DALLAS (AP) – Larry McMurtry, the prolific and popular author who took readers back to the old American west in his Pulitzer Prize winner “Lonesome Dove” and returned them to modern landscapes in works such as his mother’s emotional tale – relationship of daughter in “Terms of Tenderness”, died. He was 84 years old.
McMurtry died on Thursday night of heart failure, according to a family statement released through an advertiser on Friday. The statement did not say where he died, but noted that he would be buried “in his beloved home state, Texas”.
McMurtry, who in his later years divided his time between his small Texas hometown of Archer City and Tucson, Arizona, has written dozens of books, including novels, biographies and collections of essays. He worked simultaneously as a bookseller and screenwriter, co-writing the Oscar-winning script for the film “Brokeback Mountain”.
Several of McMurtry’s books became films, including Oscar winners “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment”. His 1986 Pulitzer-winning epic, “Lonesome Dove”, about a cattle movement from Texas through the Great Plains during the 1870s, was turned into a television miniseries starring Robert Duvall, who always cited the project as a personal favorite. and compared his role as retired Texas Ranger Augustus McCrae to act in “Hamlet”.
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Writers Larry McMurtry, right, and Diana Ossana pose with their best script awards for “Brokeback Mountain” at the 63rd Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, on January 16, 2006. (AP Photo / Reed Saxon, File )
“‘Lonesome Dove’ was an effort to demystify the myth of the Wild West,” McMurtry told the Associated Press in a 2014 interview. But, he added, “They are going to make it romantic, no matter what you do.”
“The Last Picture Show”, his third novel, became a classic with its maturing story set in a small Texas town. He and director Peter Bogdanovich were nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay, filmed in Archer City, located about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Dallas. The film adaptation of “Terms of Endearment”, released in 1983, was written and directed by James L. Brooks and won the Oscar for best film, director and screenplay, with awards for star Shirley MacLaine and supporting actor Jack Nicholson.
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“Sitting here thinking about Larry McMurtry’s greatness,” Brooks tweeted on Friday. “Among the best writers of all time. I remember when he told me to adapt” Terms “- his refusal to let me admire him. And the fact that he was working personally at his bookstore’s cash register while he did it. so.”
McMurtry was born on June 3, 1936, in a family of farmers. McMurtry attended what is now the University of North Texas in Denton and Rice University in Houston and was a member of the Stanford University Stegner Scholarship.
President Barack Obama is preparing to award the 2014 National Humanities Medal to novelist, essayist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry during a ceremony at the White House in Washington on September 10, 2015. (AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta, Archive)
He wrote his first novel, “Horseman, Pass by”, at the age of 25 in 1961. He was made into the movie “Hud”, starring Paul Newman, which was released two years later.
McMurtry opened his first used and rare bookstore in 1971 in Washington, DC, and later opened other stores in Houston, Dallas and Tucson.
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In the mid-1980s, attracted by cheap real estate, he opened his Booked Up store in Archer City. Eventually, the store in Archer City was the only one left. He reduced the size of the store – both in volume and in storefronts – in an effort dubbed The Last Book Sale, but retained around 200,000 volumes.
He had about 28,000 books at his next home in Archer City. “I am very attached to books. I need them. I need to be among them, ”he told AP in 2014.
In this April 30, 2014 archive photo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry poses in his bookstore in Archer City, Texas. McMurtry died at the age of 84. (AP Photo / LM Otero, Archive)
McMurtry’s literary collaboration with Diana Ossana began after she helped him out of a crisis after quadruple heart surgery in 1991. They won the Oscar for the screenplay for the 2005 film “Brokeback Mountain”, based on a short story by Annie Proulx about two cowboys who fall in love. Her most recent novel, “The Last Kind Words Saloon”, was released in 2014.
He told The Associated Press in 1994 that his life throughout the 1980s had been peripatetic – traveling between his bookstores across the country and a home in Los Angeles. Then the surgery forced him to stop moving. “It just so happens that I stopped at Diana’s kitchen table,” he said.
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The two, both divorced, met at a catfish restaurant in Tucson and became friends. After the surgery, McMurtry spent his time sleeping in Ossana’s guest room, writing “Streets of Laredo” on a typewriter in his kitchen or looking out the window.
She helped edit “Streets of Laredo” and then started to encourage him to accept script offers. “At the time, I received a lot of movie offers. I was very popular, but I didn’t feel confident. I had very serious heart problems. I got a lot of offers and I think she got tired of me refusing,” he said.
When the offer of a script for the bank robber of the Depression era arose, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ossana and McMurtry decided together and wrote the novel “Pretty Boy Floyd”. After that, they collaborated on dozens of scripts.
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He married Jo Ballard in 1959 and three years later, the couple had a son, singer and songwriter James McMurtry. In 1966, they divorced. In 2011, he married for the second time: to Norma Faye Kesey, widow of longtime friend Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. They held their wedding ceremony at the Archer City bookstore.
McMurtry’s family statement said he died surrounded by loved ones, including Ossana; his wife; his son; his grandson, Curtis; and his godson, Sara Ossana. He also left his sisters, Sue and Judy, and a brother, Charlie
Don Graham, professor of English and American literature at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a 2014 interview with the AP that McMurtry is “preeminently a storyteller”. “He is a great creator of characters and dialogues. That is one of the reasons he was so successful in Hollywood,” said Graham.