Larry McMurtry: A Life

by Tracy Daugherty

A biography of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry from New York Times bestselling author Tracy Daugherty.

In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains’ keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country’s pioneer traditions. It follows his astonishing career as bestselling novelist, Pulitzer-Prize winner, author of the beloved Lonesome Dove , Academy-Award winning screenwriter, public intellectual, and passionate bookseller. A sweeping and insightful look at a versatile, one-of-a-kind American writer, this book is a must-read for every Larry McMurtry fan.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Writing, Literature, Biography Memoir, Books About Books

560 pages, Hardcover

Published September 12, 2023

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A biography of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry from New York Times bestselling author Tracy Daugherty.

In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains’ keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry McMurtry: A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country’s pioneer traditions. It follows his astonishing career as bestselling novelist, Pulitzer-Prize winner, author of the beloved Lonesome Dove, Academy-Award winning screenwriter, public intellectual, and passionate bookseller. A sweeping and insightful look at a versatile, one-of-a-kind American writer, this book is a must-read for every Larry McMurtry fan.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, I want to salute Tracy Daugherty, fellow Texan and indefatigable researcher. This is a thoroughly sourced book withe compendious endnotes hyperlinked in the DRC I read. Some things didn't really need so much sourcing, being opinions of interviewees, but too much beats too little all hollow in non-fiction. More especially in the notes because reading them is entirely optional. I do it because I'm a fussbudget. I don't often comment about it either way, but here it's appropriate...a William Zinsser opinion from The American Scholar Magazine impressed me by being so niche a quote and being checkably sourced, I felt compelled to bring it up.

Then, I want to diss Larry McMurtry, petulant whiny adolescent of great age. No matter where he was, he was dissatisfied by it; no matter who he knew, he critiqued them with a flensing-knife of an eye; yest his curmudgeonliness gave the world some impressive art and a lot of filler. He had honesty enough to know it, though, that's a saving grace.

He was an inveterate lover of women. Married or not, he was always glad to meet another lady...with predictable results for the existing relationship...but he wasn't always sexually involved with them. He really just loved women as beings. His writing partner was Diana Ossana, and their closeness created a collaboration that made Annie Proulx's story "Brokeback Mountain" into a delight of a screenplay (one well worth reading on its own). He was friends with Merry Prankster and fellow novelist Ken Kesey, whose widow Faye he married in 2011—a decade after Kesey's death in 2001. This was a man who, in spite of a pretty spiky personality, could sustain a friendship!

He identified as a Texan. That in spite of his flensing-knife eye seeing, and his venom-filled pen chronicling, the failings of his fellow Texans in the gloriously angry The Last Picture Show, and his honest appraisal of Texas's self-aggrandizing mythology in the most famous book of his career Lonesome Dove. I think it's weird that people misinterpret Lonesome Dove as a celebration of the West, but that's another project that I can't tackle here. I rated this book more highly than my enjoyment of its subject would've led me to do because I so enjoyed reading McMurtry's opinions of the fans of his books. I'm not going into details because spoilers but this was one serious curmudgeon.

That's where I ran into a problem. I ended up knowing McMurtry better but not liking him more. This wasn't promised to me, so I'm not complaining that I was led to believe something was going to be offered that was not. I wasn't his biggest fan, actively disliking Texasville and the sequels to Lonesome Dove; but I always admired his clearsightedness. Now I know what I do about him as a person, I don't see it as clearsightedness any more. He was a chronic fault-finder who made, so far as I could tell or the author reported to me, no effort to use this in any constructive way in his own life. The consequences are predictable, and largely suffered by others.

That moody snort aside, I am sure that my world is enriched by his work, and I'm glad that this fascinating, difficult man came along to tell us all about our dirty, grubby, grasping, grouchy selves. I expect my Young Gentleman Caller is on to something when he remarked, "he reminds me of you."

[Brina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have book, will travel has become my mantra of late. As a full time substitute teacher with the year winding down, I have found myself in many a classroom where teachers leave their guest a lot of independent busy work. As much as I want to get up and teach a class, I have lately been left to sit and watch the students do their thing. Other than the one day where I played solitaire all day, I read my usual eclectic variety of books. With summer vacation looming, I find myself craving books set in the American west, which I associate as seasonal reading material. Books where one hits the open roads and heads west are an added bonus. At this time I also wait for my branch library to obtain this year’s nonfiction Pulitzer winners. While waiting, I selected this year’s runner up for biography about the life of Larry McMurtry, the author of the ultimate western, Lonesome Dove. The writing life centered in the west as only a Texan can tell it would be a perfect segue to summer reading.

Larry McMurtry was born on June 3, 1936 in Archer City, Texas, the oldest of four children over a fifteen year span. He came into the world at a time when the depression necessitated the end of the cowboy and cattle drives as many ranchers faced the economic despair brought on by the depression and moved to America’s western cities. The McMurtry family did not follow the great migration west or even to Houston or Dallas. Jeff and Hazel McMurtry begrudgingly moved into town from their farm, but Jeff would be a cattle man for the rest of his life and distrusted anyone who did not put in a honest day’s work everyday of their life. Larry grew up hearing tales of the old west from his father, uncles, and grandfather. It was a time of the open range, buffalo, territorial battles with native Americans, and thousand mile horse and cattle drives. The Archer City he grew up in epitomized small town USA, a town containing one stop light, a diner, movie house and later a Dairy Queen. There was also a library where young Larry cultivated his love of books and knew that he was not going to be a farmer; it seemed preordained that he was destined to a literary life, much to the chagrin of his parents who rarely left Archer City. Having grown up among both oral histories and classic books, McMurtry would transverse the United States, mainly by open road, many times in his life, but Archer City would never leave him. The town would be immortalized in all of his books.

McMurtry enrolled in Rice University in Houston, then a free institute for Texas residents. A fish out of water due to his small town education, McMurtry felt most at home in the library and eventually transferred back home to North Texas State College to be closer to home. Larry was not cut out for college yet eventually received a master’s degree from Rice. Has was also not cut out for marriage but he did marry his first wife Jo at a young age, and the couple had one son James who would go on to have a prolific career as a songwriter, also telling the story of the American west. Larry early on developed the habit of writing ten pages a day on his typewriter first thing in the morning, a habit he kept for the rest of his life. Other than writing, he was antsy and traveled keeping homes in multiple locations for the rest of his life. The first big break in his career occurred with the publication of his third novel The Last Picture Show in 1966. This novel depicted the bleakness of life in a small, western town and became a movie starring Paul Newman. All of a sudden, McMurtry became a sought after name in literature and writing, yet, he saw himself as a minor regional writer, stating that Texas was always the bridegroom, a chip on his shoulder for the rest of his life.

