After living in various places including Washington, D.C., where he owned a rare book store, in 1988 he moved back to Archer City, which had no bookstores or libraries in his youth, and built up a used book store complex that some collectors considered the biggest of its kind in the country. When not writing books, McMurtry was selling them. Instead of noble cowboys performing heroic deeds and taking part in dramatic gunfights, his characters endured endless hardships and lives of desperation. McMurtry’s novels had contemporary settings until “Lonesome Dove.” That book, along with the successful television mini-series that followed and his other Western books, did not hew to the romantic myth of the Old West. “I don’t think there have been many novelists whose best work has been written after they were 60.” “Constructing a long novel is a really demanding business,” he once said.

His heroes in that book are just terrific. “If anybody had any sense, they’d throw out ‘Moby-Dick’ and put ‘Lonesome Dove’ in the center as the great American epic novel,” Carolyn See, a literature professor at the University of California Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times in 2003. It was a sweeping tale of two aging former Texas Rangers - the amiable Gus and cantankerous Call - on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. McMurtry wrote nearly 50 books - collections of essays and criticism and memoirs in addition to his novels - but “Lonesome Dove” had the most impact. He also was nominated in 1972 for his adaptation of his novel “The Last Picture Show.” In addition to his Pulitzer Prize for “Lonesome Dove” in 1986, McMurtry won an Academy Award in 2006 with Ossana for the screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain” about the relationship between two gay cowboys. The cause was heart failure, according to publicist Amanda Lundberg, who said by email the author was surrounded by loved ones, including his wife Norma Faye and long-time writing partner, Diana Ossana, when he died on Thursday night. FILE PHOTO: Writers Diana Ossana (L) and Larry McMurtry accept the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for 'Brokeback Mountain' at the 78th annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, March 5, 2006.

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