Hot off the electric press, as the August issue of "Will's Texana Monthly: Reviews, News and Electric Observations," is "Texas Historical and Literary Blogs," an annotated, illustrated, and categorized list of over 100 blogs "about" Texas.
The email attachment is illustrated and available free upon request.
The non-illustrated version is posted at TEXAS BLOG NOTES, http://texasblognotes.blogspot.com
The categories include
Will’s History, Literature, and Reference Blogs -
Architectural Preservation & Appreciation -
Book Agents, Editors, Publicists, Consultants, and Their Ilk -
Book Reading Clubs & Book Companions -
Book Reviews & News -
Classroom Experiments -
Commercial Expressions -
Culturally Convergent with Historical or Literary Interests -
Historical Interests & Projects -
Historical Museums, Libraries, & Archives -
Historical Organizations -
History via Newspaper Blogs -
Literate Writers -
Literate Naturalists -
Literary Organizations -
Oozing Toward Politics -
Blog Cousins, The Fort Worth Museum Anomalies -
Favorites, Bookmarks, and Subscriptions to Feeds -
Starting a Blog -
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Friday, August 29, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Introduction to the Texas Institute of Letters
An Introduction to the Texas Institute of Letters
(July 2007 issue of Will's Texana Monthly)
Upon discovering there was no readily available simple listing of winners of the Texas Institute of Letters annual awards, I set out to close the gap. Darwin Payne, one such award winner, now at SMU and also secretary of TIL offered large blocks of citations which I augmented and fininished into a final list. During the period I also collected some historical and organizations infomation about TIL and fashioned it into a preface. The list was then added. The total was sent to subscribers in July 2007 as the first in what has become an occasional mono-thematic series of WTM.
If you wish to receive a full electric copy, simple request it through willstexana at yahoo dot com
[[ TIL subsequently adopted the responsibility of posting that list of award winners on their own new webpage at
The Table of Contents (of the July 2007 WTM)
What is the Texas Institute of Letters? - page 4
TIL Webpage – page 5
Officers as of January 2007 – page 6
List of Previous Paisano Ranch Residents: 1967-2000s – page 7
TIL Press Release of Award Winners for Works Published in 2006 – page 8
Finalists for the Publication Year 2006 - page 10
Active Members as of January 2007 – page 13
List of Previous Winners: 1939 to 2006 – page 16
Alphabetical Index by Winning Authors – page 31-36
TIL Webpage – page 5
Officers as of January 2007 – page 6
List of Previous Paisano Ranch Residents: 1967-2000s – page 7
TIL Press Release of Award Winners for Works Published in 2006 – page 8
Finalists for the Publication Year 2006 - page 10
Active Members as of January 2007 – page 13
List of Previous Winners: 1939 to 2006 – page 16
Alphabetical Index by Winning Authors – page 31-36
The prefatory "What is the Texas Institute of Letters" is below
What is the Texas Institute of Letters?
A recent press release describes itself, “The Texas Institute of Letters was founded in Dallas in 1936 during the Texas Centennial to stimulate interest in Texas letters, to recognize distinctive achievement in the field, and to promote fellowship among those interested in the literary and cultural development of the state.”
The TIL webpage notes, “The Texas Institute of Letters is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to stimulate interest in Texas letters and to recognize distinctive literary achievement. In addition to promoting fellowship among those especially interested in the cultural development of the state, the TIL annually gives awards for published work and, with the University of Texas at Austin, supports the Paisano fellowships for writers.”
John Edward Weems in a Handbook of Texas article on the Institute mentions that “Membership is offered to persons associated with Texas who have been nominated by a member, approved by the council, and elected by the active members. The members are novelists, poets, essayists, historians, journalists, playwrights, and other writers, but the emphasis for membership has always been on authorship of quality.”
The idea for the organization came from William H. Vann, later author of The Texas Institute of Letters: 1936 – 1966 (Austin: Encino Press, 1967). Vann’s seminal idea and continuing interest across the decades allows the bestowal of the title “Father of the Texas Institute of Letters.”
