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What’s Your Why? The Authors Journey
Every writer has a story—long before the first word is written. "What's Your Why?" is the podcast where authors share the journeys, inspirations, and defining moments that shaped their craft. Whether you're a book lover, an aspiring writer, or simply fascinated by the creative process, this show takes you beyond the pages and into the minds of storytellers.
Join Emy diGrappa, Executive Producer, Wyoming Humanities, as we explore the passion, struggles, and triumphs that drive authors to write. Through in-depth interviews and solo reflections, we uncover the why behind the words—because behind every book, there’s a journey worth telling.
Tune in and get inspired by the voices behind the stories.
[00:00:00] Emy Digrappa: Welcome to What's Your Why brought to you by Wyoming Humanities. I am your host, Emy Dig Grappa. In this episode, we are exploring the writer's journey, and my special guest is Tracy Daugherty. Today we're discussing his life and accomplishments as a writer. Tracy's work delves into the convergence of personal and public experiences spanning art, architecture, music, city life, and the American West.
[00:00:28] Welcome Tracy.
[00:00:29] Tracy Daugherty: Thanks very much. Glad to be here.
[00:00:31] Emy Digrappa: Well, I like to start at the beginning. Um, that always reminds me of that song from the sound of Music, but, Just to talk
[00:00:41] about where you grew up. I grew up in West Texas, a town called Midland, uh, which is really an oil center. My father was a petroleum geologist, as was everybody who, who worked there.
[00:00:54] Uh, it's really, uh, a place of, uh, desert and tumbleweeds and oil wells. So that was my, my upbringing. So I was a, a westerner from the very beginning. And, uh, that's why I think I was drawn to writers such as Larry McMurtry and, and Cormack McCarthy and, and people that I've written about because they were writing about a place that didn't seem very literary to me when I was growing up.
[00:01:18] Um, I think when we all first come to literature as, as young people, we, we sometimes think, uh. That you have to be writing about London or someplace like, like that because of Dickens and, and the great writers that you're taught in school. And a place like West Texas just did not seem to have much literary value.
[00:01:35] But, uh, I found writers who, who were writing about that place. And, uh, that was a real revelation to me as a, as a young person with, with literary aspirations.
[00:01:44] Okay. So when did those literary aspirations start? What, what? Um. What was your inspiration to go into writing and become an author? I did,
[00:01:56] Tracy Daugherty: I did find books early, even though my family was not particularly bookish.
[00:02:00] Um, but, uh, the, the most influential figure for me probably was my grandfather who, uh, who was a reader and he was also a politician in Oklahoma. So from a very early age. I saw him writing his own political speeches and then delivering them. So I had an example early on of how powerful crafted language can be and and he really showed me that.
[00:02:25] And the other thing is that he was also named Tracy Darty. I was named after him, so I would see posters. Uh, around town saying, you know, come here, Tracy Darty a good, loud speaker. Uh, and I, I just loved seeing his name, which was also my name, uh, on, on, on these posters. And so I saw my name in print early on and that was, uh, a very exciting thing.
[00:02:47] But he really encouraged me to read and, and to pay attention to language and, uh, showed me the power of language. So I, I think he was probably the single biggest influence for me.
[00:02:58] Emy Digrappa: Well, I think that's interesting that he was from Oklahoma. Yes. But your parents and where you grew up was, uh, Midland, Texas.
[00:03:08] Tracy Daugherty: Right. So, uh, my grandparents lived about six and a half hours from us by car. But, uh, several times a year we went to Oklahoma. So in many ways, I consider Oklahoma, uh, the other side of my raising. Uh, and it was so different from West Texas. West Texas was a, a, a dry desert and, uh, southern Oklahoma where my grandfather was, uh, was, was.
[00:03:31] You know, lush, full of creeks and trees and, uh, fireflies. It was very a magical place. So I saw the two sides, uh, of, of, uh, of that. And, uh, I always loved going to Oklahoma.
[00:03:42] Emy Digrappa: So what, what was the first novel
[00:03:45] Tracy Daugherty: that
[00:03:45] Emy Digrappa: you wrote?
[00:03:46] Tracy Daugherty: The first novel, well, the first novel I wrote was, um, just a pile of paper. Really.
[00:03:50] It was, I was about 11 or 12 years old, and in those days, this is, uh, the 1960s. The, the space program was, uh, very popular and we were going to the moon and like, like many, uh. Kids of that era. I was, I was fascinated by, by space and by nasa. So I, I read science fiction a lot when I was very, very young. Ray Bradbury was an early, uh, favorite writer of mine, so I was trying to write science fiction in those days, and I, I probably, the first novel I tried to write was a science fiction novel about a, a Gemini spacecraft that gets blown off course and just.
[00:04:26] Through space. It was ridiculous. Uh, but that was the first one. I, I really spent time on it, you know, and, uh, uh, many, many months. Uh, so I wrote that and, uh, as I say, it never got beyond just being a pile of paper. The first novel I published was in my, uh. My late twenties, uh, a book called Desire Provoked, which I worked on, uh, while I was in graduate school.
