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From "The Writer's Almanac"
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of the novelist Larry McMurtry
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=dbERwX3P08kWUNBCXNJ7pg..
, born Wichita Falls, Texas (1936). He grew up in a little town called
Archer City. He came from a long line of Texas ranchers, but Larry
McMurtry figured out he didn't like working on a ranch when he was a
kid. He said, "I saw right away that my father and all the cowboys
were slaves to these stupid animals. Who wants to be a slave to a
cow?"
He never thought cowboys were romantic figures. He thought they led
mostly drab, repetitive, unexciting lives, and weren't necessarily
strong or free. Many of them were twisted, fascistic, and dumb.
He studied literature at Rice University. He started writing dark
novels about his home town, in which he portrayed most of the people
there as none too bright, none too good. His third novel, The Last
Picture Show came out in 1966. It begins, "Sometimes Sonny felt like
he was the only human creature in the town. It was a bad feeling, and
it usually came on him in the mornings early, when the streets were
completely empty, the way they were on Saturday morning in late
November. The night before Sonny had played his last game of football
for Thalia High School, but it wasn't that that made him feel so
strange and alone. It was just the look of the town."
People in Archer, Texas didn't much care for the way they were
portrayed by Larry McMurtry. He moved away to Washington, D.C., became
a severe critic of the whole Western genre. But even though he hated
the idea of the romanticized Old West, there was a story in his head
that he couldn't get rid of. It was a story about the Old West, which
started as a movie treatment for John Wayne, but Wayne had backed out
of the project. Once in a while McMurtry would think about the
characters again, and then one day he drove past a sign for a church
called "Lonesome Dove," and that inspired him to rewrite the
screenplay as a novel.
It was the story of a former Texas Ranger, Augustus McCrae, who
persuades two friends to ride with him to Montana to find his one true
love Clara Allen, the only woman who could ever beat him in an
argument. Lonesome Dove became a huge best-seller. It won the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction, and was made into a TV mini-series.
After it came out, McMurtry's home town embraced him. The local hotel
changed its name to the Lonesome Dove Hotel, and Larry McMurtry moved
back there and opened one of the largest antiquarian bookstores in the
country, and he announced that keeping a bookstore was a form of
ranching, and instead of herding cattle, he herded books.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of the novelist Larry McMurtry
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=dbERwX3P08kWUNBCXNJ7pg..
, born Wichita Falls, Texas (1936). He grew up in a little town called
Archer City. He came from a long line of Texas ranchers, but Larry
McMurtry figured out he didn't like working on a ranch when he was a
kid. He said, "I saw right away that my father and all the cowboys
were slaves to these stupid animals. Who wants to be a slave to a
cow?"
He never thought cowboys were romantic figures. He thought they led
mostly drab, repetitive, unexciting lives, and weren't necessarily
strong or free. Many of them were twisted, fascistic, and dumb.
He studied literature at Rice University. He started writing dark
novels about his home town, in which he portrayed most of the people
there as none too bright, none too good. His third novel, The Last
Picture Show came out in 1966. It begins, "Sometimes Sonny felt like
he was the only human creature in the town. It was a bad feeling, and
it usually came on him in the mornings early, when the streets were
completely empty, the way they were on Saturday morning in late
November. The night before Sonny had played his last game of football
for Thalia High School, but it wasn't that that made him feel so
strange and alone. It was just the look of the town."
People in Archer, Texas didn't much care for the way they were
portrayed by Larry McMurtry. He moved away to Washington, D.C., became
a severe critic of the whole Western genre. But even though he hated
the idea of the romanticized Old West, there was a story in his head
that he couldn't get rid of. It was a story about the Old West, which
started as a movie treatment for John Wayne, but Wayne had backed out
of the project. Once in a while McMurtry would think about the
characters again, and then one day he drove past a sign for a church
called "Lonesome Dove," and that inspired him to rewrite the
screenplay as a novel.
It was the story of a former Texas Ranger, Augustus McCrae, who
persuades two friends to ride with him to Montana to find his one true
love Clara Allen, the only woman who could ever beat him in an
argument. Lonesome Dove became a huge best-seller. It won the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction, and was made into a TV mini-series.
After it came out, McMurtry's home town embraced him. The local hotel
changed its name to the Lonesome Dove Hotel, and Larry McMurtry moved
back there and opened one of the largest antiquarian bookstores in the
country, and he announced that keeping a bookstore was a form of
ranching, and instead of herding cattle, he herded books.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®