Larry McMurtry Loves Books
Posted on | March 18, 2009 | 2 Comments
I lived part of Larry McMurtry’s life. I went to school near where he grew up, near where The Last Picture Show was filmed. I was in school in Austin, as he was, and lived in a garage apartment in Houston, as he did. Some of his early books, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers and Moving On helped form my early framework for looking at fiction. And Lonesome Dove seems as if it were written about my grandfather, James Marvin Corry, and his brother George.
My grandfather, James Marvin Corry (right), his brother George (center), and their cousins, the Whites. New Mexico 1910.
When I went back and read my Stacey’s post from yesterday, I wondered if McMurtry still had his store in D.C. I found this story.
Walk well. God is love.
Comments
2 Responses to “Larry McMurtry Loves Books”
March 20th, 2009 @ 10:13 am
Hi JJ – Excellent entry. I had temporarily forgotten about your Texas roots. It all must be nostalgic. Lonesome Dove was recommended to me (in his 1988 Christmas card note) by an Academy classmate, Bart Jealous, who for the last 20 years or so has lived in The Woodlands, outside of Houston. I was entranced and devoured the book in a couple of days. Then, to my delight and amazement, I noticed the television announcement that the LD miniseries would start the following week. I cancelled all meetings and other commitments and parked myself on the sofa, and Gerre and I watched and thoroughly enjoyed the entire presentation, over 4 nights or so. At your suggestion, I read (and enjoyed) the Horowitz New York Times article about Larry McMurtry: very interesting! Whenever I need something to read, I just check your blog for recommendations; that way I don’t have to do any research myself at all!
March 20th, 2009 @ 11:34 am
Hey Steve,Lonesome Dove is the first — only — period novel for which I had some first or second-hand knowledge. And I found it true to the character of the time. What I read in McMurtry’s other novels, where I had lived in the areas he wrote about, I also found truth. I find it remarkable that he and his partner, Diana Ossana, wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. I found truth there, too.