Dr. Matt Luckett
Dr. Matt Luckett studies and writes about the American West, World War II, and American History in general. Originally from the Midwest, Luckett received his B.A. in history from Southeast Missouri State University in 2003 and an M.A. in history from Marquette University in 2005. After taking a few years off he relocated to California, where he completed his Ph.D. in American history at UCLA in 2014. His first book, Never Caught Twice: Horse Stealing and Culture in Western Nebraska, 1850 - 1890, will be released by the University of Nebraska Press in fall 2020. He is also working on a documentary about earthquake prediction scares in the Mississippi Valley and a book about his grandfather's experiences during World War II. In his spare time, Luckett enjoys woodworking, traveling, and spending time with his family.
Twitter: @LuckettHistory
Instagram: @LuckettHistory
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
I am a really big fan of 90s alternative, both because it is nostalgic for me personally and because I enjoy the variety. For all the ribbing that bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam get for "copying" Nirvana, there was a ton of idiosyncratic experimentation during that decade. There's no real aesthetic or thematic connectivity between Soul Coughing, Uncle Tupelo, the Breeders, Tool, Hole, Radiohead, and Hootie and the Blowfish, yet they all play on the same stations and coexisted at the same time. This will sound hackneyed and no doubt your readers should ignore it, but I feel like the message is for us to be true to ourselves. If you want to write jazz pop, do it! Fancy a combination of ska, alt-country, and heavy metal? Make it happen! Be creative. Be yourself. Don't apologize for either. When writing, only you can tell the story you want to tell.
What’s the oddest thing a reader has ever asked you?
Someone asked me last year if my history of horse stealing was real. I asked them what they meant by that, to which they replied that they wanted to know if I had made it all up. I honestly did not know how to answer that . . . I mean, obviously it's real. I have a twenty-page bibliography and hundreds of endnotes. I spent nine years researching and writing it and possess tens of thousands of pages of digitized records from archives across the country to support my argument. In other words, I kept my receipts. But I didn't know how to answer that question. With incredulity? With patience? With horror that Americans have so little faith in academic historians that they now wonder if we are making all this stuff up? I approached it as a teachable moment and explained how much time I spent researching it and documenting my work, which seemed to satisfy this person. But I was still a little surprised, and it left me wondering: what can historians do in the future to restore the public's faith and trust in our craft?
Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?
Domestically, I prefer rural areas. Internationally, I prefer cities.
In the United States I love visiting National Parks, small towns, forgotten beaches, lonely highways . . . I like the peace and solitude and beauty that comes with these spaces. I like being able to roam freely in a car or on a bike. I know enough about American history that I can imagine the landscape as it might have been and identify places like the Nebraska Sandhills that might otherwise escape the attention of tourists.
Internationally, however, I like to anchor myself in cities. I like to visit museums, try new foods, ride the subway, drink coffee in outdoor cafes and watch people, shop in local grocery stores, stay in Air BnBs, wander around, and walk everywhere. I hate driving anywhere internationally, so I don't. I've taken several rural excursions abroad, which were a lot of fun, but at the end of the day I like coming back to the city.
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
I feel like a writer is someone who writes for a living, and an author is someone who has written one or more books. They are different in the sense that a writer can pound out a few thousand words a day, get paid for it, and never finish writing their book, while an author can make their living doing other things and then publish a book that makes them absolutely no money whatsoever. These aren't mutually exclusive categories, but I'm firmly in the latter group, I think. I don't like writing enough to want to make a living doing it, since it's a gig economy labor market and a lot of that writing includes writing on subjects chosen by other people. This includes a fair amount of academic writing, too, which tends to be channeled into journal articles and other less-fun forums that count more toward tenure portfolios than personal amusement. But as a non-tenure track historian with a day job, I can work on my next book with relative freedom to do what I want. I don't write enough to be a "writer," since I couldn't buy a turkey sandwich with my daily output, but I am proud of the works I produce. I loved writing my first book, and I love writing the one I am working on now too. But I love the projects overall more than the actual writing specifically, if that makes any sense.
What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?
I don't know if it is interesting so much as it is symbolic, since most of my clothes are purchased online or at Target . . . but I do have a trucker's hat with the word "Southeast" emblazoned in red cursive on the front. I bought it at my alma mater, Southeast Missouri State University. When I was in college my friends and I would sometimes go to the Huddle House in Scott City, which had a huge truck stop, and hang out there at the end of a late night. Many of the friends I saw there are now off in other parts of the country and are doing very well for themselves. Meanwhile, I ended up in California. Just like the trucks in the parking lot there, we all came to college from different places, met there at that one critical point in our lives, and then hit the highway and dispersed in all directions. I feel like the "traditional" undergraduate college experience is kind of like a truck stop in some ways: a place to stop, have a mediocre yet satisfying meal, get your bearings, figure out your next moves, load up your music playlist, and then hit the road. Life is a journey, after all, and in my life journey college was an important part of that.
I don't usually wear my trucker hat, but I take it with me whenever I travel. I feel like it says a lot about where I'm from originally, represents who I am today, and reminds me that I still have places to go. Keep on truckin'.