Daugherty was once a student of McMurtry’s at Rice, a position he held for nearly ten years as his writing career took off. McMutry cultivated friendships with many prominent women over the course of his life, and these relationships played a large roll in his writing. Crtiics would maintain that he was not a feminist, but he developed strong female characters over the course of his body of work. Prominent names in literature and movies stand out: Cybill Shepherd, Polly Platt, Diane Keaton, Susan Sontag, Marcia Carter. All of these women found themselves in his writing, primarily about small town Texas. He claimed he would never write about the west, but all those years of hearing stories about the open plain as well as his love of western movies lead to the creation of a book named Lonesome Dove, which in 1985 won the Pulitzer Prize and made him a millionaire many times over. McMurtry had to write everyday but after Lonesome Dove this task was not necessary. He could have stopped at the pinnacle of his career, but continued writing about the west for the next thirty years, including three additional books featuring the beloved characters brought to life by Lonesome Dove.

Prior to his death on April 21, 2021, McMurtry had written for fifty years and kept characters in our collective psyche for that entire time. In addition to writing, McMurtry cultivated a book collection in the hundred thousands and desired to turn Archer City into a literary destination. He named his used book warehouse Booked Up but realized in the early 2000s that young people would rather use technology than read. A voracious reader himself, McMurtry once proclaimed that everything one needs to know he can find in Wae and Peace. He thanked bookstore owners when receiving an Oscar because they cultivate reading and many movies came from books. I wonder what his reaction would be to kindles and ebooks available on library websites. The idea that one can discuss his books here on goodreads would probably be foreign to him as well. Daugherty paints the picture of a man wistful for the old west, who then wrote about it and created timeless characters. This book is well deserving of the awards it received as it honors a man immersed in the writing life. As I wait for my library to receive the new batch of Pulitzer winners, I will have to return to McMurtry’s body of work paying homage to the old west.

4.5 stars

[Michael Burke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit I was not too familiar with Larry McMurtry’s work. I was aware he had written “Last Picture Show” and “Lonesome Dove,” but I had never read these nor had seen the films. I have seen “Terms of Endearment” and “Brokeback Mountain,” but I did not get a sense of his style from these. His son, James McMurtry, is an awesomely talented musician whose music I have enjoyed for years, but Larry was only a vaguely famous name.

Tracy Daugherty has put together an all-encompassing biography of McMurtry; exhaustive at 560 pages. McMurtry was not a man who just sat in his house and wrote books. Book collecting and book selling were huge obsessions of his. He tried in vain to establish his tiny childhood town of Archer City as a major book center.

As I read on, I did go out of my way to stream some of the screen adaptations of his work. I watched “Hud,” “The Last Picture Show,” and the first season of “Lonesome Dove.” It was pointed out that audiences parted with a romantic view of these lives, while McMurtry’s aim was to strip away our illusions. Hollywood paid well, however, and he found it within the bounds of his conscience to compose the profitable sequels for Dove.

The book explores the many relationships he had with well-known celebrities including Cybill Shepherd and Diane Keaton. We see him hobnobbing with politicians and socialites, as well.

I suppose a comprehensive study of an author’s life should cover as much as possible, but this was much too much for my interest. I can see myself reading some of his work in the future, particularly his portrayal of Texas, but my interest peaked much too early in this book.

Thank you to St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 4 out of 5]

My exposure to Larry McMurtry's works has not been sizeable, and while I enjoyed what I read, I enjoyed it as I do other works that are set in, and depend on a sufferance for which it becomes harder and harder to extend. (GWTW comes to mind.) One reads with flags going up, and guilt sets in. . .personal and ancestral.

However, all that confessed, Ms. Daughtery presents a completely thorough look through her father's life. Backstories, family stories, road trips, bad habits, great habits, and consistent behaviors splash the spaces in which these pages are read. For me? There's a gentle breeze, smell of sagebrush, salty language on the air, and a whole lot of cowboy tunes underscoring the whole of it.

Also a great appreciation for a daughter who holds this particular grumpy man in high-esteem and honor enough to write with the open-minded generosity she does. He's lucky to have had her in his life.

*A sincere thank you to Tracy Daughtery, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.*

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

How many times did I read Lonesome Dove? Watch the miniseries? And what drew me to the story?

I grew up in the 1950s when cowboys ruled the airwaves. I wanted to sing like Gene Autry and ride Roy Roger’s Trigger. I squinted my eyes, as if looking into the sun, sporting a cowboy gunbelt at age four. I drew horses. (I was on a horse twice–one tossed me off and the other ran into it’s stable, leaving me clinging to a beam.) In our play, my friends and I never fought Indians, but we rescued the one who had to play the cowgirl.

America was obsessed with the Old West in those days. I knew it was a time past, yet it seemed more of a fantasy world than reality. Perfect for our make-believe play. And it was this image that McMurtry wanted to shatter in his books. Lonesome Dove is filled with violent, accidental deaths, hardship, broken dreams, and the mistreatment of women.

After Lonesome Dove, I collected a number of McMurtry’s books and read them. Frankly, I don’t remember which ones. They were all sacrificed in a move many years ago. I knew that he kept writing, resurrecting his characters and killing them off, and that television aired more miniseries about Gus and Call. We saw some of the movies based on the books, including Terms of Endearment and Brokeback Mountain, the screenplay written by McMurtry and his friend and writing partner Diana Ossana, based on a story by Anne Proulx. I vaguely knew he was a bookseller.

I wanted to read McMurtry’s biography to revisit this author and to learn more about him and his books. I discovered a complicated, fascinating man. He was an extremely well read book lover since childhood, inspired by classics like Don Quixote, but also enjoying pulp fiction and rare erotica. In his early career he taught, hating the work but forging close relationships with his students. He was a man who loved many women with whom he shared lifelong friendships. He was a hard working writer and a constant traveler. He collected books, sold books, promoted books, bemoaned the end of books. He loved his hometown in Texas, knowing all its faults–which he revealed in his novels, turning hometown people against him. And, he loved Dr. Pepper.