[00:04:48] And, um, I, I really wasn't trying to get a degree. I was just stalling for time while I, I wrote the novel just to, to see if I could do it, and it's, uh, it did get published. Uh, I look back at it now with some embarrassment, uh, because it, it's, it's very much a, an amateur effort, but it was the book that taught me how to write a novel.
[00:05:08] Emy Digrappa: That, that's a really big question for me because
[00:05:12] how do you develop the discipline to sit and write and think and develop your characters? Like does it come and go or what is your habit?
[00:05:25] Tracy Daugherty: A habit is a good word. I mean, I think that's, that's a, an essential thing. You do have to develop a habit. Uh, it's not something that you can sit around and wait for.
[00:05:34] Um, we often hear people speak about inspiration, but I've, I've never particularly known what inspiration is because that, that suggests that you just sit and wait for something that. Hit you like a lightning bolt out of the sky. And, and I think if you do that, you're never gonna get very far. I think you have to develop what you're talking about, discipline and habit.
[00:05:53] And I, I, I feel fortunate because that came to me fairly early. Um, I, I do think, again, going back to my grandfather, I saw his example. I. I saw him laboring over writing those speeches. Uh, and then I saw the result of it, uh, after all that hard work at the kitchen table, writing words on a piece of paper.
[00:06:11] Then he would go out and deliver a speech and people would be, you know, moved by it and moved to action by it. And so I saw that the, the discipline paid off in his case. And that was a, a great, great example to have early on. Um. And I think also I was a, a bit of a shy kid, so it was not a hardship for me to sit alone in my room and write, you know, so, uh, so in a sense I had that advantage by the time I was actually working on the novel.
[00:06:37] Then I had developed a, a, a, a working pattern. Um, and because I was in school at the time, taking classes and also teaching classes, I had to get organized, which I had never really been, uh, all of my life, but I, I had to, so, so I did. Find a certain time of day each day, same time every day to to write. And, uh, in, in those days, it was very early in the morning because I, I then had classes later on.
[00:07:04] So I'd get up very early for two or three hours every morning at the very same time, in the very same place, do it even when I didn't feel like doing it. And that was also a great lesson, is that, uh, you know, even if you don't feel like being at the desk, it's, you have to be there. Because it starts to wake the mind up and the mind starts getting used to that habit of, uh, you know, alright, here it is, seven o'clock and I've gotta, I've gotta be thinking about it.
[00:07:27] So, so the mind does train itself that way.
[00:07:31] Emy Digrappa: That is so interesting because a lot of, um, what business people or business motivators or, you know, um, talk about the pen and paper. Mm-hmm. And how important it is to put your thoughts, not type them into a computer, but the physical exercise that you do when you put pen to paper or pencil to paper, whatever.
[00:07:58] Tracy Daugherty: Yes. I, I think that is really crucially important and I'm always fascinated by this. I, I wrote that first novel, uh, first by hand, and then I typed it on a, an electric typewriter. Then I would, uh, you know, correct it by hand. And then I spread the whole thing out on my apartment floor and I had sections of the novel, um, where my main character was at work.
[00:08:22] And so I put all the work sections in one stack. Then I had the sections of him with his family, his wife and children. That was in another stack. And then I had him traveling and that was another stack. And I, in organizing that novel, I literally physically. Shuffled those stacks and, and reshuffled them until I had a structure for the whole novel.
[00:08:42] But it was that act of, of making it physical. It was almost like working with Clay. I think the way a sculptor works, I imagine the way a sculptor works that you're shaping that clay. And I think, I, I think of language the same way. It, it, it's a, it's a malleable material that you can move around. Now the computer makes it very easy to move around.
[00:09:02] You push a button and you can shift a paragraph around. But I still like to print it. I waste a lot of paper. Unfortunately, I'm, I'm a bad person that way. I still like the physical shuffling and I have to have a pencil in my hand even when I'm typing. Uh, that, that physical brain to hand connection I think is really, really important.
[00:09:22] We think of writing as a mental activity. But I, I think of it also as a physical activity, and I think it's important to think of it that way because you're engaged in work in, you know, in real work and, and getting your hands dirty with those sentences is, I think very important.
[00:09:38] Emy Digrappa: Yeah. And, and I, I can agree with you more.
[00:09:40] it's so funny because so many of my colleagues keep, uh, their calendars on their phone. Mm-hmm. Do everything on their phone. and I still can't help but write my calendar in my daytimer. Good for you. Yes, yes. All my notes, what I'm doing for the day. Yeah. I have to do it that way.
[00:10:00] Tracy Daugherty: I, I don't wanna be a Luddite. I, I, I recognize, you know, where the, where the future's going and, uh, young, young people who are. Used to the computer and grow up with it. Um, you know, they're developing just a new kind of literacy. It doesn't mean that they are illiterate that the way, you know, some, some Luddites would say that, you know, well, everything's going to hell and literacy is, is we're losing it because of the computer.
