As a former journalist, I am interested in the career of others in the profession—and that of Lawrence Wright has confounded me for some time. Why does the author of the internationally acclaimed book, The Looming Tower, choose to write two politically charged books on Texas in later years? That strikes me as a strange trajectory.

Following a Bachelor’s at Tulane, Wright earned his Master’s at the American Institute of Cairo and stayed to teach for two years, not returning to the states until 1971. Living among highly educated American ex-pats and locals in Egypt allowed him an intimate view of the Middle East.

In 1992 he joined the sophisticated news team of The New Yorker, making more important contacts that prepared him to write about the Al-Qaeda 2001 attack of the twin towers. His magnum opus won a Pulitzer and a long list of other accolades in 2007. That seems to be a heady environment no journalist would want to leave. And yet Wright permanently settled in the Lone Star State, writing God Save Texas in 2018 and Mr. Texas in 2023.

That just strikes me odd. A journalist does their best work in an environment they know well and in which they have influence. Why-ever would Wright leave the international stage to write about our provincial world here?

Part of the answer comes from Wright’s background. Although born in Oklahoma, he has lived in Texas most his life. His father’s banking career took the family to Abilene, then Dallas when Wright was only a boy, and he seemed to return to this state off and on thereafter. He began to write for Texas Monthly in 1980 and settled permanently in Austin, continuing with what he describes as his “life-long field studies spent among Texans.”

Friends have included ranchers, bankers, oilmen, politicians, and historians. He’s met Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, and John Graves; and ridden on Willie Nelson’s tour bus. His daughter went to high school with George “Dubya” Bush’s twins and the Wright family attended Christmas parties at the Governor’s mansion in the late ‘90s.

Wright admits that he has “considered moving to New York, where most of my colleagues live, or Washington, which is Lotus Land for political journalists.” But he is offput by both those cultures. “I think I am too much of a rustic to survive there,” he notes.

It is obvious that Lawrence Wright has an emotional connection to Texas; it is home. Like many of us, he sees the goodness that is here. But also like many of us, he has fair criticism of the current leadership. And he happens to believe that Texas has a “disproportionate influence on the rest of the country,” writing: “Texas has nurtured an immature political culture that has done terrible damage to the state and to the nation.”

If he is correct, then Wright’s continued badgering of Texas politicians takes on a different hue and a greater importance. It seems likely he still believes he is at the center of a larger universe—a place where he can make a difference.

JONNIE MARTIN

POST SCRIPT: I hope you will join me again next week, when I will wade into poetry. I promise, it is a shallow creek–we will hardly get our ankles wet–but even this less-popular literary form has its messages to share.