The biography delves into the details of his publishing and movie history, the inspiration for his characters, and the critical response to his work. He was involved with so many women, including Cybill Shepherd and Diane Keaton, and shared a close friendship with Susan Sontag. His early friends included ‘Merry Prankster’ Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and after Kesey’s death, the octogenarian McMurtry married Kesey’s widow.

I have always been interested in writers and the creative process. McMurtry’s career spanned the extremes, from ‘midling’ novels to the Pulitzer, and included iconic movies. He was compelled to write, and by hard work created some of our most iconic characters in fiction.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's Dwight Garner's NY Times review. He likes it a lot:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/bo...
Definitely the review to read first! Go ahead. I'll wait.
“Larry is a writer, and it’s kind of like being a critter. If you leave a cow alone, he’ll eat grass. If you leave Larry alone, he’ll write books. When he’s in public, he may say hello and goodbye, but otherwise he is just resting, getting ready to write.”

Required reading for McMurtry fans. I liked this book a lot. Not perfect, but pretty darned good. Plus, I found a couple of McM books that I somehow missed. And many more to reread...

And it's fun to read about McMurtry's love life, which was varied and, um, "interesting". Here's Diana Ossana: “When I first met Larry [in 1985], he was involved with about five or six different women,” Ossana said. “He was quite the ladies’ man. I was always really puzzled. One day I said to him, ‘So all of these women are your girlfriends?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well, do they know about one another?’ He said, ‘Nooo.’” McMurtry giggled as Ossana told this story [in 2014].

The book gets almost unbearably sad as McMurtry approaches the end of his life. Especially since I'm not so far behind him. Oh, well. Nobody gets out of here alive...

So. A strong 4+ star read for me, and I expect to come back to re-read parts of this book down the line. McMurtry comes off as something of a prick at times. He says unkind things. Well, so what? Helluva writer, which is what I'm looking for. And he was, on the whole, a kind man, I think. This is a near-great literary biography.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the day Larry McMurtry died, the River Oaks Theatre on West Gray Street in Houston closed its doors for the last time.

The first sentence of Larry McMurtry: A Life felt almost too perfect, too apt, to be true, what with its The Last Picture Show overtones. The coincidence took on even more depth and resonance when biographer Tracy Daugherty revealed that the last film to be shown there was Nomadland. Daugherty points out that this film is a “latter-day Western” - the fictional/historical genre McMurtry was most associated with. Not only does this film and its “austere big-sky emptiness” correspond to the McMurtry settings - both personal and fictional - but it’s more than anything about loss and endless wanderings. Loss and wanderings: they crop up again and again in McMurtry’s work and they also form the pattern of his life, and not surprisingly, this biography.

”I’m drawn to stories of vanishing crafts . . . or trades,” McMurtry once said. “I’ve seen cowboying die, and also bookselling, to a large degree. And those things sadden me.

From the first, in McMurtry’s apprentice stories and poems, loss was the major theme of his writing. He began with elegy and ended there: the land that helped him was the essence of “American bleakness . . . empty socially, intellectually, culturally,” he said. It was a “place of unpeopled horizons.”

I came of age in the 1980s, when McMurtry was probably at the height of his fame - what with the huge successes of the film Terms of Endearment and the book Lonesome Dove. My literary crush got a bit more personal, though, when I moved to Houston to attend graduate school at Rice University in 1991. His book Moving On, inspired by his own graduate student years at Rice, was emotionally influential to me in a way that is indescribable - and it proved to have an enduring, nostalgic pull on my heart. McMurtry described Houston as his “first city;” and although mine was San Antonio, and perhaps also Austin, Houston was the city in which I became an adult.

Like McMurtry, I’m a native Texan who has always had an ambivalent relationship to Texas. We had the same kind of pioneering ancestors, and there’s no real reason - except maybe our bookishness - why we shouldn’t have been as rooted to the place as the majority of its proud inhabitants. Daugherty puts his finger on it when he says “what we think we most want to escape is inescapable.” Even though McMurtry knew many other cities well - for years he lived in Washington DC, and then Tucson, and he often travelled to New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco - he kept circling back to his hometown of Archer City, Texas. He could never hack it for long, but he couldn’t stay away from it either. Although my ties are looser, I’ve noticed that whenever I return to Texas for long periods of time I seem to visit (or revisit) Larry McMurtry’s writing. It feels like he is some kind of spirit of place guide for me.

I insert myself in this “review” in order to underline that I felt so in sync with its subject, so predisposed to be deeply interested in it, that I hardly noticed until I had finished how in sync the biographer Tracy Daugherty is as well. Daugherty was also “born and raised” in Texas and he seems to deeply understand everything about the Larry McMurtry idiom. His writing can go from folksy Texas-style humour to poetic elegy as easily as McMurtry’s does, and his previous biographical work on Texas writers like Donald Barthelme and and Billy Lee Brammer means that he has a richly detailed handle on the McMurtry milieu. I really felt like he “knew” and deeply understood his subject.

I would like to think, though, that this book would be a terrific read for all kinds of McMurtry fans - even the ones who have never sat in the River Oaks Theater or made the pilgrimage to Booked Up in Archer City. It’s fast-paced and full of colourful detail, gossip and anecdote. McMurtry’s restless wanderings and multi-hyphenate occupations - he was not only a writer of fiction, but also a prolific journalist, an Academy Award winning screenplay writer and a lifelong bookseller - meant that he had a foot in most of the entertainment worlds in the US. He knew lots of famous people, and carried on long romantic friendships with many celebrated women - Cybill Shepherd, Susan Sontag, Polly Platt and Diane Keaton, just to name a few. Not to overemphasise that aspect of McMurtry’s life or this biography, but he was an observer to a huge and interesting swathe of the cultural life of 20th century America.

The book-selling is a constant thread, just as it was in McMurtry’s life, but Daugherty wisely intersperses it with the people bit, the personality itself and the work. (McMurtry was famous for his work ethic and wrote 5-10 pages every morning of his life until he was quite ill and old.) Daugherty gives a really good sense of the books - and how they connected to the people and abiding concerns and obsessions of McMurtry’s life - without ever getting bogged down in comprehensive (not to mention boring) exposition.

