers to a German-Jewish literary critic and essayist whom McMurtry first read while at the Dairy Queen in Archer City. The material here is wide ranging, including McMurtry's childhood memories of his parents' ranch, discussion of writers as diverse as Susan Sontag and Miguel Cervantes, a description of McMurtry's 1991 heart attack, and a lament concerning the decline of storytelling in everyday life. For Bernstein, this "memoir is not easy to get a bead on. It meanders: it picks up themes and then picks up other themes, but it often doesn't get to a point… it leaves the reader longing for a stronger theme, great narrative punch." Thomas Mallon voiced a similar sentiment in the New York Times Book Review when he stated that the book "reads tantalizingly like the notes toward" an autobiography; "a reader does become frustrated with certain gaps and discontinuities." In contrast, Mike Shea wrote in Texas Monthly that McMurtry's "dry and gentle humor makes the essays read like his best fiction," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer called Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen "a thoughtful, elegant retrospective on Texas, his [McMurtry's] work and the meaning of reading by an author who has the range to write with intelligence about both Proust and the bathos of a Holiday Inn marquee."

According to Jeff Kunerth of Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, "McMurtry proves just how compelling a writer and skilled storyteller he is with Roads: Driving America's Great Highways. He confesses to being an avid travel book reader, but he writes a travel book unlike any other." Kunerth referred to the fact that McMurtry does not offer advice to travelers on where to spend the night or where to eat breakfast, but instead "uses the journey to ruminate, to let his mind wander, to think out loud on paper." McMurtry's ruminations include thoughts about his entire life, his books, and the work of other writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe, H.L. Mencken, and John Barth. A writer for Economist found McMurtry's musings less compelling, and warned readers unfamiliar with McMurtry's work not to start with Roads. "Too directionless for travel writing, too ambivalent for a paean, too inconsistent for a diary … [McMurtry] offers historical anecdotes, bookwormly musings, autobiographical reminiscences and the occasional pop-culture reference," maintained the Economist critic. "But there is little to connect these splintered thoughts save a tangle of blackened highways."

In 2005 McMurtry received the Academy Award for his screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, coauthored with Diana Ossana, his close friend and collaborator who helped nurse him back to health after his heart attack and subsequent struggle with depression. Based on the short story by Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain concerns the decades-long relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, a pair of Wyoming ranch hands who meet in the summer 1963 while tending sheep. Alone on Brokeback Mountain, the men stave off boredom and loneliness by swapping stories and drinking whiskey; one night, Jack invites Ennis into his tent and initiates a sexual encounter. After going their separate ways, Ennis and Jack both marry and have children, yet their connection remains strong and they periodically reunite over the years. "They're men who have fallen in love without quite realizing that's what's happened to them," observed Entertainment Weekly reviewer Owen Gleiberman, "and the glory of Brokeback Mountain is that in tracing their fates, treating their passion as something unprecedented—a force so powerful it can scarcely be named—the movie makes love seem as ineffable as it really is." According to Alonso Duralde, writing in the Advocate, McMurtry and Ossana "have crafted a haunting and practically perfect romance," and Newsweek contributor Sean Smith commented: "No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships."

In addition to his writing, McMurtry divides his time between "Booked Up," an antiquarian bookstore he founded, "Archer City," a ranch in Texas that he bought several years ago, and coast-to-coast driving trips behind the wheel of a Cadillac. In 1989 he was chosen president of the PEN American Center, a prestigious writers' organization with affiliates around the world. He was the first non-New Yorker to head the American branch since Indiana's Booth Tarkington, who founded it in 1922.

McMurtry describes his approach to his craft in peculiarly Texan terms. Writing, he claimed in the Los Angeles Times, is "the ultimate analogue to my herding tradition. I herd words, I herd them into sentences and then I herd them into paragraphs and then I herd these paragraphs into books." As Raymond Neinstein indicated, the region McMurtry has written about with such success is "a ghost country … a country of love and of blood-ties. When those ties break down, when the love is gone, when the inheritance or inheritability of that country is somehow thwarted and its traditions are no longer viable, then the poignancy of the country's neglected beauty, of the tradition's unusable force, and of the human life left to survive without that beauty, that tradition, that center, becomes the subject of McMurtry's powerful and nostalgic novels." These novels, McMurtry told the Los Angeles Times, are not based on mere "notes of scandals of the neighborhood," but rather are built by essential flights of imagination. "I am more and more convinced," he declared, "that the essential reward of writing fiction is in the delight of seeing what you can make out of the sole tools of your imagination and your experience."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors in the News, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Bennett, Patrick, Talking with Texas Writers: Twelve Interviews, Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 1980.