[00:10:23] I don't, I don't think that it's a new form of literacy that, that I will never be comfortable with just because of the way I grew up. But even so, I, I, I do think that in the future. Even if people are using tools like AI and, and, and whatever else is going to be available, I, I do hope that we don't lose that sense of physical brain to hand connection.
[00:10:44] Uh, I mean, I mean, I really think there's something very essential about, about the hand, you know, and the way the hand, uh, is connected to, to our mental movements. Are you still, uh, teaching at the university? No, I retired a little over 10 years ago. Um, I still go to, to conferences and, and, uh, still talk to some, some, uh, young, young writers about their manuscripts, but, uh, I'm not teaching formally now.
[00:11:10] Emy Digrappa: Oh, okay. I was just curious because when you mentioned ai, I was thinking, I wonder what it would be like for you today, uh, as a teacher of literature. Creative writing, what you would find and how it would affect your teaching?
[00:11:29] Tracy Daugherty: I, I think I would be a terrible teacher in this day and age. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm an old dog and can't learn those new tricks.
[00:11:37] I do have friends who are still teaching, and I, I hear their stories and they're of course, in the middle of, of what you know, can truthfully be called a revolution. They're now dealing with students who are using ai. I think, uh, my old university, Oregon State just hired, I forget the actual name of the position, but it was an AI specialist in the humanities, and this was the latest hire I.
[00:12:02] So they are preparing for whatever impacts AI is going to have on the study of, of humanities. And I don't know what that is. I don't know what it would look like. I don't know what it would be like. Um, but I do know that their teachers are struggling with, with students who, who are, you know, having AI write their papers for them.
[00:12:21] Um, and, and I don't know, I don't know what the, what the future's gonna look like that way. So I would not be a very effective teacher right now. I retired at the right time. Good
[00:12:32] Emy Digrappa: job. You got out just in time. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it would be a huge challenge as a teacher and you know, just even in my work as a podcaster for, I mean humanities.
[00:12:45] Mm-hmm. And just all the ways that you can use ai. Even when I am, you know, podcasting. Finish my podcast. use a transcript service, but then also have to go through the transcript and read it. But there's all these AI options in that when you're developing description and titles and all the stuff, and, and it gets, it gets kind of, um, complicated because the reason it's complicated.
[00:13:19] You could say, you could think it's easy, but. What happens is that AI is a machine and I'm not a machine. And so if you don't take the time to, um, put your voice in there or change things or you know, there's some things that AI is really bad at. And so it's just been an interesting journey for me.
[00:13:42] Tracy Daugherty: I was talking to, uh, a friend of mine the other day who is, is writing a novel and, and he, um, he came from a science background, so he's, he's more comfortable with, with the idea of ai.
[00:13:54] And I asked him how he used it and he said, I don't, I'm not using AI to write the novel, but what he does do, he says, if, if I write a sentence that that seems to me awkward, I will ask AI to paraphrase that sentence and it will give me 10 different options. Then he says, you know, I don't, I don't write down exactly any one of those sentences, but I take little bits and pieces.
[00:14:15] They're suggestions to me how to make my own sentence better, which, you know, sounds benign. I guess it sounds like a, a useful way to use it as a tool. Um, I worry a bit that that's shortcircuiting the thinking process, uh, because very often when I rewrite a sentence in, in a second or third draft, The wording will completely change the way I see my, my entire story.
[00:14:38] Sometimes it will change things, just changing one word. Just the other day, I had a, a, a draft I was working on and I changed, uh, a word in a sentence. The word was dark and I changed it to cold. And in changing, dark to cold, it entirely changed the setting and where I thought the story was gonna go. I mean, it changed everything.
[00:14:57] So that thinking process to me is, is, is very important. And I, I worry that ai. Making things so easy. Might short circuit that sometimes, but you know, again, it's a tool and as you say, uh, you have to keep watch on the machine. Oh yeah.
[00:15:13] Emy Digrappa: it tries to, um, be your brain and your personality. Yeah. You know, and that's just not even possible.
[00:15:21] That's the danger of it. I, I see.
[00:15:23] Tracy Daugherty: Yeah.
[00:15:24] Emy Digrappa: Yeah. Yeah. Well, tell me about your latest book on Larry McMurtry and why did you decide to write his biography?
[00:15:32] Tracy Daugherty: As I was saying earlier, when I was growing up in West Texas, um, I was looking for, for models of, of. How to become a writer, because I had my grandfather's example, but he, his writing was in service of his, his politics, and I was enamored of books.
[00:15:49] And, uh, so I, I did have an inkling early that I wanted to write, but I didn't know what it meant to be a writer, how you, how you came out of Texas writing that just didn't seem possible. So McMurtry was a, again, a, a very wonderful early example for me because by the time I was reading. Seriously. Uh, McMurtry had published, I think, uh, his first three or four novels, and he was already being lauded as Texas best writer.
