Southern Bookman

Tracy Daughtery details varied life of Texas author Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry wryly called himself a "minor regional novelist," even wearing a T-shirt with that designation.

In his long and varied career, McMurtry moved far beyond that self-mocking label, receiving international recognition for his novels and other work.

From 1961 through 2017, McMurtry published nearly 50 books of varying quality, ranging from essays, memoirs, histories and biographies to the beloved novels "The Last Picture Show," "Moving On," "Leaving Cheyenne," "Cadillac Jack," "Terms of Endearment" and "Lonesome Dove," which won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a hugely popular TV miniseries.

Accomplished literary biographer Tracy Daugherty's "Larry McMurtry: A Life," published by St. Martin's Press, traces McMurtry's improbable rise from a desolate West Texas ranch to literary acclaim.

Daugherty makes the reader feel the presence of McMurtry's personality, from his days as a book-hungry graduate student at Rice University in Houston, to his smashing debut seeing his first novel "Horseman Pass By" turned into the critically lauded movie "Hud," to his enduring career as a novelist, essayist, memoirist and historian.

The book unfolds like one of McMurtry's novels with moments like the comic visit of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters to McMurtry's home in Houston, to his relationships, mainly conducted by telephone, with a number of famous women, including actresses Cybill Shepherd and Diane Keaton and writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Susan Sontag.

Along with his regimen of writing 10 pages a day, McMurtry was a devoted "book scout" and rare book dealer, even opening a sprawling bookstore in his economically deprived hometown of Archer City. He also operated an elite enclave for book collectors in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown. 

Along with a thorough analysis of McMurtry's recasting of the Western cowboy myth with "Lonesome Dove," Daugherty examines McMurtry's novels, many of them series with repeat appearances of some of his memorable characters.

While McMurtry's late novels displayed declining abilities, Daugherty valiantly praises several of them.

Daugherty excels at detailing McMurtry's dealings with Hollywood, including the production of movies made from his books such as "The Last Picture Show," "Hud," and "Terms of Endearment."

In an amusing/harrowing set-piece, Daugherty revisits director Peter Bogdanovich's on-location filming of "The Last Picture Show" in McMurtry's hometown of Archer City, called Thalia in the book and movie. The Hollywood actors and crew encountered hostility from the town's residents.

Early in his career, McMurtry in an essay assailed the provincialism of Texas literature. He took a longer view, ranging from elegiac laments about the disappearing frontier to stories about the alienation of the state's burgeoning cities. Praised for his strong women characters, he was praised and condemned for his novels' explicit sexuality.

His autobiographical characters suffered his own travails of old age. In his later novels, he exposed the Western myths of characters like Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp, satirizing the dime novels that first created the gunfighter legends.

Even as he aged and suffered deep depression after undergoing open-heart surgery, McMurtry continued writing each day. Daugherty looks at his close relationship and writing partnership with Diana Ossana, with whom he wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay for "Brokeback Mountain."

In a poignant finale, Daugherty tells of McMurtry's late-life marriage to Faye Kesey, Ken Kesey's widow. The couple and Ossana lived together during McMurtry's last years.

When McMurtry died in 2021 at age 84, he was no longer a regional novelist. He belonged to the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noted biographer Terry Daugherty examines life of Texas writer Larry McMurtry

I've discovered another book to add to my overflowing autumn reading list: Terry Daughterty's new biography of Larry McMurtry.

Daugherty's book, which received favorable reviews from Greg Curis in the Wall Street Journal, Dwight Garner in The New York Times and Rachel Monroe in The New Yorker, is the first comprehensive biography of McMurtry, the chronicler of Texas history and society who died in 2021 at age 84.

McMurtry gained widespread fame and won the Pulitzer Prize for his epic novel "Lonesome Dove," which tells the story of a late 19th century cattle drive from Texas to Montana. A TV series based on the novel generated an intense national following.

Before "Lonesome Dove," McMurtry built a devoted audience for his Texas-based novels and essays, especially "The Last Picture Show," the basis of the 1971 film that received eight Academy Award nominations.

Later in his life, McMurtry wrote memoirs about his separate careers as a book enthusiast, best-selling author and Hollywood celebrity.

Daughterty, who has written acclaimed biographies of Donald Barthelme, Joan Didion and the Texas novelist Billy Lee Brammer and several novels and nonfiction books, is a Texas native praised by reviewers for his comprehensive look at McMurtry's rise from a childhood on a desolate west Texas ranch to international fame.

