{"id":47743,"date":"2021-03-26T15:51:27","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T21:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pulitzer-prize-winning-author-of-lonesome-dove-dies\/"},"modified":"2021-03-26T21:51:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T21:51:27","slug":"pulitzer-prize-winning-author-of-lonesome-dove-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pulitzer-prize-winning-author-of-lonesome-dove-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u2018Lonesome Dove\u2019 dies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Pulitzer
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry has died at the age of 84. His death was confirmed Friday by a spokesman for his publisher Liveright. Several of McMurtry\u2019s books became feature films, including the Oscar-winning films \u201cThe Last Picture Show\u201d and \u201cTerms of Endearment.\u201d He also co-wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for \u201cBrokeback Mountain.\u201d<\/span>LM Otero\/Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DALLAS \u2013 Larry McMurtry, the prolific and popular author who took readers back to the old American West in his Pulitzer Prize-winning \u201cLonesome Dove\u201d and returned them to modern-day landscapes in works such as his emotional tale of a mother-daughter relationship in \u201cTerms of Endearment,\u201d has died. He was 84.<\/p>\n

McMurtry died Thursday night of heart failure, according to a family statement issued through a publicist on Friday. The statement did not say where he died but noted that he\u2019ll be buried \u201cin his cherished home state of Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMurtry, who had in his later years split his time between his small Texas hometown of Archer City and Tucson, Arizona, wrote dozens of books, including novels, biographies and essay collections. He simultaneously worked as a bookseller and screenwriter, co-writing the Oscar-winning script for the movie \u201cBrokeback Mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of McMurtry\u2019s books became feature films, including the Oscar-winners \u201cThe Last Picture Show\u201d and \u201cTerms of Endearment.\u201d His epic 1986 Pulitzer winner \u201cLonesome Dove,\u201d about a cattle drive from Texas across the Great Plains during the 1870s, was made into a popular television miniseries that starred Robert Duvall, who has often cited the project as a personal favorite and likened his role as retired Texas Ranger Augustus McCrae to acting in \u201cHamlet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Lonesome Dove\u2019 was an effort to kind of demythologize the myth of the Old West,\u201d McMurtry told The Associated Press in a 2014 interview. But, he added, \u201cThey\u2019re going to twist it into something romantic no matter what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Last Picture Show,\u201d his third novel, became a classic with its coming-of-age story set in a small Texas town. He and director Peter Bogdanovich were nominated for an Academy Award for their script for the movie, filmed in Archer City, located about 140 miles northwest of Dallas. The film adaptation of \u201cTerms of Endearment,\u201d released in 1983, was written and directed by James L. Brooks and received Oscars for best picture, director and screenplay, with awards for star Shirley MacLaine and supporting actor Jack Nicholson.<\/p>\n

\u201cSitting here thinking of the greatness of Larry McMurtry,\u201d Brooks tweeted Friday. \u201cAmong the best writers ever. I remember when he sent me on my way to adapt \u201cTerms\u201d \u2013 his refusal to let me hold him in awe. And the fact that he was personally working the cash register of his rare book store as he did so.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMurtry was born on June 3, 1936, into a family of ranchers. McMurtry attended what is now the University of North Texas in Denton and Rice University in Houston and was member of Stanford University\u2019s Stegner writing fellowship.<\/p>\n

He wrote his first novel, \u201cHorseman, Pass by,\u201d at age 25 in 1961. It was made into the movie \u201cHud\u201d starring Paul Newman that came out two years later.<\/p>\n

McMurtry opened his first used and rare bookstore in 1971 in Washington, D.C., and later opened other stores in Houston, Dallas and Tucson.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1980s, lured by cheap real estate, he opened his Booked Up store in Archer City. Eventually, the store in Archer City was the only one remaining. He downsized the store \u2013 both in volume and storefronts \u2013 in an effort dubbed The Last Book Sale, but retained about 200,000 volumes.<\/p>\n

He had about 28,000 books in his nearby home in Archer City.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very attached to the books. I need them. I need to be among them,\u201d he told the AP in 2014.<\/p>\n

McMurtry\u2019s writing collaboration with Diana Ossana began after she helped him get out of a slump following quadruple bypass heart surgery in 1991. They won the Academy Award for their screenplay for the 2005 movie \u201cBrokeback Mountain,\u201d based on an Annie Proulx short story about two cowboys who fall in love. His most recent novel, \u201cThe Last Kind Words Saloon,\u201d came out in 2014.<\/p>\n

He told the AP in 1994 that his life throughout the 1980s had been peripatetic \u2013 traveling between his bookstores across the country and a home in Los Angeles. Then the surgery forced him to stop moving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just so happened that I stopped at Diana\u2019s kitchen table,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The two, both divorced, had met at a Tucson catfish restaurant and struck up a friendship. After the surgery, McMurtry spent his time sleeping in Ossana\u2019s guest room, writing \u201cStreets of Laredo\u201d on a typewriter in her kitchen, or staring out the window.<\/p>\n

She helped edit \u201cStreets of Laredo\u201d and then began encouraging him to accept screenwriting offers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was getting lots of offers then from the movies. I was very popular, but I didn\u2019t feel confident,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d had real serious heart problems. I got a lot of offers and I think that she just got tired of me turning them down.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the offer came in for a script on the Depression-era bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd, Ossana and McMurtry tackled it together and then wrote the novel \u201cPretty Boy Floyd.\u201d After that they collaborated on dozens of screenplays.<\/p>\n

He married Jo Ballard in 1959 and three years later, the couple had a son, singer-songwriter James McMurtry. In 1966, they divorced. In 2011, he got married for a second time: to Norma Faye Kesey, the widow of longtime friend Ken Kesey, author of \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest.\u201d They held their marriage ceremony in the Archer City bookstore.<\/p>\n

The statement from McMurtry\u2019s family said that he died surrounded by loved ones, including Ossana; his wife; his son; his grandson, Curtis; and his goddaughter, Sara Ossana. He also is survived by his sisters, Sue and Judy, and a brother, Charlie.<\/p>\n

Don Graham, a professor of English and American literature at the University of Texas in Austin, said in a 2014 interview with the AP that McMurtry is \u201cpreeminently a storyteller.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s a great creator of characters and dialogue. That\u2019s one of the reasons he\u2019s had so much success in Hollywood,\u201d Graham said.<\/p>\n

AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report from New York City.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McMurtry\u2019s works include \u2018Terms of Endearment,\u2019 \u2018Brokeback Mountain\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2482,28,1443,1107],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-celebrity","tag-headlines","tag-literature","tag-movies"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47743"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}