Author
Larry McMurtry
Birth Date
June 3, 1936
(84 Years)
Death Date
March 25, 2021
Associated Country
United States
Larry McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter best known for his vivid portrayals of life in the American West. He was born in Archer City, Texas, a small town that inspired many of his stories. McMurtry’s work often explores themes of changing rural life, nostalgia, and the decline of traditional Western culture.
He gained early recognition with his novel Horseman, Pass By (1961), but achieved major success with The Last Picture Show (1966), which was later adapted into an acclaimed film. His most famous work is Lonesome Dove (1985), a sweeping Western epic that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1986. The novel is part of a larger series set in the Old West, featuring memorable characters and richly detailed settings.
In addition to his novels, McMurtry was a successful screenwriter, winning an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005). Throughout his career, he was praised for bringing depth and realism to Western storytelling, and he remains one of the most important voices in modern American literature.
He gained early recognition with his novel Horseman, Pass By (1961), but achieved major success with The Last Picture Show (1966), which was later adapted into an acclaimed film. His most famous work is Lonesome Dove (1985), a sweeping Western epic that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1986. The novel is part of a larger series set in the Old West, featuring memorable characters and richly detailed settings.
In addition to his novels, McMurtry was a successful screenwriter, winning an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005). Throughout his career, he was praised for bringing depth and realism to Western storytelling, and he remains one of the most important voices in modern American literature.
Books
First published in 1966, this elegiac masterpiece has been better known for the Academy Award-winning film that it spawned in 1971, but this new hardcover edition affirms McMurtry’s centrality to the...
Cadillac Jack 2019
Larry McMurtry’s “big hearted” fiction has been lauded for “taking us places we hadn’t known existed” (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books). Cadillac Jack does exactly that, inviting readers...
Somebody's Darling 2018
Forty years ago, Larry McMurtry journeyed from the sprawling ranches of his early work to the provocative Sunset Strip, creating a Hollywood fable that is both immediate and relevant in today’s...
Moving On 2018
Moving On centers on the life of Patsy Carpenter, one of his most beloved characters. After calmly finishing a Hershey bar alone in her car, a restless Patsy drives away from her lifeless marriage in...
In a Narrow Grave 2018
Originally published in 1968, In a Narrow Grave is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s homage to the past and present of the Lone Star State, where he grew up a precociously observant hand on his...
Desperate to break from the “mundane happiness” of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, “El Chevy,” bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities...
Horseman, Pass By 2018
A stunning literary debut, Horseman, Pass By (1961) exhibits the “full-blooded Western genius” (Publishers Weekly) that would come to define McMurtry’s incomparable sensibility. In the dusty north...
Leaving Cheyenne 2018
In Leaving Cheyenne (1963), which anticipates Lonesome Dove more than any other early novel, the stark realities of the American West play out in a mesmerizing love triangle. Stubborn rancher Gideon...
In this "comically subversive work of fiction" (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books), Larry McMurtry chronicles the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most...
Telegraph Days 2008
When twenty-two-year-old Nellie Courtright and her teenage brother Jackson are unexpectedly orphaned by their father’s suicide on his new and unprosperous ranch, they make their way to the nearby town...
When the Light Goes 2008
Back from a two-week trip to Egypt, Duane finds he cannot readjust to life in Thalia, the small, dusty West Texas hometown in which he has spent all of his life. In the short time he was away, it...
Loop Group 2005
In perhaps his finest contemporary novel since Terms of Endearment, Larry McMurtry, with his miraculously sure touch at creating instantly recognizable women characters and his equally miraculous...
Lonesome Dove 2000
In a small Texas border town, two former Texas Rangers—Augustus “Gus” McCrae and Woodrow Call—run a quiet cattle outfit, their adventurous days seemingly behind them. But when the opportunity arises...
Terms of Endearment 1999
Aurora is the kind of woman who makes the whole world orbit around her, including a string of devoted suitors. Widowed and overprotective of her daughter, Aurora adapts at her own pace until life...