Originally, the basic purpose was discussion among the members and an undefined public role. Frank Dobie soon became the Institute’s lightning rod, center of gravity, or trail boss, as the occasion would allow. Beyond their convocations in the earliest years, the members began to give awards for the publication year of 1939. Over the years, the categories have changed and remained the same. Some awards are for books, others for periodical issues, and yet more for physical design and special categories. Most are adult works, but some are for children. Not all winning books are Texas by content but are by Texas authors treating a topic in a civilized and literate manner. The members enjoy the continuing discussion on the relationship of the regional perspective and broader literature and civilization. After Dobie’s death in 1964, his Paisano Ranch was purchased by friends, presented to the University of Texas and went to use by the Institute as a place of literary residency for selected “Fellows” who typically stayed there for a six month period.
Read a brief history to the middle of the 1960s by John Edward Weems in the Handbook of Texas Online at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/TT/kqt1.html or Weems’ other version in "History of the Texas Institute of Letters," Texas Libraries (vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 1986). Or find the Directory and History (1948, history by Dobie, mimeographed and rare). Margaret Patton Steigman wrote a thesis “An Evaluation and Record of Selected Novels and Authors Honored by the Texas Institute of Letters,” (East Texas State University, 1976).
A recent press release describes itself, “The Texas Institute of Letters was founded in Dallas in 1936 during the Texas Centennial to stimulate interest in Texas letters, to recognize distinctive achievement in the field, and to promote fellowship among those interested in the literary and cultural development of the state.”
The TIL webpage notes, “The Texas Institute of Letters is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to stimulate interest in Texas letters and to recognize distinctive literary achievement. In addition to promoting fellowship among those especially interested in the cultural development of the state, the TIL annually gives awards for published work and, with the University of Texas at Austin, supports the Paisano fellowships for writers.”
John Edward Weems in a Handbook of Texas article on the Institute mentions that “Membership is offered to persons associated with Texas who have been nominated by a member, approved by the council, and elected by the active members. The members are novelists, poets, essayists, historians, journalists, playwrights, and other writers, but the emphasis for membership has always been on authorship of quality.”
The idea for the organization came from William H. Vann, later author of The Texas Institute of Letters: 1936 – 1966 (Austin: Encino Press, 1967). Vann’s seminal idea and continuing interest across the decades allows the bestowal of the title “Father of the Texas Institute of Letters.”
Originally, the basic purpose was discussion among the members and an undefined public role. Frank Dobie soon became the Institute’s lightning rod, center of gravity, or trail boss, as the occasion would allow. Beyond their convocations in the earliest years, the members began to give awards for the publication year of 1939. Over the years, the categories have changed and remained the same. Some awards are for books, others for periodical issues, and yet more for physical design and special categories. Most are adult works, but some are for children. Not all winning books are Texas by content but are by Texas authors treating a topic in a civilized and literate manner. The members enjoy the continuing discussion on the relationship of the regional perspective and broader literature and civilization. After Dobie’s death in 1964, his Paisano Ranch was purchased by friends, presented to the University of Texas and went to use by the Institute as a place of literary residency for selected “Fellows” who typically stayed there for a six month period.
Read a brief history to the middle of the 1960s by John Edward Weems in the Handbook of Texas Online at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/TT/kqt1.html or Weems’ other version in "History of the Texas Institute of Letters," Texas Libraries (vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 1986). Or find the Directory and History (1948, history by Dobie, mimeographed and rare). Margaret Patton Steigman wrote a thesis “An Evaluation and Record of Selected Novels and Authors Honored by the Texas Institute of Letters,” (East Texas State University, 1976).
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Tecnologico de Monterrey & Texas studies
The Tecnologico de Monterrey offers some Texana
"Thirty Years of Hispanic Literature in the United States". A Celebration of Writing by American Authors of Latino Heritage. For Readers of all Ages A Humanities Exhibitorganized by Texas Humanities Resource Center.