McMurtry’s life was a rich mix of the high and the low: he was a huge proponent of the great European novels, but also knowledgeable about dime store novels and genre fiction. He loved Dr Peppers and Fritos, but he also had a huge appetite for caviar - which he ate in political salons in DC and fancy New York City restaurants. He could be a curmudgeon and a contrarian, but he was also described as a “merry companion” and a deeply affable man. He thought of himself as a solitary person, but he was deeply connected to many people - most of them women.

Daugherty has a lot of material to work with - there were 40 books, not to mention all of the other creative output - but he keeps it all moving and keeps connecting it back to the source. “Elegiac” is a word that he comes back to often, and although he is relating it to McMurtry’s life and work, it would serve equally well as a tribute to this American man of letters. He ends the book on an elegiac note, using McMurtry’s own words:

”The rules of happiness are as strict as the rules of sorrow; indeed perhaps more strict,” McMurtry had written. “The two states have different densities, I’ve come to think. The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings - crowded, active, thick - urban, I would almost say. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow’s horizons are vague and its demands few . . . I lived on the plain.”

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

As another reviewer wrote here, there’s no shame on the writer of this biography that McMurtry cannot sustain the reader’s interest for hundreds of pages. The writing in this biography is excellent and it’s perfectly clear what’s going on at every moment. Daugherty occasionally expresses an opinion about a person or a book, but he moves on quickly. Mostly, Daugherty just tells you what happened.

McMurtry is a guy who never seemed quite happy where he was. When he was in Texas, he wanted to be near the literary tastemakers of New York, or running his used-book store in Washington, DC. When he was in New York or DC, he felt like he should be back in Texas. In both places, he seemed to miss the sunshine and lucrative script doctoring opportunities of Hollywood. When older, he seemed to like Arizona a little, but he still could stay put for long. He never went anywhere, apparently, that he couldn’t find fault with. He seemed to hate most of his books as soon as he was finished with them. He had little patience with fans and readers who wanted to discuss his previous works.

I’ve only read two of McMurtry’s books (Lonesome Dove and one sequel) and seen none of the film adaptations he was involved with. This biography may be more compelling to hard-core McMurtry fans. However, after reading this book, I returned to a book of his essays (In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas) and found them more interesting and less like the grumpy mutterings of a fussy man, which was my initial first impression.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

[Ceelee · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I turned 18, one of my cousins took me to see The Last Picture Show. I loved it and had to read the book. That Is what turned me into a fan of Larry McMurty. His books bring to life a part of Texas that is the true life of my home state. The book tells of our past and the people who worked on this land and built our cities. and our culture. It spans over 60+ years of our history. I really appreciate author Tracy Daugherty capturing that aspect of this amazing author's life and work
This biography is not simply a story of a famous writer. It is a history of Texas and our literary world. I learned a lot from this book. He was born and bred in West Texas but I was surprised he lived in Houston and went to college there Houston has always had a history of being a bad town and it was interesting to learn some if it's early history. He also taught at University of North Texas. and his wife attended Texas Woman's University both in Denton. I attended both schools but way after he left. And he lived in Fort Worth too and taught at TCU. He didn't like it How. did I not know that???? My dad went there and he didn't like it either. 🙂
In addition to McMurtry's personal history within the vast history of Texas, the author talked about McMurtry 'passion for books. He lived in a time where the book industry was really taking off and he was friend to many authors at that time. He wanted to read everything and spent a lot of time tracking down rare books especially from Texas authors. His venture into book stores is a natural move and a successful one. I also enjoyed reading his opinions on books like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. (he wasn't a fan)
There is so much to this biography I have only touched the surface of this incredible book. If you are a fan like me,or a Texan who likes reading about famous Texans and/ are lover of books and author biographies, you should read this book. It is packed full of history and is never dull.
Thank you Net Galley, St Martin's Press and author Tracy Dougherty for giving me the chance to read this terrific biography of such a great author and a fascinating literary person. As a fan and a native Texan, it was an honor to have the opportunity to read and I give my opinion freely and with great enthusiasm.

[Steve Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

Absolutely no shade to Daugherty, an experienced literary biographer, but this one left me very lukewarm. The problem for me was choice of subject. McMurtry, author of one unqualified masterpiece (LONESOME DOVE), one near-masterpiece (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW) and several interesting pieces of non-fiction (ROADS, etc) comes across as petulant, self-involved, and unsympathetic. Unfortunately, this confirms my prior belief that the vast majority of McMurtry’s catalog is forgettable and rote. I am not motivated to read any additional McMurtry.

I hope Daugherty’s next book, like his bio of Joan Didion, centers around a writer worthy of this level of exploration.

[Janilyn Kocher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The man behind the epic book and one of the absolute best western epics, Lonesome Dove, was Larry McMurtry.
Born in Texas, McMurtry’s heart lie within the west and the stories he penned that made the western life of old come alive for millions of readers.
I knew nothing about the man until reading this biography. It’s a weighty tome and it’s full of Larry.
The thing that stuck with me was how he turned his old hometown into a library in the 1980s. That is so cool!
Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for both digital and physical copies.

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a complimentary copy of this excellent biography from Netgalley, author Tracy Daugherty, and Sara Eslami at St. Martin's Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read Larry McMurtry of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend it to friends and family - This is an exceptional look into the life that made McMurtry the writer we all adore, as well as a good, deep look into Texas and the lifestyle that is still available there. I would give it ten stars if I could. He will be greatly missed in my neck of the woods.
rec August 10, 2023
pub date Sept 12, 2023
St. Martin's Press (Sara Eslami)

Reviewed on September 6, 2023, at Goodreads and Netgalley. Reviewed on September 12, 2023, at AmazonSmile, Barnes&Noble, and BookBub.

[Kate Deters · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's complicated to read a mediocre biography of one your favorite authors. At times this book has great insight and connection to Larry, his people, his motivations and his writing. At other times, information is lost in too many parentheses and out of order. I'm thankful to have read it, but it took effort to stick with it.

[Brendan Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not big in biographies, but this is one worth reading. I don't know if the life made the writing or the writing made the life, or maybe they were one and the same in the end. McMurtry's personal life is almost unbelievable, but entirely relatable in so many ways. He judges no one, and therefore is rewarded with rich relationships with a slurry of characters.

