“He was always writing about America,” said Wright, “but it was set in the Texas part of America.” Or is he?Īs much as he celebrated the hard-bitten characters of the grasslands and reveled in morning skies “red as coals in the forge,” when “dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral,” he ranged far beyond the familiar, don’t-fence-me-in tropes of Western literature. Larry McMurtry, premier Western novelist of a generation, seems content with the quiet life in Archer City, Texas. He was the recipient of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for “Lonesome Dove.” In 2006, he shared an Academy Award with co-writer Diana Ossana for best adapted screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain,” and in 2014, President Obama presented him with a National Humanities Medal for work that “evokes the character and drama of the American West with stories that examine quintessentially American lives.” Michael Korda, McMurtry’s editor at Simon & Schuster, once described the novelist as “the Flaubert of the Plains” for his “sure eye for the bleak landscape of small-town Texas and the isolated ranches of the Panhandle, as well as the history of the West.”

Known for outspoken, brassy characters and a rare ability to cast scenes with raw, tender and often comic emotions, McMurtry coupled his deep understanding of American history with keen-eyed observations of American history and Western mores. The author of nearly 30 novels, about 15 works of nonfiction and more than 40 screenplays and teleplays, McMurtry died on Thursday of heart failure at his home in Tucson at 84, according to his publicist, Amanda Lundberg.

Author larry mcmurtry