Here is the link to the Southern Bookman interview with Daughtery following the publication of his 2011 biography of Barheleme, known for his surrealistic novels and short stories.

Daugerty's biographies of Didion and Barthelme found riveting drama in their lives as writers, and I'm looking forward to enjoying the same excitement from his biography  of McMurtry, one of my all-time favorite authors.

 

 

Eve Babitz's "L.A. Woman" an entertaining summer novel

The paperback's sky-blue cover and sunburst-gold title beckoned from Barnes & Noble's fiction table.

In darker, near purple font, the author's name thrilled me like the memory of old flame: Eve Babitz.

Yes, there it was calling to me:  "L.A. Woman," Babitz's novel I'd long wanted to read after my infatuation with "Eve's Hollywood" and "Slow Days, Fast Company."

I couldn't resist the the book, first published in 1982 and re-released by Simon & Schuster Paperbacks in 2015. Some brilliant Barnes & Noble bookseller had given the book prominent display for the beach-reading crowd.

CEO Mr. James Daunt had given local Barnes & Nobles stores autonomy to appeal to local tastes, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article about a revitalized B&N in New York City's Upper West Side. Each B&N is now operated like a separate independent bookstore.

My long-beloved B&N in Buckhead's Peach Shopping Center has fewer magazines, but I've been pleased with the increased book selection.

Before discovering "L.A. Woman," I was happy to find Darryl Pinckney's "Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan," his memoir about his friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick after his arrival in New York City as a student at Columbia.

I didn't take "L.A. Woman" to the beach, but to my well-worn living room rocking chair.

The book was as charming as the other books in which I fell in love with Eve, who died last year after a long, sad reclusive life brightened by her rediscovery in recent years.

As with other Babitz books, "L.A. Woman" is a buoyant, thinly disguised memoir of her coming of age in Los Angeles. In contrast to the angst-ridden L.A. chronicles of Joan Didion, Babitz bubbles with love for the city's film, music and art scenes. Like Raymond Chandler and John Fante, Babitz makes Los Angeles a character with a unique personality.

"L.A. Woman" like the Doors song for which Babitz was the model surges with the rhythms of Los Angeles freeways, restaurants and parties. While some of the characters are somewhat disguised, Babitz's alter-ego Sophie evokes the writer's intense affair with the Doors' Jim Morrison. Sophie refers to a singer like Morrison as simply "Jim."

Sophie unabashedly seeks sexual pleasure with rock stars, referring to herself as a groupie without ambition. Yet like Babitz herself Sophie ends up with a haphazard career as a photographer, album-cover artist and writer. Her economic travails and misadventures with sex, drugs and alcohol never ruin her love of life, and the city.

While Sophie has adventures in other places, such as a sojourn in Rome where she dallies with a Hollywood producer, Los Angeles is the true home of her heart and soul.

With all of Sophie's shallowness and self-absorption, she displays complex insights into other characters and Los Angeles society. Babitz's evocative language, reminiscent of Chandler's L.A. cadences, gives Sophie's interior monologues poetic richness.

"L.A. Woman" brings back Los Angeles' glory days, taking its place among my favorite books of summer.

 

"Oppenheimer" shows need for urgent global action against climate change

The world's relentless heat adds urgency to the apocalyptic message of Christopher Nolan's film "Oppenheimer."

Atlanta's heat was relatively mild Sunday afternoon when we saw the three-hour film at the reopened Tara Theater.  The temperature will rise this week to the mid-90s, with the heat index above 100.

In Nolan's film about the conflicted physicist who led America's development of the atomic bomb in World War II, much is made of the scientists believing that the test firing of the weapon in the Nevada desert could ignite the world's atmosphere.

The movie ends with Oppenheimer, hauntingly portrayed by Cillian Murphy, telling Albert Einstein that the advent of nuclear weapons did imperil the world.

With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the threat of nuclear warfare rises even higher. As the United States and NATO escalate military support for Ukraine and Russian troops suffer continued losses, fears increase that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will use atomic weapons. Ukrainian nuclear power plants have been damaged, raising concerns about a nuclear disaster.

The soaring temperatures, flooding and wildfires make clear that climate change is advancing beyond human control.

A massive global campaign like Oppenheimer's Manhattan project is needed to save humanity from the worst ravages of climate change. The world must act now to cut emissions and end the reliance on fossil fuels.

Like the Los Alamos clock ticking down to the first nuclear explosion, the world is running out of time. The atmosphere is igniting, as Oppenheimer's scienctists/warriors feared.

