[McMURTRY, Larry (1936-2021)]. UPDIKE, John (1932-2009). A pair of type letters signed (“John”) to Larry McMurtry, Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, November 15, and December 4, 1983.

Both one-page, 4tos, with Updike’s personal rubberstamps at bottom, old folds, several holograph corrections, with both original autograph envelopes addressed to McMurtry’s famous bookstore “Booked Up” in Archer City. In the first letter, Updike writes to McMurtry after meeting him for the first time during a lunch in which he enjoyed listening to McMurtry’s “thoughtful utterly unrehearsed remarks” and reflects that that is how a writer should talk. Updike thanked McMurtry for sending him books that were, in Updike’s opinion, the “best bargain since I bought my marriage license”. Updike reviews McMurtry’s work, The Desert Rose, which he “loved what [McMurtry] did with this good-natured handsome woman, with her fondness for fat men since her breasts threaten to smother the skinny ones. I’ll look forward to your movie about this killing in Rock Springs, though it can’t be more compelling than your telling of it at lunch”. Updike finished with a recounting of a dinner with President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy. In the second letter, Updike writes that he and his wife, Martha, saw the adaptation of McMurtry’s Terms of Endearment, but thought it was overdone and are looking forward to reading the book instead.

[Laid into:] UPDIKE. Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. Thick 8vo. Original light blue cloth (some sunning to extremities); original dust jacket (light wear near head, some sunning to extremities). FIRST EDITION. Provenance: Larry McMurtry (his bookplate, which he designed, features the horseshoe-shaped brand his father and grandfather used on the McMurtry cattle), from his personal library at his home in Archer City.