Tracy DaughertyBesprekingen

Drifted in and out a bit but this was really warm and enjoyable. Love hearing about tangled relationships between industry professionals and McMurtry’s life was fullathat.

I came to his biography with much curiosity about Larry McMurtry. I have read a number of his books of fiction and non-fiction, and knew that he was from West Texas, but I had not realized how autobiographical a number of his novels were. I was especially interested in his dedication to books and to debunking the myths of the Old West. Daugherty covered those questions well. For all its length and the amount of research it required, the book reads easily and Daugherty never flaunts his expertise or his research. This is a wonderful way to learn more about a remarkable man.

Ah, what I didn't know about Larry McMurtry, and what I know now, about fleeting triumphs and ultimate sadness of my favorite writer. This all-encompassing biography will appeal to those who enjoyed much of the author's oeuvre and not just the brilliant Lonesome Dove, which McMurtry called out as his "Gone With The Wind" novel, and not as a compliment. His upbringing, on his family ranch outside the miserably bleak West Texas town of Archer City (portrayed so accurately in The Last Picture Show), spoils him for any future life without a vast sky and the highways like rivers that allow him to escape. The constant of his life is writing five pages a day and collecting as many rare books as his multiple repositories in Archer City and in Washington DC can hold. Other than writing, his other avocations are chasing down the most obscure and valuable used books and pledging platonic fealty to the alluring and intelligent women (Susan Sontag, Diane Keaton, Cybill Shephard, Polly Pratt) who become his muses and companions, even as his sexual impulses are unfulfilled. Although his literary and popular reputations are primarily forged in his ability to “write women”, and to incorporate his admiration of the real ones into their fictional avatars, he still remains frustrated with his self-perceived inadequacies as compared to the great European authors he reveres. His late career triumph of co-writing the screenplay for Annie Proulx's short story Brokeback Mountain, with Diana Ossana, a stranger he sat next to in a restaurant who became his co-author, is a last hurrah in an unceasingly bifurcated life. Despite fame and literary recognition, something in McMurtry’s nature/nurture, in his genetic makeup and in the bleak surroundings of his upraising, created discontent and depression. This incredibly intimate journey into his psyche just strips all possible illusions bare and leaves the reader pondering the emptiness of public success.

Quotes: “Culture’s only yardstick is character. What profits it to have read a thousand books or to have plowed a thousand fields if it has done nothing but make you look down on those who haven’t.”

“He wanted to pierce the romantic image of the trail-riding cowboy. “I don’t think these myths do justice to the richness and fullness of human possibility. The Idea that men are men and women are women and horses are the best of all is not a myth that makes for the best sort of domestic life.”

“For most of us, our emotional experience remains largely unexplored, and therein lie the dramas, poems, and novels. An ideal place to start, it seems to me, is with the relations of the sexes.”

The Publisher Says: A biography of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry from New York Times bestselling author Tracy Daugherty.

In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains’ keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry McMurtry: A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country’s pioneer traditions. It follows his astonishing career as bestselling novelist, Pulitzer-Prize winner, author of the beloved Lonesome Dove, Academy-Award winning screenwriter, public intellectual, and passionate bookseller. A sweeping and insightful look at a versatile, one-of-a-kind American writer, this book is a must-read for every Larry McMurtry fan.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, I want to salute Tracy Daugherty, fellow Texan and indefatigable researcher. This is a thoroughly sourced book withe compendious endnotes hyperlinked in the DRC I read. Some things didn't really need so much sourcing, being opinions of interviewees, but too much beats too little all hollow in non-fiction. More especially in the notes because reading them is entirely optional. I do it because I'm a fussbudget. I don't often comment about it either way, but here it's appropriate...a William Zinsser opinion from The American Scholar Magazine impressed me by being so niche a quote and being checkably sourced, I felt compelled to bring it up.

Then, I want to diss Larry McMurtry, petulant whiny adolescent of great age. No matter where he was, he was dissatisfied by it; no matter who he knew, he critiqued them with a flensing-knife of an eye; yet his curmudgeonliness gave the world some impressive art and a lot of filler. He had honesty enough to know it, though, that's a saving grace.