 

Hollywood strike reveals frightening AI future

The actors' strike raises disturbing questions about artificial intelligence.

With AI, studios can reproduce an actor's face for continuous use, Screen Actors Guild President Fran Drescher told MSNBC's Alex Wagner Thursday night, after the thespians decided to join Hollywood writers on the picket lines.

If an actor's identify can be stolen, anyone's can. AI opens limitless possibilities for criminal activity. 

With AI, TV and movie writers will be optional. The studios can use AI to write scripts, develop ideas for shows, conceive characters.

If a show-runner comes up with a concept for a show, its characters and settings can be fed to an AI program, which will spit out scripts.

Perhaps the dialogue will be a little flat. Will viewers notice?

An AI program can duplicate a popular mystery writer's books. Or replicate an essayist's themes.

AI can be directed to write a show like "Emily in Paris." Or a Taylor Swift song. Or a Maureen Dowd column.

Those fraudulent automated telephone calls are already proliferating with AI. Some aspiring blackmailer can use the technology to make a recording of you that would harm your reputation if released on the Internet. AI can invade private accounts.

AI for is  a pressing issue for Hollywood. Its threat looms for all of us.

 

 

Distinguished actor Wendell Pierce inspired by his father's patriotism

Wendell Pierce delivers an inspiring Fourth of July message in the "House Call" feature in Friday's Wall Street Journal.

The New Orleans native and admired actor tells of growing up in a then-segregated Southern city, his war hero father's refusal to give in to bitterness over racism and his stellar career in film, television and theater.

Compiled by writer Marc Myers, the entertaining House Call feature in WSJ's Friday "Mansion" section looks at the childhoods of show-business stars.

The celebrities give first-person recollections of the homes in which they grew up, their families and how they received their big breaks to achieve fame.

Pierce, who recently received acclaim for his portrayal of Arthur Miller's Willy Loman in London and Broadway productions of "Death of a Salesman," recalls that his 98-year-old father, Amos, was for years denied medals for his heroism during the World War II Battle of Saipan, "known as the Pacific D-Day."

"At home, Dad never once let bitterness overwhelm him, nor did he stop loving his country," Pierce said.

The actor known for HBO performances as detective Bunk Moreland in "The Wire" and the New Orleans jazz musician Antoine Batiste in "Treme," grew up in Ponchartrain Park, a suburban-style New Orleans neighborhood developed after World War II for middle-class blacks. A ditch separated the community from the all-white Gentilly Woods.

His father used the GI Bill to purchase a house and attend Southern University, where he took classes for a commercial photography career.

After graduating from high school in New Orleans, Wendell Pierce was accepted at New York City's Juilliard School in 1981. His successful career also includes roles in the TV series "Suits" and the films "Ray," "Malcolm X" and "Waiting to Exhale." He's now starring in Prime Video's "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan."'

After Hurricane Katrina, Pierce helped rebuild his childhood neighborhood. He also gave the devastated city hope with a production of "Waiting for Godot," as recounted in his memoir "Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, a Play and the City That Would Not Be Broken." The staunchly liberal Pierce co-wrote the book with the conservative writer Rod Dreher, a fellow Catholic.

Pierce discovered in 2009 that his father, now 98, was entitled to six medals for his heroism at Saipan. The Army presented the medals to his father later that year at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Pierce's brother, Ron, an Army officer, pinned on the medals.

Instead of bitterness, his father at the ceremony recalled the battle. "What I remember most are the many who died there."

Pierce was in tears when his father saluted and said "God bless America."

 

 

Farewell, Robert Gottlieb, book publishing titan

Robert Gottlieb's death at age 92 marks the end of a great era of book publishing.

Gottlieb, who edited many of the late 20th century's classic books with a wooden pencil and a smile, died Wednesday in a New York hospital of natural causes. 

Of all the many books Gottlieb brought to the world, I like other members of my generation most value Joseph Heller's novel "Catch 22."

Heller's antiwar satire about an American bomber squadron in World War II was seen as an allegory for opposition to the Vietnam War. The novel's anti-establishment values made it a sacred counter-cultural text. Heller's main character, alienated bombardier John Yossarian, was a generational talisman.

Gottlieb came up with the idea of changing Heller's novel from the original title "Catch 18" to the iconic "Catch 22." The change was required because of the imminent publication of Leon Uris' "Mila 18."

Gottlieb also edited another one of my formative books, Robert Caro's "The Power Broker," cutting 400,000 words from Caro's original text, battling the author over every word and semicolon.

