The ironies that affix themselves to the life and literature of Larry McMurtry are best exemplified by the title of his autobiographical meditation on storytelling, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, wherein the eponymous German cultural critic, who warned of the dehumanizing dangers of mechanical reproduction, is imagined at the fast-food eatery beloved by Texans and responsible for the Dilly Bar.
Despite the blue jeans and cowboy boots McMurtry wore to accept his 2006 Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Lonesome Dove did not consider himself a cowboy, and he spent the bulk of his literary life letting readers know that.