While McMurtry himself is endlessly quotable, the quote that makes this all make sense comes from Benjamin Moser, who says,

"Every great writer has his failures. The bad books are inextricable from the good ones. The great writer isn't the one whose every utterance is crafted and workshopped and polished. When you read through a writer's work, you see that the successes depend upon the failures; they come out of them. The failures suggest the problems; the successes solve them. And that's why the great writer is the one who dares to fuck up." (pp. 507)

McMurtry wrote a lot. He couldn't stop. He wrote not to cement a legacy (although he knew letters was the way he would be remembered, if he would be remembered at all) and not to make money (although a few extra dollars never hurt). He wrote because he was turning his experiences and observations around in his head, over and over again. He wrote to understand. But not really for himself exactly, if that makes sense. He wrote for his characters to find their own endings. Critics would debate whether or not they deserved them, and McMurtry was ready to take on all of that responsibility. That was his courage, I think.

[Alex Mattrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the perfect send off on my journey to read McMurtry's entire novel bibliography. Great biography about an author that, quite frankly, lived a rather mundane life. He was an avid collector of books, memorabilia, female friendships...a lover of spirt but not of body...a wanderer, very much a man of the open Texas landscape. At times I thought I really didn't like him as a person, and others where I felt I understood him deeply. The author really nailed it. Of the three Pulitzer finalists for biography this one was head and shoulders above Master Slave Husband Wife. It didn't touch King: A life, which is an absolute masterpiece...but given that Larry McMurtry is no MLK (let's be serious here)...Daugherty completely sold me on why we should care about his contribution to fictional realism beyond McMurtry's Hollywood and publication success. Why he isn't uttered in the same breath as Stephen King is beyond me. I think, when the dust settles (no pun intended) McMurtry and King will be the two greatest character writers of their generation. Terms of Endearment, Last Picture Show, Hud, Lonesome Dove...Brokeback Mountain...McMurtry is an absolute pillar of literary fiction. Tracy's pros was the perfect match for an author who's prose moved millions of readers. Well done to you sir...well done.

[Deb Spera · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this at the perfect time in my life. What a prolific man. His love of books comes shining through. He made books his entire life. I particularly was intrigued by his process but also his lifelong journey looking for a sense of belonging as the west changed and became more and more unrecognizable to Larry. I recommend.

[Jeff Zell · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 1990’s, I lived in west Texas, a mere 100 miles from Archer City. I visited the multi-building Booked Up bookstore twice and came away with remarkable books. Tracy Daugherty’s description of the openness, large sky, near constant drought conditions, etc. of the area are spot on. As I worked my way through the stacks, I was stunned that a place so devoid of people and the luxury of time to read could possibly have such a remarkable bookstore.

Larry McMurtry wrote several nonfiction books including two memoirs (Books: A Memoir in 2008 and Literary Life: A Second Memoir in 2009) that explain how Booked Up came to reside in Archer City. Daugherty’s biography enriches McMurtry’s recollections with a comprehensive picture of the complicated, moody, loving, observant, and opinionated man that is Larry McMurtry. Daugherty introduces us to Larry’s parents, their origins, and then takes us from Larry’s birth to his death.

Daugherty had the cooperation of McMurtry’s family, first and second wives, and many friends. He visited many of the places that McMurtry lived, worked, and wrote. He had access to McMurtry’s letters and other writings. Daugherty uses all the resources available to him to provide us with a fine introduction to Larry McMurtry. The text is 473 pages long. Neither a word nor sentence was ill-used or unnecessary. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Daugherty is a remarkable researcher and writer.

In addition to McMurtry’s relationships and Hollywood work, Daugherty treats us to an examination of McMurtry’s major and minor writings.

This biography was time well spent.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s kind of a bloated and disorganized mess. It seems like the author got hold of a few boxes of letters and used those as source material, rather than interviewing the family members and writing partner.

[Edward Amato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and comprehensive biography of Larry McMurtry. I have great regret that I never made a pilgrimage to Texas to visit his bookstore and perhaps buy a book or two.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this wonderful biography of Larry McMurtry takes a while to get moving, it is clear by book’s end that by spending so much time focused on his early years on the plains of West Texas, McMurtry’s life and his own writing was really an ongoing story of his beginnings.

“Horseman, Pass By,” “Leaving Cheyenne” and “The Last Picture Show” are novels that convincingly — and unsentimentally — chronicle life in a land where the sky is bigger than anything else. This includes the tropes, stereotypes and cliches that McMurtry either took great care to demythologize or to parody over a lengthy, prolific career.

Other than reading the great books and writing his own, McMurtry made a career of sorts from book scouting — a lost (or at least rare) art of finding obscure or unique editions of books. He would go on to open several rare book stores, and then turn his hometown of Archer City into a Mecca of the written word.

Daugherty manages to capture details of McMurtry’s life as the latter churned out many novels, a feat for an author who didn’t talk a great deal about his own work. McMurtry himself had a sardonic take on basically everything — his homeland, the writers it produced, the state of book consumption, the women in his life, and so much more. Daugherty puts McMurtry’s canon into perspective without turning chapters into a series of literary reviews.

And then … there’s “Lonesome Dove.” After writing about heroes and heroines of Houston and Hollywood, he wrote the first of his many western novels — this most famous and beloved of his works winning the Pulitzer Prize and elevating McMurtry into another level of success and adulation.

Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite authors; I’ve read every single one of his published books — including his biographical works that he published on bookselling, his novels and his screenwriting. In my opinion, the latter two are unsatisfying and spare the kind of details most fans were likely looking for. (IMO, his introspective essays — “Roads,” “Paradise” and especially “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen” — are vastly superior.)

Daugherty takes us where McMurtry did not, and it’s worth the trip — even if his subject probably didn’t think so.

[Thomas Isern · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fer days ago I finished the Daugherty biography of McMurtry, which was not easy to read. Because so much of it cuts to the bone--for everyone on the Great Plains belonging to what I have come to call the Last Picture Show Generation, for people of letters from the region, and especially for members of the LPS Generation who are people of letters. There is the usual ambivalence in the entanglement of aspirational persons with their places of origin; and there is the extraordinary dissonance that comes with living a life of letters in a time and place where you are out of sync. Something to note, then: for all the disjunctures is McMurtry's life and career, all the listless and even toxic relationships, all the arguments over literary voice and structure, all the travels with or without purpose, McMurtry remains, to the end, a literary man.

By which I don't just mean he kept turning out ten pages a day. In fact, I think sometimes it was despite turning out ten pages a day. I situate McMurtry in a line of descent from Cather through Stegner to now, three generations of self-conscious literary artists. Cather adhered to an artistic ideal. She did not write to fill pages; she wrote to make art. By the time we get to McMurtry, he knows he is a literary artist, but it almost seems as though much of his writing springs from obsession; as though he needs to pile up pages in order to keep himself affixed to the earth. Search through those piles, and you will find the art.

