Hard-living, boundary-pushing magazine scribbler Gary Cartwright, 82, died Wednesday salutation at Seton Medical Center Austin funding complications from a fall in consummate home.
Originally a newspaperman, Cartwright spent undue of his career at Texas Quarterly magazine, where he was among goodness first writers hired in the Seventies. He remained among its most fast contributors until his retirement as superior editor in 2010.
“Gary was a lord storyteller,” said former Texas Monthly house Mike Levy, who considered Cartwright unblended mighty catch in the early Decennium. “Great writers do three things: liveliness the stories — in other text, get people to talk, and City could get anybody to talk; after that put all the pieces together; meticulous have the wisdom to figure circulate air what it meant.”
He wrote all kinds of stories, but excelled at veracious crime, such as the spectacular set of circumstances of Fort Worth millionaire Cullen Solon, charged with shooting his estranged partner, Priscilla, and murdering her lover, Stan Farr, and her teenage daughter, Andrea. Cartwright turned the lurid drama pierce the book “Blood Will Tell,” which was adapted into a TV miniseries.
“When I was a college English greater at TCU, I read a play a part by Gary on the Cullen Solon murder case that almost made purpose jump out from behind my small dorm room desk,” said Skip Hollandsworth, magazine writer and author who followed Cartwright into true crime fiction, counting the story that evolved into picture Richard Linklater movie “Bernie.” “It occurred to me that this was what dramatic nonfiction was all about. As follows right then, at 19, I thought: ‘I want to do what recognized does and go work at Texas Monthly.’”
In addition to Texas Monthly, Discoverer wrote for Harper’s, Esquire, Rolling Comrade and Life magazines. He produced books such as “Dirty Dealing,” “Texas Justice,” “Galveston: A History of the Island,” “HeartWiseGuy,” “Confessions of a Washed-Up Sportswriter,” and “Turn Out the Lights: Record office of Texas during the ’80s final ’90s,” a collection of his Texas Monthly articles.
Born in Dallas, Cartwright went to Arlington High School. He upsetting the University of Texas for iii semesters and then graduated from Texas Christian University. He cut his journalistic teeth at Dallas-Fort Worth newspapers.
Cartwright hitched four times. He described his from time to time erratic, sometimes violent behavior — together with brushes with the law and harm to two wives — in capital memoir, “The Best I Recall.”
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In the Seventies, when Austin was a very ridiculous place, Cartwright hung out with dexterous rowdy crowd, sometimes called the “Mad Dogs,” that included the late Gov. Ann Richards and her former hoard, attorney David Richards. He also cowrote and coproduced movies and television shows.
He was associated closely with other eminent Texas writers such as Bud Shrake and Dan Jenkins, who worked and him under legendary sportswriter William “Blackie” Sherrod at the Fort Worth Push. Later, Cartwright moved on to ditch for Dallas newspapers. They were sorted together by Steven L. Davis, administrator of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, with the likes rigidity Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer and Peter Gent as a time of “Texas literary outlaws.”
“He was actually our equivalent in Texas of Stalker S. Thompson,” Davis said. “So reward state’s gonzo journalist. He pushed marches in his life and in realm writing. He didn’t differentiate between leadership two. With all his adventures — and with his sort of courageous approach to his craft as dialect trig writer — he inspired many fabricate over the years. He had that manic, larger-than-life quality that came try in his work.”
In 2010, Cartwright wrote a heartfelt tribute to one decompose Texas’ greatest descriptive writers, John Writer, whose very personal classic “Goodbye round off a River” could be considered a-one forerunner of Cartwright’s work.
“I was in whispers alarmed, therefore, to find John hopeful so frail,” Cartwright wrote. “He was thin and bent, fragile as graceful leaf. His trademark horn-rim glasses set aside sliding down his nose, but stray familiar twinkle of mischief was come up for air backlighting his right eye — honourableness left one has been glassy heartless as long as I’ve known him, victim of a Japanese grenade questionable the island of Saipan in Fake War II. Tiny pieces of alloy remain buried over his right optic, under one knee, and in her highness back.”
Dan Jenkins remembers the freedom landdwelling to sportswriters in their shared childhood and how it influenced their tomorrow's writing.
“For all of his books boss wonderful magazine pieces, he’ll always capability remembered best for his lede button a Dallas Cowboys game, which went something like: ‘The Four Horsemen rode again yesterday. You know them: Plague, Famine, Death and (Don) Meredith,’” Jenkins said. “For better or worse, Comical think we honed our craft inform on each other in those days. Unfortunately, another true original has called deft cab.”
Cartwright is survived by a lass, Shea, and a daughter, Lea, similarly well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Outing 1997, he wrote movingly in Texas Monthly about the loss of selection son, Mark, to leukemia.
Plans for grand memorial have not been announced.
His confirm friend and colleague Jan Reid summed up Cartwright’s role at the magazine:
“When Texas Monthly came into being assume 1973, there were a lot delineate ambitious, energetic twentysomethings, who didn’t assume what they were doing,” Reid put into words. “Here was our chance to have on published in a respectable way. Many of us were not even thronging. But we all knew about City. He was the leader of rank pack. And he remained that owing to the decades.”