Larry McMurtry, novelist who shaped Texas' view of itself, and America's view of Texas and the Old West, dies at 84 - Entrepreneur Generations

Larry McMurtry posed for Dallas Morning News photographer David Woo in 2012 as he liquidated his collection of half a million books, which filled several store buildings in his hometown of Archer City, Texas.

Larry McMurtry, "whose novels about small-town life and the cowboy era of the American West chiseled him into the folklore of his native Texas," died Thursday night at 84, the Dallas Morning News reports.

"McMurtry shaped Texas’ view of itself far more than any contemporary writer," writes Michael Granberry. "None achieved his level of critical acclaim or rivaled his Hollywood success, as he simultaneously shattered and celebrated the mythology of his native state."

McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, which Granberry calls "an elegiac study of the Old West," won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He wrote 45 other books, including The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment and Brokeback Mountain, novels that became Oscar-winning movies. He shared an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Brokeback.

McMurtry grew up the son of a rancher near Wichita Falls, in Archer City, which became the setting for The Last Picture Show. His first novel, Horseman, Pass By, was reworked to become the multiple-Oscar-winning movie "Hud," starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal.

“Larry is someone who took on the stereotypes and busted them. He was willing to say that the cowboy myth was just that,” his friend, retired University of North Texas writer-in-residence George Getschow, told the Morning News. “He wrote about things that disturbed and challenged convention in a way that was piercing, indelicate and right on.”

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/3w2U3GS Larry McMurtry, novelist who shaped Texas' view of itself, and America's view of Texas and the Old West, dies at 84 - Entrepreneur Generations

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