Larry McMurtry was one of America's greatest novelists of recent memory. That was an unnecessary preface. Everyone knows that. The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove, are a few of his creations. If you haven't read his works, you've probably seem film adaptations. What not everyone knows is that McMurtry was also a bookseller. His two careers paralleled each other. However, he didn't operate his bookstore in a major literary site, like New York or L.A. His store was in Archer City, Texas, population 1,601. People came to see him anyway. He had customers enough to hold an inventory of 450,000 books in Archer City. He would have had to sell each neighbor 281 books were he not able to draw from all around Texas and the country. His store, Booked Up, consisting of four buildings, was a book-selling phenomenon.
In 2012, McMurtry, then 75-years-old, decided it was time to downsize a bit. He held an auction, and when the dust settled, over a quarter million books changed hands. That still left 175,000 books, not an insignificant inventory. The store continued in operation until McMurtry died in 2021 at the age of 84.
Since then, Booked Up has operated online, while the store was purchased by Chip and Joanna Gaines. The Gaines are noted for their home makeover television show, “Fixer Upper.” Chip Gaines' parents came from Archer City. What was not known is what the Gaines would do with Booked Up once they fixed it up. Now we learn it has a new use, and one of which I imagine McMurtry would have approved. It's there to assist the next generation of Texas and other writers on the path McMurtry traveled years ago as a young writer.
The Gaines sold Booked Up to the Archer City Writers Workshop (ACWW). When its doors are reopened, it will be the Larry McMurtry Literary Center. ACWW director George Getschow said, “Booked Up was the center of Larry’s literary universe and for the hundreds of writers who participated in the Archer City Writers Workshop over the last two decades. This is why we’re so grateful to Chip and Joanna for offering us the opportunity to establish the Larry McMurtry Literary Center inside Booked Up - a renowned cultural landmark and one of Texas’ and the nation’s literary treasures.” Literary centers are located elsewhere honoring writers such as John Steinbeck, Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Jack Kerouac. Local leaders and merchants are hopeful the new literary center will draw McMurtry fans from all over the world, providing an economic boost to the somewhat isolated small Texas city south of Wichita Falls.
The Archer City Writers Workshop described its mission as to resurrect Booked Up and “transform it into a thriving literary mecca that will showcase Larry’s epic life and legacy as a cowboy, novelist, screenwriter, rare book collector, and artist for the ages. Preserving, curating, and making Larry’s extraordinary collection of rare books accessible to the public is also a critical aspect of our mission.”
Among the biggest supporters of the project are McMurtry's brother, Charlie, and sisters Sue Deen and Judith McLemore. Deen managed the store for McMurtry for seven years. She explained, “For Larry, Booked Up was a sacred place. Now we can all celebrate Booked Up’s rebirth into a literary center in Larry’s honor.”
