Reading: Tracy Daugherty and Jon Lewis

Annie Bloom's Books welcomes Oregon authors Tracy Daugherty and Jon Lewis for an in-store reading from their new books and a conversation about the counterculture movies of the 1960s.

About Larry McMurtry: A Life:

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.

Born and raised in Texas, Tracy Daugherty (he/him) is the author of over ten novels and short story collections, a memoir, a book of personal essays, a collection of essays on writing, a novella collection, and several literary biographies. His 2009 biography of Donald Barthelme, Hiding Man, was a New York Times and New Yorker Notable Book, and his 2015 biography of Joan Didion, The Last Love Song was a New York Times Bestseller. His work has been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. At Oregon State University he helped found the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

About Road Trip to Nowhere: Hollywood Encounters the Counterculture:

How a new generation of counterculture talent changed the landscape of Hollywood, the film industry, and celebrity culture. Road Trip to Nowhere elaborates a primary-sourced history of movie production culture, examining the lives of a number of talented actors who got wrapped up in the politics and lifestyles of the counterculture. Thoroughly put off by celebrity culture, actors like Dennis Hopper, Christopher Jones, Jean Seberg, and others rejected the aspirational backstory and inevitable material trappings of success, much to the chagrin of the studios and directors who backed them. In Road Trip to Nowhere, film historian Jon Lewis details dramatic encounters on movie sets and in corporate boardrooms, on the job and on the streets, and in doing so offers an entertaining and rigorous historical account of an out-of-touch Hollywood establishment and the counterculture workforce they would never come to understand.

Jon Lewis is the University Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at Oregon State University. He is the author of over a dozen books, including Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles.