Larry McMurtry may well be the only Academy Award winner who used some of the precious moments of his acceptance speech to thank booksellers: “From the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world, all are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book, a wonderful culture which we musn’t lose,” he told the audience in 2006 as he accepted the Oscar for his screenplay for Brokeback Mountain — which was based on a short story.
In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and an Oscar-winning screenwriter, McMurtry has been a bookseller for most of his life. He still has a collection of 200,000 books in his private library and store in Archer City, Texas. His latest novel, The Last Kind Words Saloon, is a spare and unsentimental story about two Western icons, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
A number of McMurtry’s books have been made into successful films, including Hud, The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove, was a popular TV miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.
McMurtry says he never saw the miniseries and doesn’t think Lonesome Dove is his best book. “I think of Lonesome Dove as the Gone With the Wind of the West,” he says. “It’s a pretty good book; it’s not a towering masterpiece.”
McMurtry comes by his affinity for the West naturally. His grandfather made his living breaking horses; his father raised cattle. McMurtry grew up in Texas at a time when ranching was in its waning days. He views the West with a realist’s eye but understands why it has taken on mythic proportions for so many.