The book details how New York public works director Robert Moses inflicted his protects upon New York through autocratic power.

As the recent documentary "Turn Every Page" relates, Gottlieb and Caro's contentious relationship continued with the publication of Caro's multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson. Gottlieb's daughter, Lizzie, directed the film, which shows the two men working on the final volume, which covers Johnson's downfall over the Vietnam War.

Caro fans hope that Gottlieb's death doesn't disrupt the appearance of the last Johnson book.

Readers of my generation are nervous, remembering that William Manchester never finished his biography of Winston Churchill. Manchester's first book about the British leader was one of those classics fervently discussed at dinner parties and in bars.

Not realizing that he had edited two of my all-time favorite books, I first heard about Gottlieb when he succeeded William Shawn as editor of the New Yorker in 1985.

Gottlieb, who had been the top editor at the book publishers Simon & Schuster and Knoph, kept the moribund magazine on life support for five years until Tina Brown gave it a fresh jolt of energy.

In later years, I enjoyed reading Gottlieb's reviews in the New York Review of Books and his memoir "Avid Reader."

Books will survive the age of AI and publishing consolidation. But visionary editors like Gottlieb are gone forever.  

Iranian Pulitzer-winning playwright Sanaz Toossi discusses immigrant experience, why she turned to TV

Sanaz Toossi, who won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize this week for her play "English," can't make a living as a playwright despite a burst of success in the theater.

The 31-year-old Iranian-American writer said in a New York Times interview Thursday that she supports herself by writing for television, which allowed her to buy health insurance.

Toossi's now on strike along with other members of the Hollywood writers' union seeking increased pay and benefits from TV streaming. But media landscape changes threaten the abundant era for TV writers that has prevailed for more than a decade.

As cable TV channels and streaming services like Netflix expanded, successful playwrights turned to TV writing to earn lucrative livelihoods.

Yet changes in media technology and audience fragmentation brought reduced compensation for writers in recent years, culminating in the walkout. As the strike continues, TV production has ground to a halt.

Playwright and TV screenwriter Alena Smith in a revealing article for the Los Angeles Review of Books mourns the lack of sustaining theater income for American playwrights.

But TV opportunities for writers have also eroded, as the strike exposes. Smith in a sobering assessment of the future says that the Internet and decline of cable will disrupt the TV landscape.

Smith, a Yale Drama School MFA graduate, said she earned only $13,000 as a playwright over six years, including a federal grant. She supplemented her income with odd jobs before heading to Hollywood, where she created the popular Apple TV+ series "Dickinson."

Broadway and the New York theater once sustained American playwrights like Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

From 1920 to 1940, 130 new plays were produced on Broadway each year, Smith discloses. From 1980 to 2014, the number of new productions plummeted to 14 a year, and will fall even lower as revivals, musicals and juke-box confections vie for declining audiences.

Smith foresees a similar bleak ice age for writers as the TV landscape fragments.

Toossi, the single child of Iranian immigrants, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the theater, capped by the Pulitzer.

"English," in which four Iranians take English lessons at a storefront school outside of Tehran in order to pass a language proficiency exam, premiered in 2022 at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Co.  Before capturing the Pulitzer, Toossi won the Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding Off-Broadway drama.

The play is frequently produced around the country, and Toossi has received commissions from several local theater companies. Her second play, "Wish You Were Here," a comedy about Iranian women's travails in America, was produced in 2022 by the off-Broadway Playwrights Horizon Theater.

But like other playwrights whose first love is the theater, she's turned to TV to survive.

Now that sanctuary is closing too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering Earl K. Long, "the Earl of Louisiana"

Four years after Huey Long's assassination, the Louisiana strongman's younger brother Earl gained the state's governorship for the first time.

In one of those strange intrigues that mark Louisiana politics, Earl as lieutenant governor replaced Gov. Richard Leche, convicted in the political scandals that decimated Huey's machine following "the Kingfish's" death in 1935 at age 42.

Estranged from his nationally prominent older brother, Earl escaped the wave of investigations that led to the imprisonment of Leche, LSU President J. Monroe Smith and dozens of other state and university officials.

Taking over as governor in June 1939, Earl sought to separate Huey from the scandals, casting his slain brother as a paragon of good government and public service betrayed after his death by his cronies.

His political ambitions discouraged by Huey, Earl is a minor character in Robert Mann's "Kingfish U," reviewed by Southern Bookman Monday. In his definitive study of Long's largesse toward LSU and his political exploitation of the school, Mann briefly mentions Earl. Earl, who lost the 1932 governor's race to Huey's buddy O.K. Allen, appears as an unlikely reformer.

