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Tracy Kidder, an award-winning narrative nonfiction writer who turned everything from computer engineering to life in a nursing home into unexpected bestsellers, has died. He was 80. <\/p>\n
His son, Nat Kidder, confirmed to The Associated Press that Kidder died from lung cancer Tuesday at his daughter’s home in Boston.<\/p>\n
Kidder won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his 1981 work \u201cThe Soul of a New Machine,\u201d which delved into the work of a fledgling computer company long before most people cared about the inner workings of Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like going into another country,\u201d Kidder told the AP at the time. \u201cAt first, I didn\u2019t understand what anybody was saying.”<\/p>\n
Over the ensuing decades, Kidder immersed himself in worlds he was previously unfamiliar with, producing richly researched books about topics that may not sound like light reading.<\/p>\n
For 1989’s \u201cAmong Schoolchildren,\u201d he spent a year in a fifth-grade classroom, highlighting the dedication of an inner-city teacher in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Later, for 1993’s \u201cOld Friends,\u201d he observed the dark side of growing old in America while also chronicling how two friends maintained their dignity in a nursing home despite their infirmities.<\/p>\n
Turning these events at a Northampton, Massachusetts, nursing home into a cohesive narrative was one of his major challenges, Kidder told the AP.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a lot happens, and yet I think when you read it, you feel that a lot does. Small things have to count for a great deal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In 2003, Kidder wrote \u201cMountains Beyond Mountains,\u201d about a doctor\u2019s effort to bring health care to Haiti. The work introduced Kidder’s work to a new generation of readers as numerous universities added it to their reading lists.<\/p>\n
\u201cMountains Beyond Mountains changed my life–and the lives of so many others around the world,\u201d John Green, author of \u201cThe Fault in Our Stars,\u201d wrote on social media Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The book even inspired the indie rock band Arcade Fire’s 2010 hit \u201cSprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTracy\u2019s gifts for storytelling and tireless reporting are an enduring reflection of the empathy, integrity, and endless curiosity he brought to everything he did,\u201d Kidder\u2019s longtime publisher Random House said in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n
All the while, Kidder was careful to eschew focusing on his longtime loves like fishing or baseball, afraid that if he spent too much time in one of those realms, it might cause him to \u201cfeel sick of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kidder was born in New York City in 1945 and attended Harvard University, where he signed up for ROTC to avoid the Vietnam War draft. <\/p>\n
After graduation, despite thinking he would be assigned a Washington communications intelligence role, Kidder was instead sent off to Vietnam, where the 22-year-old was placed in charge of an eight-man rear-echelon radio research detachment that monitored the communications of enemy units to try to pinpoint their locations.<\/p>\n
Kidder documented the confounding experience in 2005’s \u201cMy Detachment,\u201d an often humorous memoir that offered insights into the lives of the support troops who made up most of the 500,000-plus U.S. military personnel who were in Vietnam at the height of the buildup when the author served there in 1968-1969. The war became an abstraction for Kidder, who never saw combat and knew the enemy only as \u201cdots on a map.\u201d <\/p>\n
After the war, Kidder and his new wife, Frances Gray Toland, moved to the Midwest so Kidder could enroll in the University of Iowa’s prestigious creative writing program, where he latched onto the New Journalism wave pioneered by writers like Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote. <\/p>\n
Kidder hated the title \u201cliterary journalist,\u201d telling the Dallas Morning News in 2010 that he found the description \u201cpretentious.\u201d<\/p>\n
The term creative nonfiction irked him too: \u201cIt suggests we make things up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, he saw himself as a storyteller.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think of fiction and nonfiction as all that different, except that nonfiction is not invented,” he told the AP. “But I take exception to those people who think nonfiction should not appropriate the techniques of fiction … They belong to storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kidder is survived by his wife, Fran, their two children, Nat Kidder and Alice Kidder Bukhman, and four grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n