In the heart of Archer City, Texas, a quiet literary revival is underway. The reopening of Booked Up—once the sprawling “temple of books” created by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry—has breathed new life into the small town. Now home to the Larry McMurtry Literary Center, this beloved bookstore is not just a monument to one man’s passion for literature, but a beacon for readers, writers, and dreamers from all over the world.
Larry McMurtry, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 84, was more than just a celebrated Western author. He was a relentless book lover and collector, whose vision transformed his one-stoplight hometown into a destination for bibliophiles. At its peak, Booked Up boasted more than 400,000 rare and used books spread across four locations around Archer City’s courthouse square, according to NPR. For years, visitors flocked to the town, drawn by the promise of literary treasures and the chance to glimpse the reclusive writer himself.
But after McMurtry’s death, the bookstore closed its doors, and Archer City lost its main tourist attraction. The silence was palpable. Merchants felt the absence deeply, as did longtime residents who remembered the days when the town buzzed with travelers searching for first editions and signed copies. Mary Ann “Murn” Wages, proprietor of Murn’s Café—a favorite haunt of McMurtry’s—remembers the author fondly. “I miss him being here,” she told NPR. “He sat right there at that booth. And he ordered a cheeseburger cut in half, and a piece of cherry pie.” She laughed as she recalled his aversion to celebrity: “He didn’t like to be a celebrity. I told folks, ‘You need to just let him be. Larry doesn’t like to be bothered. If you want him to sign your book, wait’ll he gets back to the bookstore.’”
It wasn’t just the locals who felt the loss. For McMurtry, Booked Up was the center of his literary universe. “He got married inside here. He directed in his will that his ashes be kept here forever and ever,” said George Getschow, the Literary Center’s executive director. “He wrote in the morning and spent all of his time the rest of the day pricing books, curating books, writing comments in books, and cherishing these books.” Getschow, an award-winning journalist and educator, is now leading the charge to preserve and perpetuate McMurtry’s immense collection. “I’ve never known anyone who loved books as much as Larry McMurtry,” he said.
The journey to reopening Booked Up was anything but straightforward. In 2012, McMurtry auctioned off about 300,000 volumes in an event dubbed “The Last Book Sale,” shrinking the collection to just over 80,000 titles. After his passing, Chip and Joanna Gaines—of Magnolia Network’s “Fixer-Upper”—acquired the remaining books, intending to stock the library of their new Waco hotel. For a time, the flagship bookstore in Archer City remained shuttered, its future uncertain.
But fate, and a bit of literary serendipity, intervened. Getschow, who had been seeking a permanent home for his Archer City Writers Workshop, saw an opportunity. Last year, the Gaineses sold Booked Up to Getschow’s group, who transformed it into the Larry McMurtry Literary Center. The center officially reopened in spring 2025, and as of September 4, it welcomes visitors on weekends and periodically hosts retreats for both aspiring and professional writers. The hope, according to NPR, is that the center will one day rival the likes of Rowan Oak—William Faulkner’s home in Mississippi—and the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California.
Yet, the path forward is not without its challenges. The building itself, housed in an old Ford dealership, is in dire need of repairs. Decades of deferred maintenance have taken their toll. “Water comes in at the ground level and it seeps in and leaves puddles and the books that are on the bottom shelves have been damaged because it soaks up,” explained Kathy Floyd, the center’s managing director. Essential upgrades—including heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and a new roof—are now top priorities. Once renovations are complete, the plan is to add an apartment for visiting writers and a lecture space for public events, further cementing the center’s role as a cultural hub.
Despite these hurdles, the spirit of discovery remains alive and well within Booked Up’s walls. Volunteers, dusting off shelves and sorting through pallets of books, continue to stumble upon extraordinary finds: first printings of William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, and Ernest Hemingway. “That’s the thing that’s shocking,” Getschow told NPR. “It’s like we’re in this gold mine and we’re digging through dirt and grime and dust and then, all of a sudden, BOOM, there’s a book that’s worth $10,000, there’s a book that you can’t find anywhere else.”
McMurtry’s literary legacy is impossible to overstate. His novel Lonesome Dove, an epic tale of a Texas-to-Montana cattle drive, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. The TV miniseries adaptation captured seven Emmys, while films based on his books—such as Horseman Pass By, The Last Picture Show, and Terms of Endearment—have collectively won 13 Oscars. McMurtry authored 50 fiction and nonfiction books, earning a reputation for his prolific output and his unflinching portrayal of the American West. As his friend, art critic Dave Hickey, once wrote, “If you put a cow in a pasture, it’ll eat grass. If you put Larry McMurtry in a room, he’ll write books.”
But McMurtry was also a complex chronicler of small-town life. His works, particularly The Last Picture Show, did not shy away from the bleakness and contradictions of rural Texas. “I think that Texans prefer myth to the real history,” observed Sherry Kafka Wagner, a San Antonio writer and friend of McMurtry’s. “And I think Larry thought that was wrong. Larry was trying to present the reality that he knew. It’s more interesting and it’s more nuanced.”
For Archer City, McMurtry’s legacy is deeply personal. Jenny Schroeder, volunteer coordinator at the writers center and a native of the town, reflected on his roots: “For Archer City itself it means a lot that he was part of our town. He came from a ranching tradition that is very much alive today. And I think it shows the value in that tradition, and it also shows the value in an alternate route.”
McMurtry himself once described growing up in “a bookless town.” Yet, he saw his bookshop as an act of herding—“I’m herding books and words,” he said in a 2007 interview. For him, books unlocked a kaleidoscopic world beyond the ranch—a world he spent his life writing, collecting, and treasuring.
Today, the Larry McMurtry Literary Center stands as a testament to that lifelong devotion. It’s a place where the past and present mingle, where the myth and reality of the West are debated over coffee and cherry pie, and where the next generation of writers might just find their own stories waiting on the shelves.
