I find it interesting what Larry McMurtry has to say about Lonesome Dove in the introduction he wrote in 2000 for a reprinting of the book he wrote in 1985. He essentially calls it an albatross around his neck. He compares it to Henry James being "pestered"   about "Daisy Miller" and that Bing Crosby hated singing "White Christmas". He says that :

"Artists have sometimes found to their bafflement that they have more or less been trapped by the unexpected and unrelenting popularity of a work to which they themselves had initially attached little importance. In my case the culprit is Lonesome Dove which now seems as remote from me as the Arthuriad or the Matter of Troy – but which blooms eternally – a living Myth-Flower to it's readers or watchers"