Larry McMurtry - 1954
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Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Texas
I. Upbringing and Professional Life
Larry McMurtry was born on a ranch in Wichita Falls, Texas near Archer City in 1936. He received his B.A. from North Texas State College, his M.A. from Rice and attended Stanford University. Later, he taught at Texas Christian University, Rice University, American University, and George Mason University. He also served a two-year term as president of P.E.N. American Center in New York City.
Besides writing, he also sells books at his antiquarian bookstores located in Washington, D.C., Texas, and Arizona. McMurtry was most
influenced by the writings of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Tolstoy, the Russians, and French. He enjoys Dickens and most of the nineteenth-century fiction. His first novel was Horseman, Pass By,
which he wrote when he returned to Rice in 1958 as a graduate student. He kept the manuscript with him for three or four years before he went to Stanford, where it was published in 1961.
The novel was later adapted for the motion picture Hud, the starting point for his association with movies. Some of McMurtry's other novels, The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove and Texasville were also made into movies. He later received an Academy Award for his screenplay of The Last Picture Show.
McMurtry's Lonesome Dove won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986; he has been the only Texan to win that distinguished award since 1986. McMurtry's novels are generally set on the theme of the American West and focus on human relations. "Many of McMurtry's works reflect his Texas heritage and a conflict he senses between mythic rural Texas values and the realities and energies of urban life" (Chase).
II. Works by McMurtry
1961 – Horseman, Pass By
1963 – Leaving Cheyenne
1966 – The Last Picture Show
1968 – In A Narrow Grave
1970 – Moving On
1972 – All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers
1974 – It's Always We Rambled
1975 – Terms of Endearment
1978 – Somebody's Darling
1982 – Cadillac Jack
1983 – Desert Rose
1985 – Lonesome Dove
1987 – Texasville
1987 – Film Flam
1988 – Anything For Billy
1989 – Some Can Whistle
1990 – Buffalo Girls
1992 – The Evening Star
III. Works Cited
Lee, James Ward. Classics of Texas Fiction . Dallas: E-Heart Press, 1987.
"Larry McMurtry page." 2 Nov. 1999
http://www.eskimo.com/~booknut/McMurtry.html
Encarta. "McMurtry, Larry." 2 Nov. 1999 http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=0AB7B000
Gillis, Malcolm. "Rice University President's Lecture Series 1997-98." 1997. Rice University. 2 Nov. 1999
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~events/mcmurtry.html
This essay was submitted by a student of Sheryl Row, a teacher at Jesuit College Preparatory of Dallas in Texas.