Minor writers

Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry, best known for Lonesome Dove, took satisfaction in being regarded as a "minor writer." Relatively few writers ever achieve that distinction, he noted.

Most writers make no splash at all. Minor writers are important in their own generation and perhaps for a few years afterward. Then they disappear. A very few major writers — like Dickens, Austen and Tolstoy — continue to be read a hundred years later and more.

McMurtry placed such respected 20th century writers as Norman Mailer, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow in the "minor" category. He didn't mention John Updike, but it is hard to imagine Updike still being read in the next century. Relatively few people read him now.

The only one of his contemporaries he mentioned as a major writer was Flannery O'Connor. "I think she was a true genius, painful genius," he said.

McMurtry also said, "It's fine if you're minor. I 'm glad I got that high. Not everybody does."

His comments reflect both humility and reality. True greatness in any field is rare, and should be. We think of the word minor as being insignificant or average, if not below average. And if we are thinking only of our own time, such descriptions may be true. McMurtry, however, was a bibliophile perhaps even more than he was a writer. He read great books from many centuries and many writers. He looked at literature on a big screen. In the big picture, the Mailers and the Roths and the Bellows, not to mention the McMurtrys, are truly minor. Even so, they made it to the screen.