He was an inveterate lover of women. Married or not, he was always glad to meet another lady...with predictable results for the existing relationship...but he wasn't always sexually involved with them. He really just loved women as beings. His writing partner was Diana Ossana, and their closeness created a collaboration that made Annie Proulx's story "Brokeback Mountain" into a delight of a screenplay (one well worth reading on its own). He was friends with Merry Prankster and fellow novelist Ken Kesey, whose widow Faye he married in 2011—a decade after Kesey's death in 2001. This was a man who, in spite of a pretty spiky personality, could sustain a friendship!

He identified as a Texan. That in spite of his flensing-knife eye seeing, and his venom-filled pen chronicling, the failings of his fellow Texans in the gloriously angry The Last Picture Show, and his honest appraisal of Texas's self-aggrandizing mythology in the most famous book of his career Lonesome Dove. I think it's weird that people misinterpret Lonesome Dove as a celebration of the West, but that's another project that I can't tackle here. I rated this book more highly than my enjoyment of its subject would've led me to do because I so enjoyed reading McMurtry's opinions of the fans of his books. I'm not going into details because spoilers but this was one serious curmudgeon.

That's where I ran into a problem. I ended up knowing McMurtry better but not liking him more. This wasn't promised to me, so I'm not complaining that I was led to believe something was going to be offered that was not. I wasn't his biggest fan, actively disliking Texasville and the sequels to Lonesome Dove; but I always admired his clearsightedness. Now I know what I do about him as a person, I don't see it as clearsightedness any more. He was a chronic fault-finder who made, so far as I could tell or the author reported to me, no effort to use this in any constructive way in his own life. The consequences are predictable, and largely suffered by others.

That moody snort aside, I am sure that my world is enriched by his work, and I'm glad that this fascinating, difficult man came along to tell us all about our dirty, grubby, grasping, grouchy selves. I expect my Young Gentleman Caller is on to something when he remarked, "he reminds me of you."

How many times did I read Lonesome Dove? Watch the miniseries? And what drew me to the story?

I grew up in the 1950s when cowboys ruled the airwaves. I wanted to sing like Gene Autry and ride Roy Roger’s Trigger. I squinted my eyes, as if looking into the sun, sporting a cowboy gunbelt at age four. I drew horses. (I was on a horse twice–one tossed me off and the other ran into it’s stable, leaving me clinging to a beam.) In our play, my friends and I never fought Indians, but we rescued the one who had to play the cowgirl.

America was obsessed with the Old West in those days. I knew it was a time past, yet it seemed more of a fantasy world than reality. Perfect for our make-believe play. And it was this image that McMurtry wanted to shatter in his books. Lonesome Dove is filled with violent, accidental deaths, hardship, broken dreams, and the mistreatment of women.

After Lonesome Dove, I collected a number of McMurtry’s books and read them. Frankly, I don’t remember which ones. They were all sacrificed in a move many years ago. I knew that he kept writing, resurrecting his characters and killing them off, and that television aired more miniseries about Gus and Call. We saw some of the movies based on the books, including Terms of Endearment and Brokeback Mountain, the screenplay written by McMurtry and his friend and writing partner Diana Ossana, based on a story by Anne Proulx. I vaguely knew he was a bookseller.

I wanted to read McMurtry’s biography to revisit this author and to learn more about him and his books. I discovered a complicated, fascinating man. He was an extremely well read book lover since childhood, inspired by classics like Don Quixote, but also enjoying pulp fiction and rare erotica. In his early career he taught, hating the work but forging close relationships with his students. He was a man who loved many women with whom he shared lifelong friendships. He was a hard working writer and a constant traveler. He collected books, sold books, promoted books, bemoaned the end of books. He loved his hometown in Texas, knowing all its faults–which he revealed in his novels, turning hometown people against him. And, he loved Dr. Pepper.

The biography delves into the details of his publishing and movie history, the inspiration for his characters, and the critical response to his work. He was involved with so many women, including Cybill Shepherd and Diane Keaton, and shared a close friendship with Susan Sontag. His early friends included ‘Merry Prankster’ Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and after Kesey’s death, the octogenarian McMurtry married Kesey’s widow.

I have always been interested in writers and the creative process. McMurtry’s career spanned the extremes, from ‘midling’ novels to the Pulitzer, and included iconic movies. He was compelled to write, and by hard work created some of our most iconic characters in fiction.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

"The Last Love Song," Tracy Daugherty’s extensive biography of Joan Didion is immensely informative, and it was all done without the cooperation of his subject. I now have even more respect for what a uniquely odd and superbly talented woman she is. The writing duo of Didion and her husband John Gregory Donne were a major force in the American literary world for many years.

