American · 1936–2021
Larry McMurtry grew up on a Texas cattle ranch and spent his career elegizing the mythic West while puncturing its myths. "Lonesome Dove" (1985) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—a 900-page cattle drive that earns every page through its characters: Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, aging Texas Rangers who can't quite stop living the frontier even as it closes around them. McMurtry also wrote screenplays, including an Oscar-winning adaptation of "Brokeback Mountain." He operated used bookstores and collected Western Americana. His output was vast, but "Lonesome Dove" remains the monument.