Texas-Mexcio Border Studies
American Voices: Hispanic Literature in the USA
and it refers back to a Texas page - Humanities exhibit
and an essay
"Voces Americanas/American Voices : Thirty Years of Hispanic Literature in the United States "
Essay by Dr. Roberta Fernández
(abridged)
Friday, May 02, 2008
Don Graham Observes Texas Literature
Don Graham, lead academician in Texas letters down at the University on the Colorado River, offers his corrective commentary, "Deathless Prose," in a recent Texas Observer, February 8, 2008 issue
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2687
It's a good read. He ambles through John Graves, Elmer Kelton, Larry McMurtry, Dagoberto Gilb, glances at genderist writing and the rise of PETA values, connects with Betty Sue Flowers. Not to leave a sacred cow unshorn, along the way, he does mention UT's classless tuition and Texas Monthly's persistance in carrying some content between the advertisements. He rounds it out with mentions of international concerns of the French and Chinese.
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2687
It's a good read. He ambles through John Graves, Elmer Kelton, Larry McMurtry, Dagoberto Gilb, glances at genderist writing and the rise of PETA values, connects with Betty Sue Flowers. Not to leave a sacred cow unshorn, along the way, he does mention UT's classless tuition and Texas Monthly's persistance in carrying some content between the advertisements. He rounds it out with mentions of international concerns of the French and Chinese.
Texas Writers, Authors in Wikipedia
Texas Writers Category
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Texas_writers
Here's a list of about 100 Texas writers with their own Pages in Wikipedia. The implicit task is, well, Texan in dimension - not to mention who qualifies. The "Texas Portal" link is displayed to link you to a general article on Texas; it is not that fine group of University of North Texas librarian smoothing the wrinkles in the sheet of Texas time through their "Portal to Texas History," itself a broad and admirable effort.
Wikipedia, the community based international encyclopedia, includes the option of clustering topics for users convenience. This clustering or categorizing is called a "Category." One such category is "Texas Writers" which offers an opportunity for enrichment. As with other Wikipedia efforts, its improvement rests with users, as occasionally supervised by another participant. The current list is a good beginning. It does properly include William Goyen who has been slighted by some current raining critics of Texana. It does not include Cormac McCarthy whose writing is also refined and literary.
The lists includes novelists, journalists, folklorists, playwrights, essayists, and other idlers travelling under the social approbation of wordsmithery. Who is Paco Ahlgren? He's just a click away.
A
Paco Ahlgren Susan Wittig Albert Aaron Allston Ellis Amburn Dr. Moe Anderson Mechelle Avey
B
Neal Barrett, Jr. Gordon Baxter Roy Bedichek Raymond Benson Sarah Bird Jayme Lynn Blaschke Timothy Braun Walter H. Breen Sandra Brown Paul Burka James Lee Burke
C
Rachel Caine Candace Camp Matt Clark (writer) Ernest Cline Madison Cooper Richard L. Cox
Deborah Crombie
D
J. Frank Dobie Allen Drury
E
Lars Eighner Linda Ellerbee P. N. Elrod
F
James L. Farmer, Sr. John Henry Faulk O. C. Fisher Brian Floca Robert Flynn (author) Horton Foote Kinky Friedman
G
Gail Giles Fred Gipson William Goyen John Gray (U.S. author)
H
Leon Hale Brett Halliday Charles L. Harness Vicki Hearne Allison Hedge Coke Kate Heyhoe
Donna Hogan Kimberly Willis Holt Robert E. Howard James Hynes
I
Molly Ivins
J
Bret Anthony Johnston Tom Jones (writer)
K
Elmer Kelton Rick Klaw
L
Woodrow Landfair Joe R. Lansdale Christopher Largen James Lavilla-Havelin
Thomas C. Lea, III Cara Lockwood
M
Ardath Mayhar Larry McMurtry Judith McNaught
N
Chris Nakashima-Brown Warren Carl Norwood
O
Joe M. O'Connell Chad Oliver Karen Olsson William O'Neil
P
Lawrence Person D. T. Pollard Katherine Anne Porter
R
Karen Ranney Nancy Taylor Rosenberg Ron Rozelle
S
Dorothy Scarborough Harvey Schmidt Duane Simolke Skeeter Skelton Jimmy Starr
Bruce Sterling Whitley Strieber Katherine Sutcliffe Shanna Swendson
T
Jodi Thomas John Thomason Frank X. Tolbert Sergio Troncoso Lisa Tuttle
U
Jim Underwood Steven Utley
W
Howard Waldrop Linda Warren Joanna Wayne Don Webb Walter Prescott Webb
Janice Woods Windle Gene Wolfe Ramsay Wood M. K. Wren
Y
J. Lanier Yeates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Texas_writers
Here's a list of about 100 Texas writers with their own Pages in Wikipedia. The implicit task is, well, Texan in dimension - not to mention who qualifies. The "Texas Portal" link is displayed to link you to a general article on Texas; it is not that fine group of University of North Texas librarian smoothing the wrinkles in the sheet of Texas time through their "Portal to Texas History," itself a broad and admirable effort.