Bestsellers 89, Issue 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Burke, John Gordon, editor, Regional Perspectives: An Examination of America's Literary Heritage, American Library Association (Chicago, IL), 1971.

Busby, Mark, Larry McMurtry and the West: An Ambivalent Relationship, University of North Texas Press (Denton, TX), 1995.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 2, 1974, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 7, 1977, Volume 11, 1979, Volume 27, 1984, Volume 44, 1987, Volume 127, 2000.

Contemporary Novelists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 2: American Novelists since World War II, First Series, 1978, Volume 143: American Novelists since World War II, Third Series, 1994, Volume 256: Twentieth-Century American Western Writers, Third Series, 2002.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1979, 1980, 1980, 1981, 1986, 1987, 1987, 1988, 1993, 1994.

Jones, Roger Walton, Larry McMurtry and the Victorian Novel, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1994.

Landess, Thomas, Larry McMurtry, Steck-Vaughn (Austin, TX), 1969.

Lich, Lera Patrick Tyler, Larry McMurtry's Texas: Evolution of the Myth, Eakin Press (Austin, TX), 1987.

McCullough, David W., People Books and Book People, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 1981.

McMurtry, Larry, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas, Encino Press (Austin, TX), 1968, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1971.

McMurtry, Larry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

McMurtry, Larry, Paradise, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

McMurtry, Larry, Roads: Driving America's Great Highways, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

Neinstein, Raymond L., The Ghost Country: A Study of the Novels of Larry McMurtry, Creative Arts Book Company (Berkeley, CA), 1976.

Newsmakers, Issue 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2006.

Pages: The World of Books, Writers, and Writing, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Peavy, Charles D., Larry McMurtry, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1977.

Reynolds, Clay, editor, Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook, Southern Methodist University Press (Dallas, TX), 1989.

Schmidt, Dorey, editor, Larry McMurtry: Unredeemed Dreams, Pan American University (Edinburgh, TX), 1978.

PERIODICALS

Advocate, December 6, 2005, Alonso Duralde, review of Brokeback Mountain, p. 81; February 28, 2006, "Brokeback's Big Secrets," p. 42.

America, March 5, 1983, review of Cadillac Jack, p. 179; April 29, 1995, Robert R. Burke, review of Pretty Boy Floyd, p. 32; November 18, 1995, Loren F. Schmidtberger, review of The Late Child, p. 28.

American Heritage, April-May, 2006, Allen Barra, "Larry McMurtry: Writing Westerns from Hud to Brokeback Mountain," p. 18.

Atlantic Monthly, December, 1971, David Denby, review of The Last Picture Show.

Book, July, 2001, Don McLeese, review of Paradise, p. 72; May-June, 2002, Don McLeese, review of Sin Killer: The Berrybender Narratives, Book One, p. 69.

Booklist, April 15, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Paradise, p. 1506; April 1, 2002, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of Sin Killer: The Berrybender Narratives, Book One, p. 1283; March 15, 2003, Jay Freeman, review of The Wandering Hill: The Berrybender Narratives, Book Two, p. 1253; September 1, 2003, Jay Freeman, review of By Sorrow's River: The Berrybender Narratives, Book Three, p. 7; February 15, 2004, review of Folly and Glory: The Berrybender Narratives, Book Four, pp. 1003-1004; October 15, 2004, Jay Freeman, review of Loop Group, p. 363; March 1, 2006, Jay Freeman, review of Telegraph Days, p. 44; December 15, 2006, Jerry Eberle, review of When the Light Goes, p. 5.

Chicago Tribune Book World, June 9, 1985, George Garrett, review of Lonesome Dove, p. 1.

Dallas News, January 18, 1976, Si Dunn, "Larry McMurtry Moves On."

Detroit Free Press, July 25, 1993, Martin F. Kohn, review of Streets of Laredo, p. J6.

Detroit News, July 31, 1993, H.H. Harriman, review of Streets of Laredo, p. D14.

Economist, August 19, 2000, review of Roads, p. 75.

Entertainment Weekly, March 13, 1992, Owen Gleiberman, review of Falling from Grace, p. 34; August 26, 1994, Mark Harris, review of Pretty Boy Floyd, p. 105; November 28, 2003, Mary Kaye Schilling, "Lone Star," p. 82; December 9, 2005, Owen Glieberman, review of Brokeback Mountain, p. 59.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 1997, review of Comanche Moon; September 15, 2004, review of Loop Group, p. 886.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, September 6, 2000, Jeff Kunerth, review of Roads, p. K4697.