Earl went on to a colorful and combative political career, changing the state as much if not more than his dictatorial brother. Losing his re-election bid to reformer Sam Jones in 1940 after 11 months as Leche's replacement, Earl served as governor from 1948-1952 and 1956-60.

Known as "Uncle Earl" following the rise of Huey's son Russell to the U.S. Senate, Long carried out his brother's progressive policies, building roads, schools and hospitals. He never followed Huey's antics with the LSU band, football team and students, but he gave the school ample resources while building up other state universities.

Not as power hungry as Huey, Earl still engaged in cut-throat politics against his rivals. A genius at invective and old-fashioned stump speaking, Earl rivaled Huey as a political showman.

The rough-hewn Long's battles against sophisticated New Orleans Mayor "Chep" Morrison riveted the state, although Earl returned local control to the Crescent City, which had been wrested away by Huey. 

Unlike most Southern governors, Earl was a racial moderate who expanded economic opportunities and voting rights for blacks, although he supported segregation. But he didn't oppose the integration of LSU-New Orleans.

Long suffered a mental breakdown on the floor of the Louisiana Legislature while railing against arch-segregationist Willie Rainich, an act of political courage ennobled by New Yorker writer A.J. Leibling in "The Earl of Louisiana." Long's political ally Margaret Dixon, managing editor of The Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, led away the incapacitated governor.

In an extended saga of political theater, Long through efforts by his estranged wife Blanche and nephew Russell was committed to a mental institution in Texas. Then Earl outwitted his foes by arranging a transfer to a state facility, using his power as governor to gain his release.

Despite his age and decline in health, Long was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1960, but died before he could take office at the hopeful start of John F. Kennedy's presidency.

Long received a burst of celebrity when Hollywood star Paul Newman portrayed him in the 1989 comedy "Blaze," based on Long's autumnal relationship with New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr.

Connoissieurs of Louisiana politics revere "Uncle Earl" more than Huey, repeating his witticisms and nuggets of political wisdom.

Earl Long held many of the white supremacist attitudes of his generation. Yet unlike other Southern politicians of his era, he made an admirable  stand for civil rights.

 

 

Michael Schulman's "Oscar Wars" gives history of Hollywood through Academy Awards

Big stars. Monumental deals. Gossip, intrigue, betrayal, sex, politics, racism, memorable performances.

Michael Schulman's "Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears" like one of those 1950s movie extravaganzas builds excitement with an all-star cast and amazing stories, engagingly told.

Schulman writes with dramatic power, propelled by the magnetism of Hollywood stars and creators ranging from Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks to Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson, Olivia de Havilland and her estranged sister Joan Fontaine to Hattie McDaniel, Dalton Trumbo, Harvey Weinstein, Steven Spielberg, Kirk Douglas, Jack Nicholson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Barry Jenkins and many others.

The New Yorker writer traces the history of the American movies through selected Academy Awards ceremonies through the years that he sees as especially significant.

From the awards' shows origins - shockingly a creation of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer - through the Will Smith slap of Chris Rock, Schulman examines the fierce personality conflicts, media campaigns and controversies behind the Oscars.

The book details how Weinstein changed the movie landscape with his relentless Oscar campaigns for movies produced by his upstart company Miramax. Schulman also renders an appalling litany of Weinstein's sexual assaults against female actresses and Miramax staff members.

In another impressive display of reporting and writing, Schulman gives a comprehensive account of how the Best Picture Academy Award was at first mistakenly given to "La La Land" instead of "Moonlight" in 2017. Schulman uncovers the confusion, duplicity, human frailty and magnanimity surrounding the shocking mix-up.

"La La Land" producer Jordan Horowitz after wrongly receiving the Oscar gracefully announced that "Moonlight" was the real winner, allowing Jenkins' study of a black gay child growing up in a Miami ghetto to receive recognition before the TV broadcast ended.

"Oscar Wars" gives a comprehensive account of how the Academy Awards' declining popularity matches the movies' fall from their cultural dominance in the 1930s and 1940s to increasing irrelevance.

While streaming and the decline of box office audiences present a new threat, Schulman affirms Hollywood's resilience,  surviving the talkies, the Depression, television and right-wing and left-wing attacks.

"Oscar Wars" in its wealth of details, captivating stories and glowing personalities unveils a bigger theme: that Hollywood's history is also that of America.