A collection of essays that offers an intimate view of Larry McMurtry, America’s preeminent western novelist, through the eyes of a pantheon of writers he helped shape through his work over the course of his unparalleled literary life.
When he died in 2021, Larry McMurtry was one of America’s most revered writers. The author of treasured novels such as Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show, and coauthor of the screenplays for Brokeback Mountain and Streets of Laredo, McMurtry created unforgettable characters and landscapes largely drawn from his life growing up on the family’s hardscrabble ranch outside his hometown of Archer City, Texas. Pastures of the Empty Page brings together fellow writers to honor the man and his impact on American letters.
Paulette Jiles, Stephen Harrigan, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, and Lawrence Wright take up McMurtry’s piercing and poetic vision—an elegiac literature of place that demolished old myths of cowboy culture and created new ones. Screenwriting partner Diana Ossana reflects on their thirty-year book and screenwriting partnership; other contributors explore McMurtry’s reading habits and his passion for bookselling. And brother Charlie McMurtry shares memories of their childhood on the ranch. In contrast to his curmudgeonly persona, Larry McMurtry emerges as a trustworthy friend and supportive mentor. McMurtry was famously self-deprecating, but as his admirers attest, this self-described “minor regional writer” was an artist for the ages.
George Getschow is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting and winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for distinguished writing about the underprivileged. He has earned numerous other awards for his writing and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2012 for “distinctive literary achievement.” Today, as director of the Archer City Writers Workshop, he helps organize and conduct annual writing workshops in Archer City for professional writers and college and high school students from across the country.
Table of Contents
George Getschow, Acknowledgments
Stephen Graham Jones, Foreword
George Getschow, Introduction
Native Ground
Charlie McMurtry, In Awesome Wonder
Paulette Jiles, The Boy with the Lamp
Skip Hollandsworth, The Larry McMurtry I Knew
Erik Calonius, The Master Geologist of Archer County
Joe W. Specht, Larry’s Oil-Patch Legacy
Teacher and Apprentices
William Broyles, Leave His Saddle on the Wall
Gregory Curtis, McMurtry’s Mild Discouragement
Mike Evans, “Mike, It’s Larry. I’m in Trouble.”
Myth Buster and Myth Maker
Geoff Dyer, Ranging across Texas
Doug J. Swanson, Gus, Call, Danny, and the Rangers
Oscar Cásares, Snakes in a River
Sarah Bird, Finding Home
Reader and Bookman
Bill Marvel, Larry McMurtry, Reader
Greg Giddings, An Afternoon with Larry
Brandon Kennedy, On Book Scouting and Ghostwritten Erotica
Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Runaways
Kathryn Jones, Bonding over Books
Collaborators and Confidants
Diana Ossana, Stirring the Memories
Michael Korda, The Moby-Dick of the Plains
Carol Flake Chapman, My Long Trail to Lonesome Dove
Susan Freudenheim, An Unlikely Bond
Sherry Kafka Wagner, Not So Silent Women
Beverly Lowry, Scenes from a Friendship
Katy Vine, Road Trip Tips from Larry McMurtry
Critic and Champion
John Nova Lomax, To Hell with the Sunny Slopes
Jim Black, Writer, Pass By
Elizabeth Crook, Loving Gus
Workshopper
Kathy Floyd, Somewhere, a Writer . . .
Eric Nishimoto, McMurtry’s Rebuff
Dianne Solis, At the Intersection of Aspiration and Asphyxiation
Cathy Booth Thomas, Reckoning at Idiot Ridge
Dave Tarrant, “Furthur”
Legacy
Stephen Harrigan, Writing Plainly and Unforgettably
Alfredo Corchado, The Borderlands: A Home for Misfits Like Me and McMurtry’s Danny Deck
W. K. Stratton, All My Friends Are Going to Be Larry
No Texas man of letters loomed larger than Larry McMurtry. This wonderful encomium from friends and admirers gets at the peculiar magic behind McMurtry's long and incredibly eclectic career as a celebrated novelist, screenwriter, bibliophile, and student of the American West.
Luis Alberto Urrea
Pastures of the Empty Page is essential reading for both writers and readers. It should be on the bookshelf of everyone who values words, who appreciates insight and unexpected revelations, and who loves Larry McMurtry. As a bonus, it is brilliantly written.
Philipp Meyer
A brilliant and insightful collection of essays and personal recollections about one of America’s most important writers. Honest, funny, and compelling: this will go down as one of our great literary histories.