[00:16:16] There really had not been a literary tradition in Texas before McMurtry's generation. So he was a very important person for all of us, even if we didn't like all of his books. He was just an example for us, a model. So I, I grew up reading him. Uh, I read him, I've been reading him all my life. so it was kind of natural for me to eventually turn to him.
[00:16:38] Uh, I kind of stumbled into writing biographies a few years ago. I never had intended to do that, but, but I did. And, uh, and, and one of the reasons I did was because I wanted to know how writers did what they did. And, and studying their careers and their lives was, was very interesting to me. So it was kind of inevitable.
[00:16:57] I think that I would eventually come around to McMurtry who, who had been reading since, since childhood really. He was just a, you know, he was the Texas writer and as a boy growing up in Texas, he was just a natural subject.
[00:17:09] Emy Digrappa: did you grow up, being enamored with the American West, or did you not see yourself as, as, you know, part of the west?
[00:17:18] Tracy Daugherty: No, I really didn't. I, I didn't, Again, I think one of the reasons I, I spent so much time writing as a kid is that I didn't feel terribly at home in that culture. I loved the landscape even, even though it was pretty desolate out in West Texas. What's great about West Texas is the sky, you know, there's this flat horizon and the sky, especially at night, is just everywhere around you.
[00:17:39] And it's beautiful. I loved that. But the culture, um. You know, the kind of, it was a strong macho culture. You were expected to, you know, go hunting and drive a pickup and, uh, play football and all that stuff, which are things that I didn't really cotton to, to put it in West Texas terms. so I was, I was a more bookish, you know, so it was a very different kind of, uh, sensibility, I guess.
[00:18:01] So, no, I, I actually resisted the idea of the West and all the myths about the west and the stereotypes, uh, you know, like the, the TV series Dallas, which, uh, you know, showed the, the oil tycoons in Texas, and people all thought that's what Texas was like. And I just hated all those stereotypes. I didn't like country music.
[00:18:20] I was resisting everything, you know. But then when I went away to school, when I left, uh, Texas for a brief time, I, I got homesick for it and nostalgic for it. And that's when I, I think, you know, in my early twenties or so, I, I became, uh, really enamored of the West again and sort of embraced it after rejecting it all my life.
[00:18:40] So I, I came back to it pretty hard later on. and, and I've lived in the west ever since. I've lived in Oregon now, and I've always loved traveling through the desert, Southwest to New Mexico and, and Arizona. So, yeah, I've, I've come to really love it, but it, it took me a while.
[00:18:56] Emy Digrappa: they call that in Wyoming, the boomerang effect.
[00:19:00] Hmm. because everybody can't wait to get out when they go from high school. They, they, they can't wait to leave and go someplace else. and then they go to another place and then they miss Wyoming.
[00:19:13] Tracy Daugherty: Yeah. Yeah. I can see, I, I, how can you grow up in a landscape like that? And, and, uh. Not think that, uh, you know, that's the place to be.
[00:19:21] It's uh, there's just nothing else like the, these great western landscapes.
[00:19:27] Emy Digrappa: And I loved what you said about the night sky because that is the beauty of living in the West where you, where you are in the middle of nowhere and you can look up, you don't have the night pollution. Right. I mean, I'm sure you do in Dallas and Fort Worth and those Yeah.
[00:19:41] Yeah. Populated areas, but probably not in Midland.
[00:19:45] Tracy Daugherty: No, no, no. Midland was great and in fact I was a part of a little astronomy club. Uh, it was a hobby of mine when I was a kid, and we built our own observatory. We built our own telescopes. We'd go out there, and then the only thing that would be out in the fields would be the, the, the pump jacks, the oil pump jacks, you know, pumping up and down.
[00:20:03] But there wouldn't be any lights out there. And, uh, so it was a great time for observing. In fact, my first publication there was this magazine called Sky and Telescope Magazine, and they, they always had an amateur page. So amateurs, little, you know, anybody could send in an observation they'd made. And one night we were watching for meteors during the perceived meteor shower.
[00:20:24] And, uh, we saw. Huge, bright meteors. Um, and I made little drawings of them, of where they went, you know, and through the constellations and sent it into Sky and Telescope and they, they published my little drawing. So my first publication was, uh, sky and Telescope Magazine. So it's that great night sky.
[00:20:42] Emy Digrappa: Oh my gosh.
[00:20:43] I love that. Well, and, and that's the other thing that you were saying about, um, growing up in Texas and not relating to the cowboy culture, let's say.
[00:20:55] Tracy Daugherty: Right.
[00:20:56] Emy Digrappa: I, I, I hear that a lot here in Wyoming. That. it's so iconic and it's so loved. Yes. Yes. So anywhere in the world and people can relate, love and want to know about the cowboy culture.
