Pastures of the Empty Page: Fellow Writers on the Life and Legacy of Larry McMurtry is a new series of essays focusing on the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Oscar-winning screenwriter, and bookseller, who died in 2021 at the age of 84 and whose personal estate auction was held in May this year.
Edited by director of the Archer City Writers Workshop George Gestchow, Pastures of the Empty Page from the University of Texas Press includes essays from a wide range of writers and contributors with a section of essays on Larry the antiquarian and bookseller called Reader and Bookman. Among them is an essay by Brandon Kennedy, On Book Scouting and Ghostwritten Erotica exploring McMurtry’s early days of bookscouting and bookselling, focusing on a trove of letters he discovered at UT Austin’s Briscoe Center.
Pastures of the Empty Page brings together fellow writers to honor the man and his impact on American letters. Paulette Jiles, Stephen Harrigan (who writes “He was the first novelist I read who took Texas seriously but not reverently"), Geoff Dyer, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, and Lawrence Wright concentrate on 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 30-year book and screenwriting partnership, while other contributors explore McMurtry’s reading habits and his passion for bookselling. Among them is his brother Charlie McMurtry who shares memories of their childhood on the ranch.