Library Journal, November 15, 1998, Stephen H. Peters, review of Crazy Horse, p. 75; February 1, 2000, Barbara Perkins, review of Comanche Moon, p. 133; October 15, 2000, Thomas L. Kilpatrick, review of Boone's Lick, p. 102; July, 2001, Cynde Bloom Lahey, review of Paradise, p. 90; May 1, 2002, Joseph M. Eagan, review of Sin Killer, p. 134.

Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1984, Garry Abrams, "A West Texas Literary Herdsman"; January 31, 1989, Charles Champlin, "McMurtry on the Trail of Dove Again"; July 3, 1989, David Lamb, "Small Texas Town's First Picture Show Won't Be Its Last Dose of Hollywood, Thanks to Resident Author"; September 28, 1990, Sheila Benson, "Texasville: Midlife Crises Film," p. F1.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 14, 1982, Carolyn See, review of Cadillac Jack, p. 1; September 4, 1983, Larry McCaffery, review of The Desert Rose, p. 7; June 9, 1985, John Horn, review of Lonesome Dove, p. 2; August 16, 1987, review of Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood, p. 12; October 30, 1988, Robert Gish, review of Anything for Billy, p. 1; October 22, 1989, review of Some Can Whistle, p. 2; June 7, 1992, review of The Evening Star, p. 4; June 4, 1995, review of The Late Child, p. 3.

Nation, February 3, 1979, Brina Caplan, review of Somebody's Darling, p. 121; November 20, 1982, Peter Prince, review of Cadillac Jack, p. 536.

Newsweek, October 1, 1971, Paul D. Zimmerman, review of The Last Picture Show; June 3, 1985, Walter Clemons, review of Lonesome Dove, p. 19; September 26, 1988, Walter Clemons, review of Anything for Billy, p. 76; June 8, 1992, Mark Starr, review of The Evening Star, p. 58; January 11, 1999, Malcolm Jones, "The Poet Lariat," p. 62; November 21, 2005, Sean Smith, "Forbidden Territory," review of Brokeback Mountain, p. 68.

New York Review of Books, August 13, 1992, Thomas R. Edwards, review of The Evening Star, p. 54.

New York Times, December 3, 1966, Thomas Lask, review of The Last Picture Show, p. 37; June 10, 1970, John Leonard, review of Moving On, p. 45; October 22, 1975, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Terms of Endearment, p. 43; December 20, 1978, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Somebody's Darling, p. C25; June 3, 1985, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Lonesome Dove, p. C20; April 8, 1987, Michiko Kakutani, review of Texasville, p. C24; June 27, 1987, Michiko Kakutani, review of Film Flam, p. C7; September 28, 1988, Michiko Kakutani, review of Anything for Billy, p. C24; November 1, 1988, Mervyn Rothstein, "A Texan Who Likes to Deflate The Legends of the Golden West," p. C17; October 16, 1990, Michiko Kakutani, review of Buffalo Girls, p. C17; May 12, 1992, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Evening Star, p. C17; August 26, 1994, Michiko Kakutani, review of Pretty Boy Floyd, p. C28; June 28, 1995, Richard Bernstein, review of The Late Child, p. C19; December 13, 1999, Richard Bernstein, "An Author's Seminal Moment at a Texas Drive-In."

New York Times Book Review, November 13, 1966, W.T. Jack, review of The Last Picture Show, p. 68; July 26, 1970, review of Moving On, p. 16; August 15, 1971, Walter Clemons, reviews of Leaving Cheyenne, Moving On, and In a Narrow Grave, p. 39; March 19, 1972, Jim Harrison, review of All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers, p. 5; October 19, 1975, Robert Towers, review of Terms of Endearment, p. 4; November 21, 1982, Eden Ross Lipson, review of Cadillac Jack, p. 13; October 23, 1983, Steve Tesich, review of The Desert Rose, p. 12; June 9, 1985, Nicholas Lemann-Haupt, review of Lonesome Dove, p. 7; September 16, 1985, Edwin McDowell, "Western Novels Ride High Again," p. C13; April 19, 1987, Louise Erdrich, review of Texasville, p. 7; May 31, 1987, William Murray, review of Film Flam, p. 35; October 16, 1988, Jack Butler, review of Anything for Billy, p. 3; October 22, 1989, Barbara Kingsolver, review of Some Can Whistle, p. 8; October 7, 1990, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, review of Buffalo Girls, p. 3; June 21, 1992, Robert Plunkett, review of The Evening Star, p. 12; July 25, 1993, Noel Perrin, review of Streets of Laredo, p. 9; October 16, 1994, Sidney Zion, review of Pretty Boy Floyd, p. 31; May 21, 1995, Verlyn Klinkenborg, review of The Late Child, p. 12; September 10, 1995, Thomas Flanagan, review of Dead Man's Walk, p. 33; February 21, 1999, Robert Houston, review of Duane's Depressed; November 21, 1999, Thomas Mallon, "Even Cowboys Get the Blues"; November 26, 2000, Karen Karbo, review of Boone's Lick, p. 16; June 10, 2001, John Vernon, "Lonesome Son: When Larry McMurtry's Mother Was Dying, He Got as Far Away from the World as Possible," p. 19; May 26, 2002, Neil Gordon, "An Englishman Abroad," p. 8; June 1, 2003, David Willis McCullough, "Chaps in Chaps," p. 32; December 7, 2003, Verlyn Klinkenborg, "Plunging In," p. 48; June 18, 2006, Chelsea Cain, "Cowboys Are My Weakness," p. 11; March 18, 2007, John Leland, "Duane's Depraved," review of When the Light Goes.