Wikipedia, the community based international encyclopedia, includes the option of clustering topics for users convenience. This clustering or categorizing is called a "Category." One such category is "Texas Writers" which offers an opportunity for enrichment. As with other Wikipedia efforts, its improvement rests with users, as occasionally supervised by another participant. The current list is a good beginning. It does properly include William Goyen who has been slighted by some current raining critics of Texana. It does not include Cormac McCarthy whose writing is also refined and literary.
The lists includes novelists, journalists, folklorists, playwrights, essayists, and other idlers travelling under the social approbation of wordsmithery. Who is Paco Ahlgren? He's just a click away.
A
Paco Ahlgren Susan Wittig Albert Aaron Allston Ellis Amburn Dr. Moe Anderson Mechelle Avey
B
Neal Barrett, Jr. Gordon Baxter Roy Bedichek Raymond Benson Sarah Bird Jayme Lynn Blaschke Timothy Braun Walter H. Breen Sandra Brown Paul Burka James Lee Burke
C
Rachel Caine Candace Camp Matt Clark (writer) Ernest Cline Madison Cooper Richard L. Cox
Deborah Crombie
D
J. Frank Dobie Allen Drury
E
Lars Eighner Linda Ellerbee P. N. Elrod
F
James L. Farmer, Sr. John Henry Faulk O. C. Fisher Brian Floca Robert Flynn (author) Horton Foote Kinky Friedman
G
Gail Giles Fred Gipson William Goyen John Gray (U.S. author)
H
Leon Hale Brett Halliday Charles L. Harness Vicki Hearne Allison Hedge Coke Kate Heyhoe
Donna Hogan Kimberly Willis Holt Robert E. Howard James Hynes
I
Molly Ivins
J
Bret Anthony Johnston Tom Jones (writer)
K
Elmer Kelton Rick Klaw
L
Woodrow Landfair Joe R. Lansdale Christopher Largen James Lavilla-Havelin
Thomas C. Lea, III Cara Lockwood
M
Ardath Mayhar Larry McMurtry Judith McNaught
N
Chris Nakashima-Brown Warren Carl Norwood
O
Joe M. O'Connell Chad Oliver Karen Olsson William O'Neil
P
Lawrence Person D. T. Pollard Katherine Anne Porter
R
Karen Ranney Nancy Taylor Rosenberg Ron Rozelle
S
Dorothy Scarborough Harvey Schmidt Duane Simolke Skeeter Skelton Jimmy Starr
Bruce Sterling Whitley Strieber Katherine Sutcliffe Shanna Swendson
T
Jodi Thomas John Thomason Frank X. Tolbert Sergio Troncoso Lisa Tuttle
U
Jim Underwood Steven Utley
W
Howard Waldrop Linda Warren Joanna Wayne Don Webb Walter Prescott Webb
Janice Woods Windle Gene Wolfe Ramsay Wood M. K. Wren
Y
J. Lanier Yeates
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
What is Texas Literature?
If we're gonna talk Great Texas Novel, then "What is Texas Literature?" The blog "A Practical Policy" which normally focuses on Liberation Lit and the Middle East, explored the topic in October of 2006. It begins:
"The question is sometimes asked, What is Texas literature? Is there one? And the answer is sometimes that Texas literature is more of a national literature than anything else – perhaps given that Texas has three of the 9 or 10 largest US cities and its vast countryside and great ethnic and class diversity and other factors. Among other Texas surprises, I suppose, there’s a book coming out on an “Asian underground railroad” that once ran through El Paso, Texas."