Or again, I think of it another way. Within a given work, say, especially, Lonesome Dove, or within McMurtry's entire corpus, he writes in an immense number of random facts that, in the eyes of his long-time agent, are just distractions, causing readers to veer off the main narrative line and perhaps lose interest. These inclusions, however, McMurtry would argue, were life as it happens. Lives do not have neat plotlines. They are messy. Like his novels are messy. McMurtry is in this sense a realist, as well as a modernist (and the arrival of Modernism on the plains from Mexico via Texas, that's a valuable piece of context provided by Daugherty).

Still, as with Cather, and I would argue Stegner, McMurtry's defining work springs from his own personal roots in north Texas. They all could do great work from other materials, but those works do not define them. Daughtery puts us into the wrestling match between McMurtry and his ranch and small-town origins. For a while I worried that Daughtery knew too little about these things, and I still think so, but I ceased worrying about that. Daughtery might not ring perfectly true with all the details, but he gets the trajectory right. In the long view, we find McMurtry circling back on, or to, the home places he once had fled. Perhaps he worked out his problems with his lineage by putting them on pages. Or, perhaps McMurtry, with his serial relationships, constant relocations, and unending reconfigurations, eventually found that his dissonance with Archer City was more tolerable than his dissonance with the rest of the world.

McMurtry seems to me to be fundamentally conservative. While caroming through a noisy and chaotic generation, and while claiming to be trying to lay to rest old Western narratives and values, he inadvertently, so he says, reiniforces them. I'm not so sure it was inadvertent.

McMurtry's life and work are instructive as to generational change on the Great Plains (as in American life). Cather and Stegner both also had a generational sense. McMurtry's, for all his movement, may be the most place-specific. Meditating on this, I love it that Daughtery shares my own fascination with McMurtry's fascination with Walter Benjamin. To ponder the plight of the storyteller in times of disjuncture, which drinking a Dr. Pepper in a Dairy Queen--this so bespeaks time and place to me.

Two takeaways for a Great Plains historian. First, the characterization of the Last Picture Show Generation, with its declensionist ethos. Maybe you had to be there.

Second, the resilience and resonance of Western myth, which refuses to rest easy in a narrow grave.

[Vivek Tejuja · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read Lonesome Dove in my twenties, in a cramped, overheated apartment in Bombay, surrounded by the constant thrum of traffic, vendors, and the sea from my window - vast and huge. There could be no landscape more unlike the spare, sun-baked, wind-scrubbed plains of McMurtry’s Texas. And yet, something in that book gripped me. It wasn’t just the story, it was the silence between the dialogues, the ache behind the stoicism, the way people moved through wide, empty spaces carrying heavy, unseen burdens. That felt familiar, even from halfway across the world. That interiority, that emotional restraint masking quiet desperation that I understood.

So reading Tracy Daugherty’s Larry McMurtry: A Life all these years later felt like revisiting an old conversation, picking up threads I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying. Daugherty’s biography is not just comprehensive, it’s intuitive. He doesn’t just chart McMurtry’s life from Archer City to literary fame to the Hollywood machine. He reads McMurtry like someone who’s lived with his sentences for a long time, who knows what lingers between them.

McMurtry was full of contradictions: a man of the West who didn’t romanticise it, a storyteller of cowboys who rarely gave them happy endings. In Horseman, Pass By (adapted into the film Hud), he dismantled the myth of the noble cowboy. In The Last Picture Show, he captured the suffocating stasis of small-town life with unflinching clarity. Terms of Endearment and Duane’s Depressed showed his deep, often surprising sensitivity to the inner lives of women and aging men. And Texasville, Some Can Whistle, The Desert Rose, they're all part of this wide, strange, beautiful tapestry of love, failure, and longing.

He wrote of masculinity not as a triumphant force, but as a fragile, performative thing—wounded, often cruel, and rarely capable of real intimacy. And his women? They were complicated, self-sufficient, angry, tender. Sometimes maddening. Always real.

Daugherty doesn’t try to resolve these contradictions. He lets them breathe. He writes McMurtry as someone driven by both restlessness and rootedness, someone who escaped small-town life by writing obsessively about it. And he captures McMurtry’s lifelong obsession with books, not just writing them, but hoarding, selling, and surrounding himself with them, as if pages could somehow anchor him.

What I appreciated most was how Daugherty writes with a certain emotional remove, never sentimental, never overly analytical, but still with warmth. You can feel the respect in the pacing, in the moments he lingers on. This isn’t myth-making. It’s not a hagiography. It’s a quiet reckoning with a man who shaped American literature, who kept rewriting the West not as a place of heroism, but of heartbreak.

For me, McMurtry was always about what men don’t say to each other. About friendships that are closer than love but less than articulated. Lonesome Dove—especially the bond between Gus and Call read like a queer love story to me, not in a literal sense, but in the depth of emotional dependence, in what was sacrificed and never spoken. Daugherty doesn’t name this explicitly, but he leaves space for it. Like McMurtry himself, he knows the power of what’s left unsaid.

Reading this book brought McMurtry back into focus, not just as a writer of cowboys, but as a chronicler of emotional exile. A man whose landscapes stretched wide and dry, but whose characters carried oceans inside them.

[Mark Schiffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drifted in and out a bit but this was really warm and enjoyable. Love hearing about tangled relationships between industry professionals and McMurtry’s life was fullathat.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher St. Martin's Press for an advanced copy of this biography on one of the last great writers, who wrote about the old and new West, living for dreams, losing one's dream, love, and loss.

I first came across Larry McMurtry when I worked at my first bookstore, a chain owned by Kmart at the time, that allowed employees to take home strip covered books. I knew Terms of Endearment, might have heard of Last Picture Show, but knew Lonesome Dove, so grabbed a bunch for myself and my Grandfather. Not being westerns my Grandfather had really no interest, but I was enthralled by the writing, though this was about subjects I didn't really care about. Normal people not solving mysteries or going to other planets. I'm not going to say Larry McMurtry opened my mind to books outside my mindset, like a classic novel once did for him. However he did make me track down his movies at my Video Store, and those books I didn't get as strips I did track down and read, and continued to read for almost 20 years. So maybe he was a bigger influence than I thought. Tracy Daugherty, noted literary biographer, writes about the man that was the writer in Larry McMurtry: A Life, looking back at the childhood that made him what he was, his education, and a look at the many novels, screenplays and essays McMurtry was responsible for.

