Larry McMurtry (R.I.P.) on Book Ranching
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist\xa0Larry McMurtry\xa0is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel\xa0Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana. (Update:\xa0Larry died yesterday, March 25, 2021).\xa0
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.\u2019s \xa0Georgetown neighbourhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988 he opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a "Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 titles.
McMurtry is well-known for the film adaptations of his work, especially Hud (from the novel Horseman, Pass By),\xa0The Last Picture Show; James L. Brooks\u2019s\xa0Terms of Endearment,\xa0and Lonesome Dove, which became an enormously popular television mini-series. In 2006, he was co-winner (with Diana Ossana) of both the Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for\xa0Brokeback Mountain.
I interviewed him ( in 2008) as part of a project I was working on for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest,\xa0Books: A Memoir, his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of the hunt, book-scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality, keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining number of used book stores, and optimism for the future.