Two Authors Died: Beverly Cleary and Larry McMurtry

 

I was going to the public library to return some books and decide I would see what books they had by these two authors. Above you can see the Beverly Cleary books.

In their obituary, the New York Times says:

Beverly Cleary, who enthralled tens of millions of young readers with the adventures and mishaps of Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, the bratty Ramona Quimby and her older sister Beezus, and other residents of Klickitat Street, died on Thursday in Carmel, Calif. She was 104.

Marta enjoyed the Ramona Quimby books when she was in elementary school. And Michal was a big fan of the books about Ralph S. Mouse when he was in first grade.

Shown below are the Larry McMurtry books at my public library.

 

The New York Times started their obituary like this:

Larry McMurtry, a prolific novelist and screenwriter who demythologized the American West with his unromantic depictions of life on the 19th-century frontier and in contemporary small-town Texas, died on Thursday at home in Archer City, Texas. He was 84.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said Diana Ossana, his friend and writing partner.

Over more than five decades, Mr. McMurtry wrote more than 30 novels and many books of essays, memoir and history. He also wrote more than 30 screenplays, including the one for “Brokeback Mountain” (written with Ms. Ossana, based on a short story by Annie Proulx), for which he won an Academy Award in 2006.

But he found his greatest commercial and critical success with “Lonesome Dove,” a sweeping 843-page novel about two retired Texas Rangers who drive a herd of stolen cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana in the 1870s. The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and was made into a popular television mini-series.

Mr. McMurtry wrote “Lonesome Dove” as an anti-western, a rebuke of sorts to the romantic notions of dime-store novels and an exorcism of the false ghosts in the work of writers like Louis L’Amour. “I’m a critic of the myth of the cowboy,’’ he told an interviewer in 1988. “I don’t feel that it’s a myth that pertains, and since it’s a part of my heritage I feel it’s a legitimate task to criticize it.’’

But readers warmed to the vivid characters in “Lonesome Dove.” Mr. McMurtry himself ultimately likened it, in terms of its sweep, to a Western “Gone With the Wind.”

The times also published an article on the essential Larry McMurtry in case you want to read some of his books but are not sure where to start. He also participated in their By the Book series in 2014.

I have read and enjoyed many of McMurtry's books over the years. Lonesome Dove is definitely one of my favorites -- I read it again in August of last year.

In very different ways, both Beverly Cleary and Larry McMurtry have been very important writers to me.