[00:21:12] Tracy Daugherty: Yes. And that's another thing that that fascinated me about McMurtry and made him such a good subject. It was because he had that same struggle. He grew up, he really did grow up being a cowboy. His father was a cattleman, and he expected, uh, McMurtry to be a cattleman too. So McMurtry was, you know, from a very young age out there, uh, working with, with, with the cows and the horses.
[00:21:33] He was a cowboy, but he didn't like it either. He wasn't suited to it. Uh, and his entire career, you know, his most famous book, lonesome Dove, which is. By many people considered the Great Western was really his attempt to debunk those iconic myths about the cowboy. But, uh, it was so beloved that he, he kind of gave up and said, all right, you know, I have to embrace the cowboy myth even though I'm, I'm trying to debunk it.
[00:22:01] Uh, so, so he had that ambivalence about it himself, which makes his writing really interesting.
[00:22:06] Emy Digrappa: So what did you discover that was so surprising about Larry McMurtry that. you know when you write about somebody, it's not that you've read all their books because what's the story behind the story?
[00:22:20] Mm-hmm.
[00:22:21] Tracy Daugherty: Probably the most striking thing about him, uh, is if, if people just pick up his books and read them, they're so plainly written. And I, and I mean that as a compliment, you know, the, the, the language is not fancy. Uh, it's not a, a very extensive vocabulary. He writes very simple sentences in a way, but they're so easy to read and they, they flow so beautifully that you think, well, this is just a guy who's writing the way he talks.
[00:22:48] Um, and that it must come easy to him. And in fact, he was extremely educated. He, he, he was a scholar. And I think people would be surprised if, you know, if they, if they pick up Lonesome Dove or the last picture show to, to read this very plain, plain spoken English, uh, they would be surprised how much scholarly work goes into that.
[00:23:09] On his part. He really, um, studied the history of the, of the novel, going all the way back to its very origins. He studied the European novel. He loved Henry James. You know, I mean, he, he, he knew the whole tradition that, that he was working in. And I think that would surprise a lot of his readers that, that, uh, he makes it look so easy because he is so steeped in the education of it.
[00:23:31] He, he knows the history. He knows every example of it. He was a book collector and a book dealer. So, I mean, he really was immersed in, in the, uh, the culture of the book, and I think that's, uh, surprising. It was to me.
[00:23:45] Emy Digrappa: Yeah. That is surprising to me because I'm, I'm looking at a book right now on my shelf.
[00:23:53] Anything for Billy? Yeah. Yeah. And what you were saying, how he's taking. A big picture, but bringing it in a very simple, I'm just having a conversation with you kind of way. Yeah,
[00:24:09] Tracy Daugherty: yeah, yeah. And that novel, you know, it's kind of a, a novel about Billy the Kid and you think, okay, well we've all heard Billy the kid stories if you grow up in the West.
[00:24:18] But he's also aware, he, he. Researched the whole tradition of, of, uh, the, the newspapers from that period and, and how, how the West was being written about at that time. And he researched dime novels and pulp novels. So he knows the whole tradition and the whole history of where the very first Billy of the kid stories came from.
[00:24:38] So he is not only just telling a, a, a, a tall tale about Billy the kid, he's, he's also in that book kind of parodying and, um. Excavating, you know, the, the, the literary tradition of the West and, and what it was like, and how we come to believe in those myths. So it's, it's a little more complicated than it appears to be on the surface because he's so erudite about it.
[00:25:02] Emy Digrappa: So when you said he was a scholar, and so where did he go to school? Where, where was, um.
[00:25:08] Tracy Daugherty: Rice University in Houston. He, he said that Houston was his Paris, uh, you know, it was the big city that he went to, to become educated. And, and it, that was my mine too. I, I came, you know, coming out of Midland, I wound up going to school in Houston and, uh, Houston was my, my, I.
[00:25:23] My big city. It was my education in, in urban life. And that that was the truth for McMurtry as well. So he came off a cattle ranch in, in, you know, nowhere Texas, and wound up in Houston and he went to Rice University and got a, got a, a master's degree there. And, uh, but mostly he used the library there to educate himself.
[00:25:43] Uh, you know, the, the real education he got was, was on his own and he taught for a while at Rice. Uh, and uh, so that was, that was where he became. The scholar,
[00:25:54] Emy Digrappa: what was his
[00:25:55] Tracy Daugherty: personal life like? That was another interesting thing. He's, uh, I think he was another person we could say was probably pretty shy growing up in many ways, pretty reserved.
[00:26:08] But he had a real capacity for friendship and uh, he kept his friendships. Throughout his life, he was the kind of person if you, if you met him and uh, you know, became his friend when you were 13, you'd be his friend for life. Uh, and he was also that way with, with the women in his life. he had many, many.
[00:26:26] What he called, uh, friendships with women. And some of them were romantic friendships and some of them were not. But he always, uh, said, uh, that he valued friendship more than anything. And if, if the romance or the erotic stuff got in the way, you know, that would be secondary. He would keep the friendship first.
