Pastures of the Empty Page

Pastures of the Empty Page is essential reading for both writers and readers. It should be on the bookshelf of everyone who values words, who appreciates insight and unexpected revelations, and who loves Larry McMurtry. As a bonus, it is brilliantly written. ~Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Good Night, Irene

A brilliant and insightful collection of essays and personal recollections about one of America’s most important writers. Honest, funny, and compelling: this will go down as one of our great literary histories. ~Philipp Meyer, author of The Son

No Texas man of letters loomed larger than Larry McMurtry. This wonderful encomium from friends and admirers gets at the peculiar magic behind McMurtry's long and incredibly eclectic career as a celebrated novelist, screenwriter, bibliophile, and student of the American West. ~Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West

A conclave of writers gathers to consider the late Larry McMurtry (1936-2021). . . . Sprinkled with surprising revelations, this is a good collection for every McMurtry fan’s library. ~Kirkus

The elegiac remembrances offer intimate glimpses into McMurtry’s life (collaborator Diana Ossana recalls the “emotional breakdown” he suffered after a heart attack), with no shortage of surprises. . . . McMurtry’s fans will want to track this down. ~Publishers Weekly

More than three dozen writers contemplate the legacy of Texas’s most beloved author. . . a moving tribute. ~Andrew Graybill, Texas Monthly

McMurtry, who died in 2021, famously referred to himself as a 'minor regional writer.' In this Festschrift, a host of authors and close friends, including his longtime screenwriting partner Diana Ossana, argue the opposite in essays that celebrate the author’s talents, contributions to literature, and mentoring of other writers. ~Alta

This book is part eulogy, part memoir, part literary criticism. All of it is absorbing . . . Among the pleasures of Pastures of the Empty Page are the short biographical sketches of the contributors dangled like literary gifts at the end of each piece. ~Austin-American Statesman

The essays in Getschow's book consider McMurtry's position in the pantheon of great literature — along with a critical take on how he wrote about minority groups. ~Axios Dallas

In Pastures of the Empty Page, Getschow defines how each writer, by various avenues, was dealt an education in storytelling by McMurtry, the sensitive but formidable master of chronicling this region’s built and behavioral vernaculars. ~Patron Magazine

On the whole, the quality of the [contributed] pieces is gratifyingly high.  Some of the richest essays are evocative reminiscences by intimates, among them Ossana, Gregory Curtis, Mike Evans, and Beverly Lowry, all of whom served as sources for Daugherty. ~The Times Literary Supplement

Pastures of the Empty Page: Fellow Writers on the Life and Legacy of Larry McMurtry (University of Texas Press) edited by George Getchow, contains essays from a who’s who list of Texas writers about Larry McMurtry’s influence on Texas culture and their lives. It includes an array of reflections on history and the writing process as well as anecdotes about McMurtry’s off-beat and innovative life. ~Texas Observer

For any writer who writes because they are drawn by some semi-articulable sense of the craft’s Importance (that is to say, most writers) these essays will provide glimpses and quirks and no-bullshit motivations of a literary giant who, as the book hammers home more than any other point, changed the literary landscape and possibilities for Texas . . . The hardest part about reading Pastures of the Empty Page is never getting to read McMurtry in its pages. Instead, he is the subject of writers plenty capable of stirring something in a reader, so capable that someone reading this collection who has never actually read McMurtry must think that his writing is literal magic, able to do something even more powerful than any of these essays could. ~D Magazine