A remarkable story yesterday on the next-to-last page of the New York Times Book Review. To illustrate how book reviews “are an engine that helps keep the culture running,” David Streitfeld, a Times reporter and former Washington Post Book World columnist, told about a little-known literary connection.
In the ’70s, Larry McMurtry wrote reviews for Book World. Then in 1978 he was fired by the new editor, Michael Dirda, who “was acting on orders from management. McMurtry returned to his hometown in Texas, where he worked on a “stalled manuscript” that would become Lonesome Dove.
Years later, Annie Proulx published a novel, Accordion Crimes, that was panned by most critics but praised by Dirda. His encouraging words convinced her to continue with a story she had been struggling with, a story that became “Brokeback Mountain.” After appearing in The New Yorker, it was made into a film, the script for which was written by McMurtry and his writing partner Diana Ossana.
Final note: At the beginning of the piece, Streitfeld tells of interviewing Jeff Bezos “when he was the crown prince of the dot.com crowd” and finding one book in his office, a science-fiction novel.