New York Times Magazine, December 7, 1997, Mark Horowitz, "Larry McMurtry's Dream Job"; May 29, 2005, Deborah Solomon, "Cowboy Culture," p. 17.

Policy Review, February-March, 2007, Cheryl Miller, "Creating the American West," p. 88.

Publishers Weekly, December 2, 1996, review of Zeke and Ned, p. 40; November 16, 1998, review of Crazy Horse, p. 59; December 7, 1998, review of Duane's Depressed, p. 51; October 1, 1999, review of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, p. 87; May 21, 2001, review of Paradise, p. 92; October 22, 2001, review of Sacagawea's Nickname: Essays on the American West, p. 62; March 31, 2003, review of The Wandering Hill, pp. 38-39; August 25, 2003, review of By Sorrow's River, p. 35; November 8, 2004, Allison Block, "The Circle of Life," p. 34; May 2, 2005, review of The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America, p. 186; October 10, 2005, review of Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West, 1846-1890, p. 47; December 18, 2006, review of When the Light Goes, p. 38.

Southwest Review, winter, 1976, R.C. Reynolds, review of Terms of Endearment, p. 102.

Texas Monthly, November, 1999, Mike Shea, review of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, p. 30; May, 2003, Don Graham, "Not Moving On," pp. 84-86; September, 2004, Evan Smith, "Larry McMurtry," p. 102; June, 2006, Mike Shea, review of Telegraph Days, p. 50; March, 2007, Mike Shea, review of When the Light Goes, p. 66.

Time, June 10, 1985, R.Z. Sheppard, review of Lonesome Dove, p. 79; April 20, 1987, John Skow, review of Texasville, p. 71; October 24, 1988, R.Z. Sheppard, review of Anything for Billy, p. 92; October 16, 1989, Paul Gray, review of Some Can Whistle, p. 89; May 25, 1992, review of The Evening Star, p. 73; August 9, 1993, John Skow, review of Streets of Laredo, p. 59; September 19, 1994, John Skow, review of Pretty Boy Floyd, p. 82; September 4, 1995, John Skow, review of Dead Man's Walk, p. 65; November 28, 2005, Richard Schickel, "A Tender Cowpoke Love Story," p. 68; January 30, 2006, Josh Tyrangiel, "Capturing the Cowboys," p. 62.

Times Literary Supplement, March 23, 1973, review of All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers, p. 313; September 11, 1987, John Clute, review of Texasville, p. 978; November 3, 1989, Julian Loose, review of Anything for Billy, p. 1217.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 5, 1987, review of Texasville, p. 1; October 9, 1988, review of Anything for Billy, p. 1; October 15, 1989, review of Some Can Whistle, p. 4; May 17, 1992, review of The Evening Star, p. 1; September 4, 1994, review of Pretty Boy Floyd, p. 3; September 10, 1995, review of Dead Man's Walk, p. 6.

Variety, September 12, 2005, Todd McCarthy, review of Brokeback Mountain, p. 63.

Village Voice, October 30, 1988, M. George Stevenson, review of Anything for Billy, p. 63.

Washington Post, October 13, 1982, Jonathan Yardley, review of Cadillac Jack.

Washington Post Book World, November 12, 1978, Jonathan Yardley, review of Somebody's Darling, p. E5; August 28, 1983, Jonathan Yardley, review of The Desert Rose, p. 1; June 9, 1985, review of Lonesome Dove, p. 1; April 12, 1987, review of Texasville, p. 3; October 9, 1988, review of Anything for Billy, p. 1; October 22, 1989, review of Some Can Whistle, p. 5; October 7, 1990, review of Buffalo Girls, p. 6; September 4, 1994, review of Pretty Boy Floyd, p. 9; August 27, 1995, Noel Perrin, review of Dead Man's Walk, p. 3.