Before Larry McMurtry was a writer, a screenwriter, and even more important a fellow bookseller, bookshop owner and collector, McMurtry was a small town lad, with not a lot of hope for the future. Born in 1936 in Archer City, McMurtry grew up in on a family ranch outside the city, a ranch that was almost always in debt. McMurtry was no horseman, and no farmer, as he grew up he hated animals outside of dogs and cats, and even the most loyal family members knew that life on the ranch was not much of a possibility. McMurtry's parents fought constantly and fought with his grandmother, and before long the family was living outside Archer City with a growing brood of kids. Living in this kind of town gave him lots to draw on for his later books set mainly in Texas, the fact that cowboys while thinking they lived the romantic life, were destroying their bodies, or living in debt. That small town life was full of secrets, ones that he would hear at the local Mobil station, stories that would make appearances in other stories. Books gave him something to live for. A box of of adventure tales made him realize there was life outside the world, reading Don Quixote showed him that words could be powerful. Soon he went to Rice University, his Paris, and later Stanford University where he met other writers and artists and knew he had plans. And he began to write.

A very interesting biography that looks at McMurtry's whole life, but does a really wonderful job of describing the period that made him, growing up in a small town in Texas. Maybe it is the affinity that Daugherty has also being from Texas, but I really enjoyed this section and how you could see where McMurtry drew on events and people for his works, and how a certain view of the world was shaped. The book is quite good at looking at McMurtry's life and works, with nice summaries of his works, his relationships and even his life in retail trading and selling books. Daugherty has a very nice style, has done a tremendous amount of research, and respects his subject something that shows in the writing.

I have read a few of Tracy Daugherty's book and have liked them all, especially his look at the writer Donald Barthleme. This is one of his best, a really good look at a man in full, his life which was a little busy, and his works. For fans of Larry McMurtry of course, but also for those who enjoy well written biographies, or those with an interest in literary subjects.

[Dirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Full disclosure I should say that I knew Larry in the 60s and 70s, had some brief communications with the author of this biography, and am mentioned and quoted briefly in the text as are hundreds of other people. I add I’m not a reader of biographies. In 80+ years of voracious reading I can remember only seven,each one read because I had a specific reason to learn more about the subject. I don’t know how to evaluate biographies. I feel as if I don’t know what they are for. One of the most important parts of my experience this book is just those hundreds of other people. The author has done an amazing job of discovering people who had to do with Larry and discovering something about them or a quotation from them. I take for example the people involved in a posh bookstore he was part time manager of while as graduate student at Rice. The owner of the bookstore was a wild and colorful character so we have say 1/2 a page on him. (I listened to this book so my estimates of pages are shaky) His money came from his mother and, when his life got too weird to function, she took over managing the bookstore and she is described as being a lifelong friend of Larry’s although I don't recall her being mentioned again. So we have a page on her. She had a husband (not the father of the book dealer) who tried to kill her three times, so we have a page on him. If the purpose of a biography is to provide a basis for future study this is a treasure house. If it is to engage the reader, a 700-page book filled with people slightly or peripherally related Larry's is more than enough for me. The book pays thoughtful attention to the influence of times and places on writing and publishing. It discuses time and again Larry’s feeling about being labeled and labeling himself as a Texas novelist and about the views of the publishing world of that label. It goes into detail on other writers associated with Texas and Larry relations with them. This is all part of his having grown up in a family of cattle ranchers in a small, bookless town in Texas, his not being comfortable with it, and his writing about his discomfort and struggling with it. Likewise Dougherty expounds for periods of a decade what kind of writing Americans were doing and looking for particularly publishers. Likewise the fashions in movies since Larry did a significant amount of screen writing. The book gives proper space to his difficult first marriage and provides a sense of his and his then wife’s lengthy struggles to make a go. What it did best for me was recall what a very good guy Larry was, and make me feel I should have worked harder to keep in touch. But he was the author of a book called All My Friend Are Going to Be Strangers.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biographer Tracy Daugherty has brought to new attention Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry (1936-2021), focusing on his roots and how he brought them to flower for a vast audience.

McMurtry was born to a family of Scottish background who initially occupied a small cabin on a ranch in Texas near Wichita Falls. From an early age, the boy understood that theirs was “a dying way of life” --- a notion that later would infuse his creative endeavors. This sense of loss was especially apparent when, in the evenings, the family gathered on the porch and told tales of how things used to be in the Old West.

From that youthful inculcation, and an education in creative writing at Stanford University, McMurtry would rise to stand among the best-known story creators of his time. His mind was always focused on what the western migration meant to America, who were its true heroes, and what were its undeniable failures. Standout works included LONESOME DOVE, HORSEMAN, PASS BY --- which is set in bygone times and reveals his sometimes bitter perspective on early Texan and Southwestern settlers --- and the iconic, more modernly situated THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

Daugherty has done an admirable job of showing this complex visionary in his public and private life. McMurtry spoke so openly and frankly that someone once noted that his conversation carried such weight that it was “a little scary for Hollywood.” His friends included many of the recognized greats of his time, while his books --- some destined for the big screen and the best actors --- continued to center on the loneliness and problematic scenarios that typified the Texas of his childhood.

In his wide-reaching portrait of McMurtry, Daugherty had access to family memories and archives, and includes a plethora of detail. In addition to writing compulsively, McMurtry collected books and ran a bookstore, Booked Up, for much of his adult life. In college, he hung out with Ken Kesey and his wild hippie cohort. There were several females in his life, and on his deathbed, he spoke their names. He met the stars who peopled his novels on film but remained largely unswayed by the movie-making glitter. However, he met Elizabeth Taylor in his older age and declared that she had “the best eyes in Hollywood.”

Daugherty’s diligently constructed biography will provide memories for those who lived in McMurtry’s era and recall well his novels, along with the movies and series that sprang from them. It also undoubtedly will prove fascinating to aspiring young writers and anyone determined to understand the subtleties of American history.

Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I once drove to Archer City just to see McMurtry´s bookstore, and when I got there it had closed.
His books were like that for me. I´d read one that made me incapable of thinking of anything else, and the next would be, not disappointing, actually unreadable. Daugherty´s biography helped me understand why this might be and gave me respect for the life that created all those contradictions.
The writing is marvelous, and occasionally slips into a style worthy of its subject. Here McMurtry is attending a small-town rodeo:

¨He walked the burning streets, amid the cow-dung reek, watching the rodeo circuit´s repeat winners drive into town in big white Lincolns, honking their horns at the girls, at the café waitresses leaning out of fly-buzzed open doors, while the rest of the lonesome boys, carrying saddles, arriving on foot to scrabble for whatever they could win in whatever competitions they could talk their way into, looked for shady spots to toss their bedrolls. The old-timers emerged from their paint-peeling houses, hunched over, chawing about the good ol´ days. Children tore off their clothes and blurred their chubby faces with red and blue Sno-Cone slush. It would soon become apparent which of them had no homes to go to -- or none to speak of: they´d still be filthy by the end of the week.¨ (p. 67)

And, again like the subject, he enjoys life´s ironies:

¨In mid-April 1986, McMurtry was staying in the Holidday Inn in Uvalde. He had been invited to lecture at a small college there -- the first speaker the school had ever had. ´Welcome to Larry McMurtry, Author of Terms of Endearment read the Holiday Inn marquee. During a half-hour lunch break on his campus visit, McMurtry learned that he had just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove. The next day, someone told him the hotel had updated the marquee. He stepped outside, expecting heavy congratulations. The sign read: ´Catfish Special, $3.99 .´ ¨ (p. 321)

Because many of the sources are life-long friends of the subject, it is sometimes difficult to remember what relationship the quoted individual bears to McMurtry, but excellent notes and an index make tracking these down easy.

[False · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason I gave a four star rating was due to the amount of research and writing time put into the subject. Do I think his life, overall, was that interesting? No. Like anyone aging, McMurtry had to face some hard truths toward the end of his life: that his dream to turn Archer City into a book lovers dream city wouldn't come to being. He sold his collection off, for the most part. I have no fond memories of his bookstore in Washington, D.C. I even had a friend who worked in the original shop locale after McMurtry had bolted. It still had that rarified air that drew in the monied crowd, but it wasn't a serious second-hand bookshop, but rather a plaything for the wealthy.

I had one encounter with McMurtry outside of that bookshop one day, and I'll share it. I'm a prolific reader, as was McMurtry, and he stopped me one day on the sidewalk to ask if he could help with anything. I may have taken out my 30-page "to read" list and was scanning it, wondering if I should look inside. He asked to see my list, and I drew back, as any Washingtonian would, and said, "No. That would be much too personal." He seemed to understand, but I never did go into the shop during his lifetime. Others have written about their experiences, none favorable that I've seen. Later? Yes, I was in the smaller shop because my friend was manning the desk, and I did buy a few books there. It was, sad to say, an odd thing. A brick building covered in ivy (or was it Virginia creeper?), and shelves full of the collector's dreams. Even an Edward Gorey handmade doll in the window. Ideal, you might think, but something told me it wasn't what it seemed. More like...a movie set.

I'll let McMurtry have the last word, and the closing words of this book:

"The rules of happiness are as strict as the rules of sorrow; indeed, perhaps more strict. The two states have different densities, I've come to think. The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings--crowded, active, thick--, urban I would almost say. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and it's demands few...I lived on the plain."

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Larry McMurtry tells a would-be biographer (possibly Tracy Daugherty himself) that “my women friends will never talk to you.” And lots of women friends there were. Daugherty’s biography lists at least 25, among them Cybill Shepherd, Dianne Keaton and Susan Sontag.

But several of the close female friends die before Larry, leaving personal letters and papers behind. McMurtry even helps getting the personal papers of Susan Sontag purchased by UCLA.

McMurtry himself was an assiduous letter-writer, often communicating with five or six close female friends at a time, even though a friend says the Texas author was a “serial romancer, not a womanizer.” And Larry was careful to ensure that most of his female confidents didn’t know about each other.

Finally, biographer Tracy Daugherty says upfront in his acknowledgments that “without the generosity of the McMurtry family, I would not have pursued this project.” He gets the cooperation of at least ten of the women (and several men) who were in McMurtry’s life.

--

The biography itself is well-crafted and treats each stage of McMurtry’s life well, particularly his involvement in screen-writing for movies like “Hud”, “Terms of Endearment”, “Lonesome Dove” and “Brokeback Mountain”.

Daugherty , who taught creative writing at Oregon State University, also does a good job with the criticism of McMurtry’s 48 published novels and non-fiction.

It’s a well-researched book, with almost 60 pages of footnotes to indicate sources that the
biographer used.

--

McMurtry was a chronicler of the changes in American society in his writing. But he was also an avid bibliophile, collecting hundreds of thousands of books in his hometown of Archer City, Texas. But he was also disturbed by the modern trend to read online because he felt that books were the prime means of passing down culture. Daugherty also tells this part of the story well.

[Abigail Melchior · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Contemporary or historical, what bound the novels together was McMurtry's sensibility, his eye for America's dying subcultures, for the ghosts they unleashed, and for the viral erosion stirred by their demise, threatening the health of culture as a whole." (p.445)

In this comprehensive biography of Larry McMurtry we are given an in depth view of the legendary author's life. Tracy Daugherty explores his history, childhood, education, family, social life, career, and of course his vast literary legacy. I was impressed with what a well-rounded biography this was. The research was so inclusive, containing the observations of those who were closest to McMurtry, and much of McMurtry's own words, taken from his letters and other writings. Much of the book discussed his contribution to literature and film, his most famous works of course being Lonesome Dove, for which he won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize, and Brokeback Mountain, for which he won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. But the biography also gave such an intimate look into his personal life and the way his mind worked. I ended the book feeling like I had connected with a fellow soul who truly loved literature and learning the way I do. Many biographies I read can report on the life and accomplishments of their subject, but few make the man or women feel known to me, and I want to commend Daugherty for such a job well done here.

Also, the only book by Larry McMurtry I have read is Lonesome Dove, but I did not feel at all lost or hindered reading this biography. Those not overly familiar with McMurtry's work will still take pleasure in this biography. It did make me want to read more of McMurtry's books and also helped me narrow down which of his large collection I want read next.

I would recommend this biography to all literature lovers, and especially those who appreciate McMurtry's work.

Thank you to St. Martin's press for sending me an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.