Larry McMurtry, one of most acclaimed writers of the American experience, died Thursday at his home in Tucson, Arizona. Author of such popular and critically praised books as “Lonesome Dove,” “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment,” McMurtry had been fighting complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to his publicist, Amanda Lundberg.
A keen-eyed observer of Western and national mores, McMurtry, 84, was the recipient of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for “Lonesome Dove.” In 2006, he shared with co-writer, Diana Ossana, the Academy Award for adapted screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain.”
In a career that spanned 60 years, he wrote nearly 30 novels, about 15 works of nonfiction and more than 40 screenplays and teleplays. He was as prolific as he was learned.
Whether crafting tales about the settling of prairies or an essay for the New York Review of Books, he brought to his prose a popular sensibility that earned him a devoted readership.
His editor at Simon & Schuster, Michael Korda, called him “the Flaubert of the Plains.” Journalist Texan Lawrence Wright praised his capacious vision of America. Historian Patricia Limerick honored the empathy he brought to his exploration of character, especially of women.
“We’re talking about one of the greatest men who ever lived,” actor Cybill Shepherd told the LA Times, “one of the greatest men of letters in this country, in the world.”
His most memorable achievement, the 1985 novel “Lonesome Dove,” was the story of a 2,500-mile cattle drive from Texas to Montana. Written at a time when the national popularity of westerns had waned, it became an unlikely bestseller.
Speaking to The Times in 2000, the late novelist Carolyn See said, “If anyone had any sense, they’d throw out ‘Moby Dick’ and put ‘Lonesome Dove’ in the center as the great American epic novel.”
Compared with other great writers of the American West — Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas McGuane and Annie Proulx — McMurtry was content with keeping a modest profile.
Dressed in dungarees and a sweatshirt declaring “Minor Regional Novelist,” he could often be found loading books in and out of trucks at the back of his bookstore in Archer City, Texas.
An avid reader, McMurtry was a stalwart champion of the printed page, and his bookstore, a far-flung destination for both fans and collectors, boosted the local economy as ranching and the oil industry flagged.
During his acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, he gave special recognition to “all the booksellers of the world, from the humblest paperback exchanges to the masters of the great bookshops.”
His words were an expression of a lifetime devoted to literature and the belief that reading is essential to humanity.
