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Tracy Daugherty is the author of four novels, two of which, What Falls Away and Axeman's Jazz, won the Oregon Book Award. He's also the author of a volume of personal essays and two previous story collections, one of which, It Takes a Worried Man, won the Oregon Book Award

Includes the name: Tracy Daugherty (Author)

Image credit: Uncredited image from author's website

Værker af Tracy Daugherty

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Fairy Tale Review: The Violet Issue (2008) — Bidragyder — 9 eksemplarer

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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.… (mere)
 
Markeret
nmele | 4 andre anmeldelser | Dec 25, 2023 |
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.”
… (mere)
 
Markeret
froxgirl | 4 andre anmeldelser | Oct 11, 2023 |
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."
… (mere)
2 stem
Markeret
richardderus | 4 andre anmeldelser | Sep 15, 2023 |
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.
… (mere)
2 stem
Markeret
nancyadair | 4 andre anmeldelser | Jul 12, 2023 |

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562
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