When writer Larry McMurtry died on March 25, 2021, it seemed a cosmic coincidence that it was also the date of the final screening—for now at least—at Houston’s historic River Oaks Theatre (which was showing the Frances McDormand-starring road film Nomadland).

For the wry thinkers, that means the date marked—literally—The Last Picture Show. Coincidentally, the River Oaks Theatre was a place that a younger McMurtry spent a lot of time in during the 1950s and ‘60s while a Houstonian himself, his imagination lit by the flickering images of the screen.

McMurtry on Houston in the late ‘60s: “A lot of young artists gravitated to Houston because of money. Houston was a very open town. Everybody that has some pizzazz and energy [was] welcome in Houston.”

By the time of his death, McMurtry was also arguably the best known and most read author who came from within the borders of the Lone Star State. He produced dozens of both contemporary and historical novels for which he was most famous (including the epochal Lonesome Dove), but also short stories, memoirs, journalism, essays and screenplays.

The work, life, and Bayou City connections of Larry McMurtry are covered in the staggering and detailed new biography, Larry McMurtry: A Life (560 pp., $35, St. Martin’s Press). Author Tracy Daugherty will also discuss and sign the book on October 23 at Brazos Bookstore.

But while McMurtry at different times lived, studied and taught in Houston, his relationship with the city ran the gamut. He wrote “Houston was my first city, my Alexandria, my Paris, my Oxford. At least I was in a place where I could begin to read, and I did.”

He also complained to a friend early in his career “I hope I get famous, so I can denounce this hole from the pages of every learned magazine in America.”

Over the phone, Daugherty says he’s not surprised by the dichotomy. “Well, he was a very contradictory character, and that became clear to me when I was researching and writing the book. He was ambivalent about almost everything in his life. He had love/hate relationships with people and places and writing itself.”

So, does that also mean, in terms of reading and book culture, going from his tiny hometown Archer City to boomtown Houston as he did was akin to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz going from black and white to color?

“That’s a great way of putting it! And that’s exactly right. Archer City wasn’t even a town; it had so little to offer. So going to Houston was like going to another planet for him!” Daugherty says.

“It’s the old story of going from the small town to the big city, but it was even more dramatic in this case. For him, Archer City was such a wasteland and Houston was dazzling. There were these bookstores and a great library at Rice University. Which had the added advantage of being air conditioned!”

McMurtry on exploring the “funkier reaches” of Houston while hunting for books his personal library or the local store he managed, The Bookman: “[I loved] its steamy, shoddy, falling-down sections. Houston as a city was a series of crumbling, half-silted-over neighborhoods.”

The book discusses his four different stints at Rice University: Twice at separate times as an underclassman, once for graduate studies, and once to teach. He had initially dropped out of Rice early on because he couldn’t handle the math courses. Then he went to North Texas State University before returning.

“He immediately regretting leaving Rice when he did. He felt intimidated, like he couldn’t keep up with the math and the people who had better public-school educations than he did,” Daugherty says.

In one of the book’s more bizarre anecdotes, McMurtry, his first wife, and infant son (and future singer/songwriter, James) got a shock in their quiet, conservative Quenby Street home with the arrival of some visitors in the summer of 1964, led by an old friend.

That friend happened to be author and extroverted psychedelic pioneer Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and his wild proto-hippie group. The Merry Pranksters. Their trademark colorful bus showed up at the McMurtry’s front door and out tumbled drug freaks, weirdos, and at least one naked woman, with chaos ensuing.

James was sitting on the lawn when the whacked-out woman mistakenly grabbed him, thinking it was her own son. She later disappeared and was found in a Houston police station, arrested after biting an officer!

“I’m sure James doesn’t have a memory of that! But that reveals some of McMurtry’s character,” Daugherty says. “He really took care of that woman when the Pranksters essentially abandoned her in Houston. He was even going to fly back to San Francisco with her to make sure she was OK.”

In doing research, Daugherty visited Houston, but was already familiar with the city. He lived here in the early ‘80s while attending the University of Houston writing program and studying with Donald Barthleme. In his life, McMurtry also taught night classes at the University of Houston and wrote book reviews for The Houston Post.
With the massive success of Lonesome Dove—both as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and a well-regarded TV mini-series starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, several McMurtry “imposters” cropped up, with Houston connections.

The real author had to call a local woman to break the news that the man her daughter was scheduled to marry was, in fact, not actually him. And he felt the eyes of several airline pilots at Hobby Airport on him, only for them to tell him that he didn’t look at all like the “Larry McMurtry” that they had drinks with in Mexico two nights before!

McMurtry on Houston, comparing the city to a sensual woman. “[I loved] her heat, her dampness, her sumpy smells. She wasn’t beautiful, but neither was I. I liked her…looseness…[that was] her substance. And if she had been cool and dry and odorless, I wouldn’t have cared to live with her.”
Finally, knowing what he knows now, we ask the biographer what he thinks noted curmudgeon Larry McMurtry would make of Houston in 2023, especially since late in his life he railed against the “tsunami of technology” that he felt was destroying kids’ abilities to read and killing book culture itself.

“I’m sure he would feel the way I feel. Houston now is beyond recognition in some ways,” Daugherty begins.

“But he kept coming back from time to time throughout his life. And in his letters, no matter how much Houston changed, it was the one city that he never lost his affection for. He’d be critical of Hollywood and LA and New York, and even the chaos and faults and politics of Houston, but he still he always felt at home there."

Tracy Daugherty discusses and signs Larry McMurtry: A Life at 6:30 pm on Monday, October 23, at Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet. For information call 713-523-0701 or visit BrazosBookstore.com Free, but any signed book must be purchased from Brazos.