"The question is sometimes asked, What is Texas literature? Is there one? And the answer is sometimes that Texas literature is more of a national literature than anything else – perhaps given that Texas has three of the 9 or 10 largest US cities and its vast countryside and great ethnic and class diversity and other factors. Among other Texas surprises, I suppose, there’s a book coming out on an “Asian underground railroad” that once ran through El Paso, Texas."
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Great Texas Novel - Part B
After the entry from the Campaign for the American Reader, I wondered about the phrase and, yes, searched Google, some of the results being:
http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2006/wier.htm Tejano
"Tehano is a terrific novel, an epic tale of the Western frontier that is superior to Lonesome Dove: better written, more smoothly plotted, more historically accurate. It may well be the Great Texas Novel."—Dallas Morning News
http://www.forewordmagazine.com/articles/shw_article.aspx?articleid=177 Tejano
Tehano by Allen Wier (Southern Methodist University Press, 736 pages, hardcover, $27.50, 0-87074-506-9): Tehano has been cited as rivaling War and Peace in scale and Lonesome Dove in gripping reality. With the Texas Comanche territory as his arena and Antebellum days through Reconstruction as his timeframe, Wier tracks the destiny of a motley army of Americans—from displaced Northerners to desperate Okies. This is indeed the Great Texas Novel.
http://www.ninavida.com/ Texicans
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMANFREDERICKSBURG, TX NEWSBy Amanda Maria Morrison" Just when you thought the great Texas novel has already been written and any more attempts would be just running over the same armadillo again and again, comes the Texicans, a tremendous historical novel set in the aftermath of the Texas' independence and its burgeoning statehood. ...The author's ability to reveal the human heartache that plagued so many settlers in their cabins and on their ranches drives the novel's convincing plotlines........Vida's work should be placed on the same shelf with Lonesome Dove, Texas, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. "
http://books.google.com/books?id=E3J21cztCHsC&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=%22Great+TExas+novel%22&source=web&ots=6mE1PURAm4&sig=VTE5zfFa7BHZ3xf7P9d--9JjBhk&hl=en#PPA123,M1
Farther off from Heaven
In Bert Almon's "William Humphrey: Destoryer of Myths" regarding William Humphrey's "Farther," Almon invokes James Ward Lee's pamphlet on Humphrey as suggesting the volume is a great Texas novel.
A Sunday, October 30, 2005, opinion at the Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-clarke_30edi.ART0.State.Edition1.db82fc2.html
"Will Clarke: Beyond the Texas Myth: When Larry McMurtry bashed the state's literati, he must've been having one bad day" explores greatness.
A DMN sidebar asked for email suggests under the question: "Your Point: If a novelist tried to write the Great Texas Novel this year, what would it be about?
Quiet Bubble (Southern writing) explores, in July 2005, in a broader context, Texas great(?) novelists
http://quietbubble.typepad.com/quiet_bubble/2005/07/texas_writers_o.html
"Quick thinking: name four major Texas writers. By “Texas writer,” I guess I mean writers who grew up in Texas and/or writers who glean from the state for their themes, plots, geography, and moral frameworks.
After two days of back-and-forth emails with Ernesto and some web browsing, I came up with Katherine Anne Porter and Larry McMurtry. Donald Barthelme grew up in Houston, but he doesn’t count–when I think of him, I think of the hippest, strangest Greenwich Village insider you’d ever want to have a drink with, but Texas would never enter the conversation. I’ve heard the name Elmer Kelton batted around in a few newspapers, but I think he’s too obscure even for Bookforum.
So, two writers. That’s it. Why is that?"
Then Quiet Bubble goes further
http://quietbubble.typepad.com/quiet_bubble/2005/07/texas_writers_p.html
wherein he invokes Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" and Poppy Brite's "Prime" among others.
