Larry McMurtry’s New Myth of the Old West
Found this excellent interview of Larry McMurtry, buster of old west history and myth.
Originally posted on Books: A Documentary:
(Reblog of ALEXANDRA ALTER’s article for wsj.com)
Larry McMurtry at his bookstore in Archer City, Texas Brandon Thibodeaux for The Wall Street Journal
by Alexandra Alter for wsj.com
It’s sort of surprising that it took Larry McMurtry this long to write a novel about the shootout at the O.K. Corral. The famous 30-second gunfight that broke out on Oct. 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Ariz., has become short hand for roughly delivered, vigilante-style justice.
Mr. McMurtry, author of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Lonesome Dove,” has tackled just about every other major myth about the Old West in the course of his 53-year literary career. He’s taken on revered 19th-century American figures including Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Crazy Horse, Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody and George Custer, and has often made it his mission to brush off the romanticism and mythology that clings to the Old West.
In his…
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Filed under: ON THE JOURNEY
