Auctioning off the treasures of Texas author Larry McMurtry
Items up for bid include personal items, books and knickknacks collected over a lifetime
Fans of Augustus McCrae, Aurora Greenway and even Hud Bannon will have the opportunity to own a piece of these and other literary characters when about 400 of the personal belongings of the late Texas author Larry McMurtry, who died in 2021 at 84, are sold at auction this spring by San Antonio-based Vogt Auction Galleries.
In addition to books from the Pulitzer Prizewinning author, including “Lonesome Dove,” “Terms of Endearment” and “Horseman, Pass By” (made into the movie “Hud”), the auction will feature a trove of his personal items: his writing desk and chair, a Gruen wristwatch, a Steinway grand piano, his intricately carved, four-poster bed and two pairs of cowboy boots, one so worn they’re patched with electrical tape.
Also on the auction block will be 14 of McMurtry’s Hermes 3000 portable typewriters — some complete and others cannibalized for parts. The famously tech-averse author thanked the Swissmade Hermes 3000 while accepting the 2006 Golden Globe award for best screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain.” He called the mechanical typewriter “one of the noblest instruments of European genius. It has kept me for 30 years out of the dry embrace of the computer.”
The auction is scheduled for 1 p.m. May 29 at Vogt Auction Galleries, 7233 Blanco Road, and will be simulcast at Texasauction.com. To register to bid online or by phone, call 210-822-6155 in advance.
McMurtry is one of the most important and consequential authors in the Texas literary canon, according to Steve Davis, literary curator of the Wittliff Collections. Located at Texas State University, the Wittliff works to preserve and showcase the musical, literary and photographic arts of the Southwest. It holds what its website calls “a small yet significant collection” of McMurtry’s papers.
“He was groundbreaking,” Davis said. “Unlike
early Texas writers, like J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb and Roy Bedichek, whose writings romanticized and extolled the virtues of Texas, McMurtry wrote about the state more realistically, often with a fine sense of irony.”
Vogt Auction Galleries Director Rob Vogt said the auction house was selected to host the event after he was introduced to the author’s son, musician and actor James McMurtry, by the appraiser hired to value the elder McMurtry’s vast collection of books in the four Booked Up stores he owned and operated in Archer City.
“We’re obviously very honored and excited to be associated with such an iconic Texan,” Vogt said, adding that he accompanied James as they walked through the author’s home selecting items to be sold.
“He’d say, ‘You can have this,’ and ‘No, I’m keeping that,’” Vogt explained. “If there was something really special, I’d beg, ‘James, can I please have that?’ and he’d go, ‘Yeah, all right.’”
One item McMurtry said Vogt couldn’t have was his father’s personal copy of “Lonesome Dove,” the book for which he won the 1986 Pulitzer for fiction.
“It probably should be in the Smithsonian or something,” Vogt said.
But don’t despair, “Lonesome Dove” fans. The auction will include a first edition of the book that Vogt sourced from elsewhere and a limitededition, leather-bound copy signed by several stars of the 1989 miniseries, including Robert Duvall, Anjelica Huston and Ricky Schroder.
A number of hardcover books from McMurtry’s personal collection also will be auctioned, some of them signed or first editions. These include “Terms of Endearment” (which Vogt appraises at $4,000 to $6,000), “Streets of Laredo” ($2,000 to $4,000) and “Cadillac Jack” ($2,000 to $3,000). These all carry McMurtry’s personal book plate — a simple line drawing of a stirrup — on an inside front page of the books.
There are also plenty of odds and ends of the type a welltraveled, inquisitive and somewhat eccentric personality like Larry McMurtry would accumulate over 84 years of living. These include several animal skulls (Vogt speculated that one might come from a rhinoceros), Native American bowls, a 1901 Colt .45 pistol, a vintage table clock and perpetual flip calendar, even a small bottle of Dr Pepper.
Vogt has yet to place a value on most of the items. The auction house will publish a 60page catalog with photos and estimated prices prior to the auction date, but there will be no minimums. Everything will be sold regardless of how high — or low — the bidding goes.
Since estate auctions of individuals as well-known as McMurtry are rare, Vogt has little on which to base his estimates. He’s been looking for guidance to last year’s auction of the estate of author Joan Didion (“The Year of Magical Thinking”) estate, during which 224 of her personal items sold for a total of more than $1.9 million, according to the auction house. One pair of brown faux-tortoiseshell sunglasses, valued at between $400 and $800, went for an eye-popping $27,000.
“We’re hoping to capture some of the same kind of magic,” Vogt said.
Vogt said he expects about 300 people to attend the sale in the Blanco Road auction house, with as many as 2,000 more to follow it online.