[00:26:44] And every, um, every woman who was ever involved with McMurtry, none of them had a bad word to say. You know, they, they maintained their friendships and, um. He was, he was very gracious. and that's not always true. I've written several biographies now and, uh, you know, you see the good side and the bad sides of people when you start delving into their life stories.
[00:27:04] But I would say, um, Metri sometimes had a reputation for being a little curt and abrupt and curmudgeonly sometimes. Um, overall, I would say of all the subjects I've written about, um. He was the most beloved by, by the people that I, you know, interviewed all of his family, his friends, they, uh, he was really a, a, a generous guy and, uh, and quite well liked.
[00:27:28] Emy Digrappa: that brought me to another thought that I always have when I think about authors. Um, especially when you're writing biographies or you're writing about doing a great deal of research on someone's life Do you feel like it's intrusive?
[00:27:43] Tracy Daugherty: It can bes? Sure. I mean, I, I have, I have some qualms about, uh, biography.
[00:27:49] As I say, I never really intended to do it. I kind of got into it by, by accident. Um, and certain biographers, uh. Really disturbed me because they, they intrude into people's lives. I, I have, um, especially when writing about subjects who are still alive, as I did with Joan Didion, when I wrote my biography of her, she was still living and, uh, I was aware she didn't really want a biography to be written about her.
[00:28:15] And so I felt a little intrusive myself there. But I was also careful that I, you know, I didn't put everything I knew about her into that book because she was still alive and I, I thought it would be a violation of her privacy. Now that she's gone, I'm sure other biographies will, will be appearing and that we'll learn a lot more about her and people will be more willing to talk about her.
[00:28:37] I felt it was important to write about her when I did because, um, she was an impor important cultural figure, but I, I was trying to also be respectful of her privacy, which sounds contradictory. You know, you're writing a biography, but, uh, I wanted it to be respectful, so, yeah, it's, uh. And I think if, if somebody came to me and, and said, I'm writing a biography of your wife.
[00:28:59] Will you tell me everything you know about your wife? I would probably say, no, of course, I'm not gonna talk to you. Uh, so I understand people's, uh, qualms about biographers and biographies, but they are public figures. and, and especially in the case of literary biography, they, they are, they are contributing to the culture and helping shape the culture.
[00:29:18] And I think it is important, uh. To know where it comes from. And I, for better or worse, I have what a friend of mine called a, a biographical intelligence, which means that I, I can't really see anything except through that biographical lens. I can't just deal with an abstract idea or a philosophy or, or a political stance without tying it to the people that it kind of comes from.
[00:29:43] I wanna know, you know, who, who first thought of that idea? Who first thought of that political, uh, viewpoint, and why did they? Come up with it, what was going on in the world at the time that made them come up with that idea? That seems to me very important. Uh, it's again, going back to the idea of the physical, you know, we're, we're physical beings on this planet and, uh, our experience is where our ideas come from.
[00:30:05] And, and so I think the biographical lens is, is useful and important, but it, it, it, it does have a lot of contradictory and thorny issues associated with it.
[00:30:17] Emy Digrappa: I'm just thinking about my own family. and, uh, thinking about people who write about their families. and I, I did have a, a friend and she, um, passed now, but she wrote about her family and
[00:30:30] for them it was very disturbing. Yes. Yeah.
[00:30:35] Tracy Daugherty: I think any, anybody who has a writer in their family has had that experience. It can be hurtful and it can be very uncomfortable. yeah. People writing about their, their own families and people they know. But I, I've also had the experience of, um, writing a story.
[00:30:50] This happened to me when I was pretty young. I, I wrote a story and a friend of mine didn't see herself in the story, so she got mad at me for not writing about her. So. You know, you, you can't win either way. So.
[00:31:03] Emy Digrappa: Absolutely. Um, so I, I wanna know, why did you choose to write about Joan Didion? what was your desire to do that?
[00:31:12] She, again, was, um, very important to me when I was young because she's another western writer. I mean, she's, she's most mostly associated with California. And then later became associated with New York. But I knew her, you know, from early stages as a, as another westerner. Uh, so that was important.
[00:31:28] Tracy Daugherty: Somebody writing about that, that landscape. Um, and she just has a style that's, that's infectious. Uh, it's, it's like music. It gets in your head and you can't get it out. And so, you know, she was just a very important writer to me. And also she was writing about. All of the cultural things that were happening.
[00:31:46] I, I came across, I think the white album was her first book that I read. and it's very fragmented and, and, uh, chaotic in some ways. And so it not only was talking about the 1960s, which was her subject, but it, it, it gave the feeling of the 1960s, the, the rhythm of her prose felt like the 1960s. And I had never encountered writing like that.
[00:32:10] So I wanted to know how she did it. the, the way I came to her, uh, really was, as I've said, I, I kind of accidentally came to biography. My first one was, um, a biography of Donald Bar May, who had been my teacher in Houston. He died, uh, fairly early. He was only 58 when he died. And, uh, I kind of wanted to keep my mental conversation with him going, so I started writing about him and it turned into a biography.
