Customer Reviews

Lone Star Literature: From the Red River to the Rio Grande: A Texas Anthology

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This humongous book - 733 pages - is of the un-put-downable kind. Except you can put it down when you absolutely HAVE to and then pick up easily where you left off because it consists of many short pieces, each entire of itself. In fact, it's the kind of book you can dip into. But what will happen, or at least what happened with me, is that you'll think you're going to read a selection or two from, say, the 'West' section and will look up two hours later and realize that your coffee got cold, that the phone had gone unanswered several times or that you're only going to get three hours sleep before you have to be back at work.

The editor of this jewel is Don Graham, who is the J. Frank Dobie Professor of American and English Literature at the Univerity of Texas in Austin, a man who probably knows more about Texas writers than anyone. J. Frank Dobie, of course, was the Texas writer who put Texas history on the map back in the middle years of last century (it still seems funny saying 'last century,' doesn't it?). There's a piece of Dobie's, 'Bogged Shadows,' that is a great place to start; it tells of a yarn-spinner of the quintessential Texas cowboy sort, and is funnier than all getout.

The book primarily consists of 20th-century writing and is divided into logical sections: 'The West,' 'The South,' 'The Border,' and 'Town and City.' Each section is ordered chronologically. For me, the selections from memoirs are the most arresting, but there are also short stories, humor pieces and essays covering everything from pioneer days to the JFK assassination and beyond. There are many well-known writers here--like O. Henry ('Art and the Bronco,' with a funny O. Henry ending), John A. Lomax (from 'Adventures of a Ballad Hunter'), Robert A. Caro (not a Texan, but the honored writer of the multivolume LBJ biography, here represented by 'The Sad Irons,' from Volume I), Larry McMurtry (from 'The Last Picture Show'), Sandra Cisneros ('La Fabulosa: A Texas Operetta'), Katherine Anne Porter ('The Grave'), Molly Ivins ('Texas Women: True Grit and All the Rest'), Donald Barthelme (the hilarious 'I Bought a Little City'), and Kinky Friedman (the equally hilarious 'Social Studies'). And there's much more that I don't have room to list. For instance, there is an excerpt from 'The Wind,' by Dorothy Scarborough that was the basis for Lillian Gish's greatest silent movie of the same name set in the unrelenting harshness of the Panhandle.

The real discoveries, as I've said, are the raw and veristic memoirs. There is 'The Bride,' by Hallie Crawford Stillwell, who tells of being an 18-year-old bride taken by her new husband to live on his godforsaken ranch forty miles from the nearest town. Cowpoke James Emmitt McCauley's 'Headed for the Setting Sun,' gives a gritty yet funny picture of life on the cattle trail. C. C. White's 'No Quittin' Sense,' recalls life as a boy of color in East Texas in the early years of the century.

Most arresting of all is the excerpt from the memoir of Gertrude Beasley, 'My First Thirty Years,' written in the mid-1920s in language that is still shocking today. When the book was published in Paris (France, not Texas) it was banned in England because of its sensational content. Still, it fairly throbs with the reality of growing up in a dirt-poor household, one of eleven children, and the product of a rape. I'll say no more; you really must read this. I, for one, am going to see if I can't find the complete book--it's THAT good.

For someone like I, who grew up in rural Oklahoma (and felt a kinship with Texas partly because half our family were and are Texans) the scenes and situations in this collection were at least vaguely familiar, yet I learned things on every page. For someone with no connection with Texas there will be discoveries that at least partly dispel the notion that Texas is nothing but George W. Bush and Enron. Texas is a real, honest-to-goodness place that fairly vibrates with energy, that is populated with some of the wryest, kindest, orneriest, most independent people on earth.

Heartily recommended.

Scott Morrison

As someone who has recently been turned on the fascinating history and culture of the Lone Star state, I got my hands on this book shortly after it was published. The anthology's editor thoughtfully divides the pieces into four sections based on the major geographical regions of Texas. There is a wide range of authors represented, from Dobie and McMurtry to Cisneros and Glib. My only problem with Lone Star Literature is that while Don Graham includes works from dozens of authors, he leaves out pieces from, in my opinion, two of the best novelists to ever produce Texas fiction: Cormac McCarthy and James Carlos Blake. It is possible that these two simply did not want to be included, but I don't think the anthology is complete with out them. All in all, Graham has created a great, thick volume of Texas literature that will provide hours of reading entertainment.

This is a conglomeration of stories in an array of styles and points of view. This is a great book for those of us who love to read something written in a genuine style that ignores the capriciousness of editors and agents. With the exception of a few contemporary successes, most of the authors in this compendium are unknowns who simply wanted to tell their stories. After reading, I've purchased several copies for gifts.

The book I ordered came in a timely manner and in great condition. I am very please and will be sure to order more in the future.