McMurtry was born into a struggling Texas ranch family. Bookish even in a home without books, he was certainly not made to be a cowboy. Yet his experiences growing up in that environment allowed him to create an impressive library of western fiction, both contemporary such as The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment and of the Old West variety, such as Lonesome Dove.
Like his novels, where his characters always seem to be going somewhere, McMurtry lived his life mostly on the road. Archer City, Texas, may have been his home base, where he eventually brought thousands of books in hopes he could turn this nothing town into a literary haven, but mostly he traveled. He owned a bookstore in Washington, D.C. He went often to Hollywood, where he wrote screenplays (like Brokeback Mountain) and built friendships with the likes of actresses Diane Keaton and Cybill Shepherd. He became pals with author Ken Kesey in California and the Pacific Northwest and eventually married Kesey's widow. He spent a lot of time in Tucson.
McMurtry may not have looked like a ladies' man, but like a sailor he seemed to have a girl in every port. His relationships with women, from Susan Sontag to Diana Ossana, were extremely close, even when they were not sexual. As Daugherty puts it, "He gathered women as he gathered books, and for much the same reason: so as not to feel bereft." And so many of his best characters were women, many of them based on the women in his life.
Daugherty says that "loss was the major theme of his writing." The loss of the Old West, his father's and grandfather's generations, was certainly dominant in his work. But there are other kinds of loss, as well. So many of his main characters die in his books, reminding readers that life is fleeting.
And now we have lost Larry McMurtry. Yet, at least for the time being, we still have his books.
No comments:
Post a Comment