Pastures of the Empty Page

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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS

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

Lawrence Wright, McMurtry Passes By