[00:32:35] And so that was my first one. And I, you know, I just kind of did it as a labor of love. It wasn't, um, something I sort of, you know, had an ambition to do. But that book did, did fairly well, critically. And my editors said, you know, who do you wanna write about next? And Joan Didion came to mind. Uh, 'cause she was so, so much in my head at the time, so I didn't, didn't really realize when I said it, what I was gonna get myself into.
[00:32:59] But,
[00:33:01] Emy Digrappa: but you obviously enjoy it, which is so I did.
[00:33:04] Tracy Daugherty: Yeah.
[00:33:05] Emy Digrappa: Yeah. Which is so rewarding that you, you love writing, but you came upon this. Style that is, you've made your very own.
[00:33:14] Tracy Daugherty: Yeah. It's a, it's a strange, it's a strange form. Uh, you know, aside from what we were just talking about, the, the kind of ethical questions around it.
[00:33:22] Do you, do you invade a person's life? And is that okay? Uh, but as a form, it's also strange because we all know that, uh, when you think about our own, your own life. Uh, you sort of make up stories about your own life and you tell stories about your past to your friends and, and they become kind of, um, solidified those, those stories, those little narratives about our own lives that we tell.
[00:33:46] But we also know that life really isn't that plainly organized and it nothing really moves from beginning to middle to end the way it does in narratives. But when you're writing a biography, you, you kind of have to do, you know, the life story that makes sense. There's a great, a great line. I think it's ki guard who said, uh, life can only be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards.
[00:34:13] You know, once we reach the end, you can see the patterns that inform a whole life, and that's what a biographer sort of does. But in a way, you're, you're kind of imposing those patterns too. You know, my version of Joan Didion is, is very different. From what another would say about her, 'cause I'm looking at the things that interest me about her life and you look at other things in her life and you could construct an entirely different story.
[00:34:37] So I don't think biographies are ever definitive. You hear that phrase from critics all the time. The definitive biography. I don't think such a thing exists. Uh, it's always gonna be a different story in somebody else's hands. But you as a biography, you are looking for the patterns that seem to make sense that this is what impelled her from the beginning.
[00:34:54] This is how she developed, this is why she developed the way she did, and that's what you're looking for. And it does very much mean you know, that you're imposing your own idea of meaning on it. So in a sense it's, uh, it's not fiction, but it's got it's share some properties of, of fictional narrative.
[00:35:13] You're, you're, you're, you're, you're creating patterns, uh, or hopefully you're finding patterns, but you're, you're, you're illustrating them.
[00:35:20] Emy Digrappa: That is so interesting, and it just reminds me, I, I come from a big Hispanic family, seven kids, and I have this conversation with my youngest sister. Because, she's, you know, the baby.
[00:35:36] Yeah. She's next to my brother, but they're both a lot younger and her perception of my mom and dad is so different than my perception.
[00:35:51] Tracy Daugherty: Yes, yes.
[00:35:52] Emy Digrappa: The first five kids that, and I tell her dad was so strict. you better, you know, have your chores done. I mean, it was very much like that.
[00:36:03] Tracy Daugherty: Yes, yes. The time
[00:36:05] Emy Digrappa: she came along, it was like they had loosened all the strings and so she has this whole different story.
[00:36:15] Tracy Daugherty: Yeah. And, and, uh. Yeah, a person's context, even a person's place in a family is gonna change, change the story. And our memories are, are, uh, you know, they're, they're flawed. They're, we, we, we forget things. Uh, and we, we change things in our own heads. Uh, so, so memory is to a large extent, imagination.
[00:36:36] And, uh, the degree to which. Imagination and memory work together is, is, is very fascinating when you're dealing with biography. Um, so yeah, it's, it's very tricky terrain. It really is. Yeah. I admire you. Pick that on. What, what are you working on right now? I'm now writing a biography of Cormac McCarthy, uh, which is, is fraught for all sorts of reasons.
[00:37:01] Uh, he was a very reclusive person, you know, and he, he didn't, uh. Didn't give a lot of interviews, didn't wanna talk much, and his, his friends didn't want to talk much. Uh, he, he passed away a couple of years ago. So, so more and more people are willing to, to open up and speak about him now. And so I've, I've, uh, I've really enjoyed talking to, to family and friends.
[00:37:22] Uh, but it's still, it's still a little, a little tricky. Uh. He was so reclusive and people are respective of his privacy. And then, I don't know if you're aware, there's been kind of a recent scandal about him. Uh, there was a big Vanity Fair article about, uh, a relationship he had with an underage girl when he was, uh, younger, a younger man.
[00:37:43] So, so there's been some scandal and some talk about, oh, should we cancel Cormack McCarthy? It's, you know, there's been a lot of talk about that. So that, that has broken while I've been working on the book. so again, these are things, you know, even when a subject has, has passed away, it is so recent that in, in a way, the story is still, still changing, still growing, still living.
