Despite his earlier escape to higher ed, he remained enamored of the ranching life. His novels were calloused and lived-in, rich in the details of arduous cattle drives, lonesome nights on the plains, and the daily tragedies, both great and small, that affect us all. McMurtry grew up as the son of a rancher and he inherited a deep but honest appreciation for small towns, hard work, and eccentric characters. for 30 years, but had to fold it up and move it to Texas.” His son, the songwriter James McMurtry, once described his father’s Texas store to Rolling Stone as “way out in the middle of nowhere,” a location chosen for its affordable rent. In 1988, he opened a Booked Up store in his hometown of Archer City, Texas, which he operated up until his death. McMurtry sought out rare copies and editions and worked at a number of bookstores, opening his own, Booked Up, in 1971 in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. He was more passionate about writing books than teaching, however, and was particularly interested in physical books themselves. McMurtry spent time teaching English at Rice University and George Mason, among other institutions, and penned his first books during that period. He famously accepted his Oscar in blue jeans and cowboy boots. In 2006, he and his collaborator Diana Ossana, with whom he once lived, won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for their work on Brokeback Mountain, adapting Annie Proulx’s short story about an illicit romance between two cowboys.

First published in 1985, it was adapted into a CBS-TV miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in 1989.Īlong with Lonesome Dove, McMurtry wrote critically acclaimed novels like 1966’s The Last Picture Show and 1975’s Terms of Endearment. The page-turning tale of two grizzled cowboys on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana in the mid-19th century won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986.

He was 84.īorn in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1936, McMurtry was a prolific author with an uncanny gift for making a lengthy opus like Lonesome Dove - all 843 pages - eminently readable. McMurtry’s death on Thursday was first reported by The New York Times. Larry McMurtry, the Texas novelist known for American West epics like Lonesome Dove and the Oscar-winning screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, has died.

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