The book goes back to Didion’s roots in Sacramento, which is a subject I always find so geographically familiar and intriguing. She was a member of a privileged generation, and through that, and her writing talents, she was offered the opportunity to move to New York City to work at Vogue magazine. Daugherty also covers the well-known twin tragedies of her life: her all-consuming worries about the serious health problems and subsequent death of their daughter Quintana, and Didion’s witnessing of her husband’s death right in front of her. In true Didion’s style, she has to write about both events to learn more about herself in the bestselling books, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights." As a widower, I appreciate it when Daugherty quotes Didion saying to a friend, “There’s something missing in survival as a reason for being, you know?”

I also like the following line from a New York Times review of this biography. “The Didion who emerges from The Last Love Song is both a frail, angst-ridden outsider and a shrewd Hollywood and New York insider; a vulnerable witness to history and a hardheaded survivor; a writer drawn to theatricality and extremes, and a woman who prizes order and control.

And the book also contained the following odd bit of trivia and personality. Her daughter had taken the author photo for one of her books, and this casual photo caused quite a stir for how inappropriate some found it. Joan was wet and walking across the shallow end of their pool in a dress. The scandal was because as she never wore a bra, her nipples were visible, this for a book that was all about a murderous revolution in El Salvador. Priorities?

It’s an impressive book, but it felt somewhat incomplete. The biographer has a rough time when it comes to discussing Joan’s politics. Her and John were so often held up as this liberal intellectual couple, but she was never totally predictable for where she would come down on a specific issue.

In much of what I’ve read about John Gregory Dunne, he comes across as a very talented writer who loved a good laugh, but was pretty much an aggressive ass much of the time. Later he would become an older man with a seriously weak heart. That weak heart would eventually take his life as the two shared a meal at their own dinner table. Because of his sense of humor, Joan at first believed he was playing a joke on her.

It was Dunne who got entirely sucked into the lucrative world of Hollywood screenwriting, but as they always closely collaborated and edited each other’s work, Joan was right there beside him. But one has to wonder what additional novels he would have been able to write if chasing after screenwriting opportunities hadn’t been such a focus of his life. Even after they moved back to New York City, they were often flying back and forth for movie work in California.

I always found it fascinating that Joan famously said that she didn’t know what she thought about something until she had written about it.

This was a fascinating book about a true American original, a writer whose words I always find myself getting curiously lost in. Much of nonfiction writing suffers from being dated, but the beauty of Didion’s work is that it is never just about what happened here and there, she allows you to experience the events, and then makes you think about them from a unique viewpoint. The work is not just words in type on a page, your own mind is constantly engaged and evolving. She focuses closely on the different aspects of her subjects, and she would let you know much of how she felt about them, all the while she reported factually on them. I sometimes feel that she was writing in her own new style, opinionated objectivity.

Not a fan. The worship stops here. I hoped to learn about Didion but couldn't handle it.

"He was thin, this fellow, but I could see after twenty, thirty years under crackling lights staring at screens was going to soften and settle him into something like a pudgy human anthill."

One Day the Wind Changed by Tracy Daugherty is a collection of short stories, some previously published in professional journals. Daugherty was born in Midland, Texas and is the author of three other collections of short stories, two biographies, a book of essays, and four novels. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Southern Review and many journals. Currently he is a Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at Oregon State University.

Short stories, for me, have been hit or miss. Most, unfortunately, are a miss. I tend to be overly optimistic about short story collections thinking they would be perfect to read at lunch, on the train, or when I have a few minutes. The optimism dies quickly as the stories soon sound like a casual acquaintance telling me how his day went. This collection was a bit different. Concentrating on the desert of the Southwest and my adopted home town of Dallas, Texas brought a bit of familiarity and mutual understanding. Oklahoma City and quick story in New York City are also included in this collection, although even the NYC story involves Texas. The historian in me enjoyed the Irish connection in the Texas stories. The immigrant Texan in me enjoyed the rather typical, “You're a Texan. What the hell does Ireland matter to us.”