[00:38:03] So, uh, the biography is never gonna be finished in that sense. You know, uh, and I'm also working on some fiction. I, I never have stopped writing fiction. but it's the biographies that tend to, to get most of the notice, I think.
[00:38:15] Emy Digrappa: I would think they take so much more time
[00:38:18] Tracy Daugherty: yeah. The research does and the travel to do the research.
[00:38:21] Emy Digrappa: Um, yeah.
[00:38:21] Do you use a recorder and then transcribe it?
[00:38:24] Tracy Daugherty: I do. Yeah. again, I'm very old fashioned about it. I don't have a machine to help me. I've got a little tiny little recorder, and then I'll come home and, uh, write it out, you know, transcribe it by hand. It's very slow. But again, it's, it, it helps me, uh, it helps me to really listen hard.
[00:38:40] You know, I have to listen over and over again. And by actually writing the words out by hand, I, I, uh, you know, I, I get to dig into what they're actually telling me and, and not just kind of take it for granted or, or overlook it.
[00:38:53] Emy Digrappa: Oh my gosh. It's a lot of work. A lot of work.
[00:38:57] Tracy Daugherty: And like your calendar. I keep my, my, I don't ever do an outline of a biography, but I, I do keep a kind of chronological notebook year by year in, in the person's life and what was going on in the world at the time.
[00:39:10] What was going on in literature at the time, what was going on in their life at the time. Then I, I just sort of, you know, organize it all by hand. I don't, I don't put it on the computer. I, I like, again to, to do it by hand. So I, I get a physical sense of that life unfolding.
[00:39:26] Emy Digrappa: that just brings to mind that not only are you a writer, but in doing that you are a historian.
[00:39:35] Tracy Daugherty: Very much so. Yeah, it's, uh, and, and, and I would say for me, biography is, um, more than anything else, cultural history. Uh, I mean, going back to that ethical question of about biography, the, the biographies that make me most uncomfortable are, are biographers who claim to understand the psychology of the person they're writing about.
[00:39:56] Like, I can get inside that person's mind and tell you what they were thinking and what their creative process was. I don't. Believe that, you know, I really don't wanna go there, to, to whatever extent I can. I want to try to understand what motivates a person's behavior, but mostly what interests me is the cultural history.
[00:40:16] Again, Joan Didion as an example, why did she write what she wrote? She wrote because she was, you know, she came of age as a writer in the, in the fifties and the 1960s, that very turbulent cultural era. So the subjects were turbulent, they were controversial. The, the society was changing radically. So that's what she wrote about.
[00:40:37] And the way she wrote the style she developed came out of those very same things. So I can't pretend to understand Joan Didion's psychology, but I can understand the culture that surrounded her. And that was the, the forces that were working on her, you know, as she wrote. And, and I think you can understand that and, and document that.
[00:40:57] So it's very much history. I. That to me is, is the real value of, again, where do these ideas come from? They come from a particular cultural moment in a, a particular place and time. And that's, to me, the biographical impulse is that person was born then and there, grew up then and there, and that's why they had those ideas, um, because of that time in place.
[00:41:20] you know, and that's what I'm interested in tracking.
[00:41:23] Emy Digrappa: that is amazing, Tracy, because I think about my oldest sister who grew up in the sixties her way of thinking and talking and you know, the civil rights movement and all this stuff is so different from Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:39] From me. You know, that didn't. Grow up in that period. Right. And it is amazing how those, the culture is actually shaping and forming you. Mm-hmm. As, as you are growing up, what's going on in the world? It,
[00:41:55] Tracy Daugherty: it is, and it still reverberates. I mean, the world right now is so different than the world of the 1960s, but.
[00:42:03] Many of the things that are happening culturally now are, are still, I think, reactions to some things that happened in the sixties or they are echoes conscious or not of, of that, of it. Or they're, they're, they're, they're, uh, it's a backlash against it or whatever, but was these things still reverberate?
[00:42:20] So the mm-hmm. It's really true. What Faulkner said, the past has never really passed. Mm-hmm. Which is the value of studying history.
[00:42:27] Emy Digrappa: Yeah. Well, it has been so wonderful talking to you. Um, tell me or tell the audience what are the ways that they can, um, discover you, your website? Are you on social media?
[00:42:40] How can they find you?
[00:42:41] Tracy Daugherty: I'm not on social media. I'm, I'm one of those dinosaurs. Uh, but I do have a website. It's just tracy doherty.com and it's got a list of all, all my books and publications and so that's the easiest way to find me.
[00:42:54] Emy Digrappa: Okay. Well I will definitely, um, put that in the show description
[00:42:58] Tracy Daugherty: Well, I appreciate it. It's been fun talking to you and uh, I look forward to coming out your way again sometime, so. Oh
[00:43:04] Emy Digrappa: yeah. Very good. I love it out there in Wyoming.
[00:43:06] Tracy Daugherty: Good,
[00:43:07] Emy Digrappa: I'm glad to hear it. Thank you so much. Thank you.