SNOW AND STRAW: Three Novellas on the Life of Poetry, by Tracy Daugherty

Publication Date: December 15, 2021

Paperback, 200 pages

ISBN: 978-1-937968-97-7

$32.00 retail, $25.00 from publisher

Tracy Daugherty is an acclaimed biographer of authors, as well as a distinguished fiction author in his own right. In Snow and Straw he braids together these two skills, presenting three novellas that offer fictionalized accounts of the lives of very disparate writers: John Howard Griffin, Jack Elliott Myers, and Anna Akhmatova. What connects their stories – aside from Daugherty’s mastery of language and narrative – is the insight they offer into the writing life. All three of his subjects, along with a wide cast of other characters real and imagined who populate their stories (including, in the Griffin account, a vivid portrait of Thomas Merton), are human, all too human, and Daugherty grants them their flaws along with their achievements – suggesting, in the process, that it may not be possible to separate the two. He also demonstrates, compellingly, that sometimes it is fiction that conveys the greatest truths.

Praise for Tracy Daugherty & Snow and Straw

With sharp, beautiful concision, Tracy Daugherty’s new novellas, like the best of poetry, invite you into a labyrinth of human consciousness. Here are the days and nights that poets actually live, where they encounter the experiences that make and mark the language of their poems. Whether it’s young Jack Myers stalking into the Jewish butcher shop or motherly Anna Akhmatova at the prison gates, the desperation of everyday life in these narratives is just that. Sometimes Daugherty’s characters lose. Other times they get lost. But, always, they grow organically in the asymmetrical shape that any life, and any novella as marvelous as these, possess. As with all his previous fiction, Daugherty gives you a generous understanding of the sublime qualities of his characters. And, there is no one more masterful at evoking the magnetic depth and mystery of Texas.

—David Biespiel, author of Republic Cafe

Has any American fiction writer ever written about the inner life of the poet more revealingly than Tracy Daugherty? In the three novellas of Snow and Straw, Daugherty balances numerous angles of inquiry to render the contrariant impulses that give birth to high literary art. In so doing, he uncovers not merely the exterior chaos of actual writers in their everyday lives but also the irresolvable conflicts that both compel and impede important creative work. Daugherty’s achievement is to demonstrate how, for each of the authors in these stories, writing itself assumes a priestly function, granting temporary absolution so that the writer can go on in the world.

—Kevin Clark, author of The Consecrations

How – and why – does one become a poet? What of fate and desire compels a person to live so intimately, and often at great personal cost, with words? In language both gorgeously lyrical and emotionally precise, Tracy Daugherty offers a stunning cache of poet-world surprises – homages and biographies, cameos and incarnations, maps of literary meccas, retellings of literary lore (wild parties, chance meetings, the weirdness of academia) and so much more. Poets will recognize the life-and-times recounted here, but every reader will be taken in by the insights and revelations in these stunning novellas.

—Lia Purpura, author of All the Fierce Tethers

A compelling voice drives each novella, they are supplely crafted, and the language very often leaps with vibrant, unapologizing heart. A Jewish boy, having settled a score: “Jack didn’t say a word. His fist hurt but the rest of his body felt like a beacon shining clear across the ocean, lighting all the dark huts in Odessa where his ancestors had dwelled.” Daugherty convincingly evokes the lives of poets because he is one, writing in prose.

—John Daniel, author of Gifted

About the Author

Tracy Daugherty is the author of thirteen books of fiction and eight nonfiction books, including biographies of Donald Barthelme, Joseph Heller, Joan Didon, and Billy Lee Brammer. His biography of Larry McMurtry is forthcoming. His work has been honored by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Oregon with his wife, the writer and musician Marjorie Sandor.