Michael Korda reflects on his long collaboration with Larry McMurtry

REVIEW BY MICHAEL KORDA

I have been Larry McMurtry's editor—and friend—since 1969. That's a long time to edit and publish one writer, in a business where authors flit from publishing house to house at the drop of a hat (or a check), constantly in search of a bigger advance, or the promise of more enthusiasm, and where editors also get fired or move, while the publishing houses themselves, once names that really stood for something, have been bought up by big entertainment or communication conglomerates, many of them to vanish except as one of a row of names on the stationery.

By the time he came to Simon & Schuster with Moving On, Larry had already written three excellent novels and a book of essays on Texas, and I had already been at S&S for 11 years, which is to say that neither of us entered into the relationship with any illusions about publishers (on his part) or writers (on mine).

In the 34 years since Larry and I first met (in Houston), and agreed that Moving On was not only a major novel, but as near as anybody would ever come to writing a—perhaps the—classic novel about rodeo (and that we were both in love with its heroine Patsy, who, as it turned out, many subsequent readers found tiresome and quick to cry, though it was Larry's opinion, and mine, then and now, that she had a lot to cry about), he has written no fewer than 31 books, plus innumerable screenplays, as well as winning the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Critics Circle Award and the Golden Spur. With Lonesome Dove he wrote one of the most beloved and best-selling novels in modern American literature (which also served as the basis for perhaps the best long mini-series ever put on television by a major network), an achievement which he turned into a franchise of sorts by writing three more novels using the characters of Gus and Call (one sequel, and two—to use a word we all hate—"prequels,") and single-handedly managed to bring the West, and the Western, back to life as a subject for and a form of literature. Yet, in The Last Picture Show, as a young man, he wrote a novel about "coming of age" which, both as a film and as a book, is almost as famous and beloved as its Eastern equivalent Catcher in the Rye or, and was made into a memorable and hugely successful movie. Even Larry's "juvenalia" has not only stood the test of time as literature, but has been commercially successful, either as a book, or as a movie, or both. Horseman, Pass By, his second novel, published when he was 25 years old, was made into the hugely successful movie Hud, with the result that almost from the beginning, unlike most young American writers, Larry had one foot in Hollywood while he still had a foot in Archer City, Texas, just as in mid-age he had a foot in Georgetown, where he opened a rare book shop, and in Washington, D.C. society, while still keeping the other firmly planted in his rural roots—a situation which he managed to repeat later on, by becoming President of PEN and moving in New York City society—including a table of his own at Petrossian, the famous caviar restaurant—while remaining, in spirit, and in fact, Archer City's most famous citizen.

Although at one time East Coast reviewers so often dismissed him as "a minor regional novelist" that he used to wear a black sweatshirt with that phrase printed on the front in big white letters, Larry McMurtry has long since outgrown that description, but unlike many artists who have risen in the social world—as president of PEN Larry attended black tie dinners and hobnobbed with the likes of Mrs. Brooke Astor, he became the elder Mrs. Bush's favorite novelist, and dated a number of Hollywood stars—he remained true not only to his roots, but to the special vision of the West, both as it was and as it has become, that was and remains his trademark.

Unlike countless writers for whom celebrity became a distraction—Norman Mailer leaps to mind as an example—Larry always knew when it was time to retreat from New York City, Washington, D. C., or Los Angeles back to his modest ranch house in Archer City, and resume getting up at five in the morning to start typing. His enormous productivity (in the face of serious health problems that he has since overcome) and his genius for storytelling—beautifully expressed in his current series, the Berrybender Narratives, a project so ambitious that very few, if any, other American writers would dare to undertake it—remains an astonishment.

Having stayed at the ranch in Archer City—his parents' house—my strongest memory (apart from the excellent bacon frying on the stove, produced by a nearby community of German farmers) remains the sound of Larry's typewriter (the old-fashioned kind, with a ribbon) beginning to click and ping at dawn, as he sits down to turn a large pile of canary yellow bond paper into fiction, methodically, swiftly herding words, characters and stories onto the page as he once herded cattle, living in this same house (of which traces may be found in Horseman, Pass By and Hud, the movie made from it). There is no hesitation, no hint of writer's block, no urban distractions—just the sound of a great writer making breakfast at dawn and getting to work while the rest of us are still in bed, the comforting sound of a writer at work, which is what Larry has been for nearly half a century, and will go on being, I hope, for many more years.

Michael Korda is the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster and the author of several books, including Horse People (HarperCollins, $25.95, 384 pages, ISBN 0066212529), a reminiscence on the riding life released this month.

Author photograph by Margaret Korda.