Literary Life - by Larry McMurtry (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry follows up his memoir Books with this engrossing and deeply personal reflection on the life of a writer.

Larry McMurtry is that rarest of artists, a prolific and genre-transcending writer who has delighted generations with his witty and elegant prose. In Literary Life, the sequel to Books, he expounds on the private trials and triumphs of being a writer. From his earliest inkling of his future career while at Rice University, to his tenure as a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford with Ken Kesey in 1960, to his incredible triumphs as a bestselling author, this intimate and charming autobiography is replete with literary anecdotes and packed with memorable observations about writing, writers, and the author himself. It is a work to be cherished not only by McMurtry's admirers, but by the innumerable aspiring writers who seek to make their own mark on American literature.

Review Quotes

"A master reflects on the joy of writing . . . An invitation into the working writer's head." --The Boston Globe

"A rambling, shambling, and ambling autobiography." --John Barron, Chicago Sun-Times

"Entertaining and enlightening." --David Hendricks, San Antonio Express-News

"Mr. McMurtry is an outsider with insider stories and connections. . . . Strewn through this book's loose narrative are stories about things like eating chicken gizzards and attending a stock car race in Texas with Susan Sontag. . . . The book is also, happily, filled with his literary enthusiasms." --Dwight Garner, New York Times

"The master of the showstopping anecdote." --Kristy Davis, O, The Oprah Magazine

About the Author

Larry McMurtry (1936-2021) was the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove, three memoirs, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays. He lived in Archer City, Texas.