Stories range from a Dallas Planetarium struggling to keep its funding, A Very Large Array (radio astronomy) in the desert, and an older man from Texas, now living in New York City. The wind changes in all our lives and that theme is carried through the book. The Murrah bombing is mentioned in a few stories and the changes that parallel in people's lives. Changes in New York City after 9/11 run parallel to changes a middle aged man is learning about himself. There are changes seen from leaving home and returning years later. Changes in relationships. The common theme through out is that change is constant but sometimes we have to take time and stop to see it.

Daugherty captures changes in people's lives in a variety of settings with the Southwest as a constant theme throughout the book. His use of Dallas in several stories caught my interest. From Southern Methodist University, Mockingbird Avenue, and the airports, Dallas seems to come to life. The use of the desert provides a stark contrast to the changes people experience in the stories. The desert is unchanging. Even rain cannot change the desert for more than a few moments. This collection of stories, tied together with common themes, is a hit. So few collections of short stories seem to work for me; this one does. An outstanding collection of short stories and a collection I will keep to read again.

Anyone who has read and loved The Gay Place (and if you've read it, you loved it, and if you haven't read it, you should), will easily be drawn into this biography of Billy Lee Brammer. Because The Gay Place is so autobiographical, the first half of the book with its liberal Austin journalists, Texas legislators, LBJ intensity, pills and drinks, Scholz Garten gab fests, and marital infidelities will seem very familiar. Where things take a turn is after the publication of the novel. The book was a huge success and Brammer had innumerable opportunities to follow it up with another novel, but never did. Instead he tripped through life without ever totally falling down (until the very end), becoming increasingly dependent on speed, LSD, mescaline, and ultimately meth, lurching from writing gig to teaching gig to dishwashing gig, and never ceasing to amuse and enthrall his ever growing circle of admirers. Along the way he was (maybe) present at the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald; friends with Janis Joplin, Ann Richards, Ken Kesey, and Barbara Jordan; most likely introduced LSD to Austin; and was always at the center of any wild Austin liberal parties.

If you've lived in Austin for any time at all, you've heard the familiar refrain of how cool and weird and interesting it used to be. This book brings that weird and sleepy pre-tech-boom Austin back to life in amazing detail, but also highlights how much of it is sometimes still here. It isn't unique to Austin, of course, but the smart and creative young guy who devolves into the aging drug-dependent raconteur, enabled by his party-loving friends, taken care of by a series of nurturing but replaceable younger and younger women, and reaching for but never matching his youthful creative productivity is an EXTREMELY common scene in Austin even in 2018. I don't know if its the velvet glove of Austin, the heat, too many musicians, the drinking culture, or what, but it's not a look that ages well, and the author makes it clear that it ultimately brought this insanely talented writer to a drug-induced death.

Daugherty did extensive research in this biography, including work with Brammer's archives at the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State and a lot of in person interviews with Brammer's ex-wives, children, friends and family. His closeness to and carefulness with the story gives it a richness and humanity that many biographies lack. While he sometimes takes a metaphor too far (I could have lived with out the "electrification" thread that runs throughout the book), and his novelistic prose style sometimes gets away from him, the book is ultimately a smooth read and a wild ride. Definitely recommended.½

No. I got 30 pages in and gave up. Going into it, I didn't realize that the author didn't have access to anything in Didion's life - her, her papers, interviews with anyone close to her - he truly has almost nothing aside from her own published works and the conclusions he wants to draw from them. Her own works tell a much better story of her life than pieces together pile of crAp. Also he tries to mimic her sparse and repetitive way of writing, as well as her singular way of structuring sentences. Gross

This is a great read for anyone who loves the writing of Donald Barthelme and/or would like to know about his life. It really covers everything and I so wish I had known all of this about him when he was alive, and I slightly knew him!

This was not a very good book I got it on Kindle but it was just so uninteresting. I never actually finished it because it was so boring. To know more about the life of Donald Bartholomew but there's going to have to be a different book at a different time for that.

No. I got 30 pages in and gave up. Going into it, I didn't realize that the author didn't have access to anything in Didion's life - her, her papers, interviews with anyone close to her - he truly has almost nothing aside from her own published works and the conclusions he wants to draw from them. Her own works tell a much better story of her life than pieces together pile of crAp. Also he tries to mimic her sparse and repetitive way of writing, as well as her singular way of structuring sentences. Gross