Profile of Author/Bookseller Larry McMurtry by Nigel Beale.
This profile of Larry McMurtry appears in the summer edition of Canadian Bookseller magazine:
Until the age of fifteen British poet Ted Hughes spent most of his time trying to catch animals. When this interest waned he turned to poetry. On the surface these two interests don’t seem to have much in common, but as Hughes explains in a little book called Poetry Is, "My pursuit of mice at threshing time when I was a boy, snatching them from under the sheaves as the sheaves were lifted away out of the stack and popping them into my pocket till I had thirty or forty crawling around in the lining of my coat, that and my present pursuit of poems seem to me to be different stages of the same fever. In a way I suppose I think of poems as a kind of animal"
Celebrated author Larry McMurtry is into these kinds of animals as well. Not mice, or cats, nor even cattle, though he comes from a herdsman tradition, his father and eight uncles were cattlemen. No. Larry herds books and words: words into sentences and paragraphs, books into boxes and stores: his own stores. Superficially these interests share little resemblance, like poems and mice you might say; only in this case, you’d be right. They have nothing in common. In fact, as Larry suggests in our interview, bookselling is the opposite of writing. The longer you do it, the better you become; with writing, you get progressively worse.
And so, after forty-one books, Larry says there will be no more. Novels at least, only belles lettres, essays and the odd review. His latest book, "Untitled Fiction," due out in stores this summer, is about books themselves and his life as a book rancher. I asked him what advice he’d give the young bookseller: "Have the right books" he said. Simple as that. Put attractive, appealing volumes on the shelves and sales will take care of themselves.
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He should know. Of the hundreds of thousands of books in his four Archer City, Texas book stores he has handpicked virtually all of them; opened every box to determine what will go out on the floor. "Junk is a major problem, it tends to creep in. The taste of the bookseller is important. We sell only our kind of books, a general humanities selection, all in very good condition."
In the used book business the high end is easily saleable. The challenge lies in the $25-$50 range. McMurtry himself eschews the Internet, where buyers generally search for specific titles, preferring in-store visits where customers can browse, respond to the stock, enjoy the fun of the hunt, and ideally leave with box loads more books than they may have initially intended to buy.
Like most book dealers, Larry started out life as a scout to finance his own reading. In 1962 he put together his first ‘catalogue’, a flimsy one page number listing six collections. Ironically, he’s only put out two subsequent catalogues in the 40 odd years he’s been selling books. He now owns Booked Up, a four building bookstore in Archer City, a small town two hours northwest of Dallas, which sustains itself quite comfortably today, after weathering a severe downturn in 2001 that coincided with the high tech bubble burst.
Larry is probably best known to the non-bookselling public as author of such bestselling titles as "The Last Picture Show," "Terms of Endearment," and "Lonesome Dove," for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 He is also a prolific, award-winning screen-writer. In 2006 he won the Oscar for "Brokeback Mountain." In his acceptance speech he saluted booksellers around the world, in part because of the many hours spent during his life in second hand antiquarian bookstores and all the pleasures he has derived therein. He also believes that these shops are essential to the cultural vitality of the United States, bastions of hope in the face of a dumber and dumber population. The chains sell music, he says, and kids go there to buy CDs and DVDs. Second hand bookstores don’t typically offer these products, and as a result, while continuing to get loyal customers and collectors, not many young people can be found scouring the stacks. It’s disheartening he says.
Back on the theme of success, he advises booksellers to keep their stock fresh. Buying is like breathing he says. Regulars want to see new things. You don’t want your inventory to be stagnant. "Every day I go to a bookshop called The Book Stop, in Tucson. It’s part of my daily rhythm. He faithfully hunts the new arrivals for volumes to send to Archer City so there’ll be fresh quarry on the shelves every week.
As for his own collection Larry has some 38,000 books. He’s what you would call an accumulator, purchasing books he wants to read. He hasn’t formed any collections per se, although he does have detachable batches that can be sold separately if and when the need arises.
As a reader Larry burnt out on fiction some time ago, not wishing to write it half the day in the mornings, only to read it in the afternoons. He prefers history and memoirs. Similarly, as a screen writer he has watched thousands of films, and now has little interest in the movies.
Speaking of tinsel and faded interest, almost all of his favourite bookstores have now closed, or are dying. Of those still afloat, Serendipity in Berkley, California ranks number one with Larry. At one time he recalls, some 115 stores used to sit along the Long Beach-Ventura coastline. Now there are hardly any. Most of the famous are gone. There are none on Hollywood Boulevard where there used to be many. Less than a dozen significant bookstores now exist in the whole country.
The Strand in New York, Serendipity, Powell’s in Portland, John King in Detroit, Brattle in Boston (listen to my interview with proprietor Kenneth Gloss here).
But all is not gloom. In fact, Larry believes that the used book business will again flourish. "People have been taking, browsing and reading books off shelves for a long time. Book buyers like the culture, like to talk to the bookseller…I think it will survive." As for his own store, "We get enough response to encourage us…I can’t imagine not having a bookshop. This one is going to tickle along."
Which goes to show that books lie deeper in the blood of Larry McMurtry than the words he has so ably corralled over the years to fill them.