Others' added "Comments" go further.
http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2006/wier.htm Tejano
"Tehano is a terrific novel, an epic tale of the Western frontier that is superior to Lonesome Dove: better written, more smoothly plotted, more historically accurate. It may well be the Great Texas Novel."—Dallas Morning News
http://www.forewordmagazine.com/articles/shw_article.aspx?articleid=177 Tejano
Tehano by Allen Wier (Southern Methodist University Press, 736 pages, hardcover, $27.50, 0-87074-506-9): Tehano has been cited as rivaling War and Peace in scale and Lonesome Dove in gripping reality. With the Texas Comanche territory as his arena and Antebellum days through Reconstruction as his timeframe, Wier tracks the destiny of a motley army of Americans—from displaced Northerners to desperate Okies. This is indeed the Great Texas Novel.
http://www.ninavida.com/ Texicans
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMANFREDERICKSBURG, TX NEWSBy Amanda Maria Morrison" Just when you thought the great Texas novel has already been written and any more attempts would be just running over the same armadillo again and again, comes the Texicans, a tremendous historical novel set in the aftermath of the Texas' independence and its burgeoning statehood. ...The author's ability to reveal the human heartache that plagued so many settlers in their cabins and on their ranches drives the novel's convincing plotlines........Vida's work should be placed on the same shelf with Lonesome Dove, Texas, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. "
http://books.google.com/books?id=E3J21cztCHsC&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=%22Great+TExas+novel%22&source=web&ots=6mE1PURAm4&sig=VTE5zfFa7BHZ3xf7P9d--9JjBhk&hl=en#PPA123,M1
Farther off from Heaven
In Bert Almon's "William Humphrey: Destoryer of Myths" regarding William Humphrey's "Farther," Almon invokes James Ward Lee's pamphlet on Humphrey as suggesting the volume is a great Texas novel.
A Sunday, October 30, 2005, opinion at the Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-clarke_30edi.ART0.State.Edition1.db82fc2.html
"Will Clarke: Beyond the Texas Myth: When Larry McMurtry bashed the state's literati, he must've been having one bad day" explores greatness.
A DMN sidebar asked for email suggests under the question: "Your Point: If a novelist tried to write the Great Texas Novel this year, what would it be about?
Quiet Bubble (Southern writing) explores, in July 2005, in a broader context, Texas great(?) novelists
http://quietbubble.typepad.com/quiet_bubble/2005/07/texas_writers_o.html
"Quick thinking: name four major Texas writers. By “Texas writer,” I guess I mean writers who grew up in Texas and/or writers who glean from the state for their themes, plots, geography, and moral frameworks.
After two days of back-and-forth emails with Ernesto and some web browsing, I came up with Katherine Anne Porter and Larry McMurtry. Donald Barthelme grew up in Houston, but he doesn’t count–when I think of him, I think of the hippest, strangest Greenwich Village insider you’d ever want to have a drink with, but Texas would never enter the conversation. I’ve heard the name Elmer Kelton batted around in a few newspapers, but I think he’s too obscure even for Bookforum.
So, two writers. That’s it. Why is that?"
Then Quiet Bubble goes further
http://quietbubble.typepad.com/quiet_bubble/2005/07/texas_writers_p.html
wherein he invokes Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" and Poppy Brite's "Prime" among others.
Others' added "Comments" go further.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Texas Vampire Moans Intro
The Texas Vampire Moans
A Will's Texana Electric Monograph
The full bibliography is available free by emailing a request to willstexana@yahoo.com
The "Introduction" to the bibliography is below:
Introduction
With thanks to Texas A & M University Bibliographer Bill Page and Novelist Anne Rice, and a blood bank of librarians, TAMU Librarian Candace Benefiel, Dallas Public Librarian Rachel Howell, and Yale Librarian Eva Guggemons for allowing me to drain them of their vital, free-flowing information.
We could just point to our neighboring Creole and Cajun rich cultural mix in Louisiana where there is a stunningly high ratio of fictional vampire settings. But there may be even lurking foreign influences. J'arbre comme cadaver, by Léo Malet (Paris : Editions Sagesse: Librairie Tschann, 1937) a surreal work by the future major French detective novelist with a yen for America and Texas. It contains six poems, the first entitled “Texas” and another invoking a vampire’s street presence in Paris. The German comic book series “Pecos-Bill, der Held von Texas” [Pecos Bill, Hero of Texas] had as its 20th issue (among 60 others) the title Die Vampire der Goldstadt, [The Vampire of the City of Gold] (Hamburg: Mondial - Verl., 1954). But Bram’s behind it all.
The true progenitor of the Texas vampire genre begins with the modern master, if not the seminal source, Bram Stoker. Stoker’s original Dracula in 1897 included Quincey Morris, a mysterious, rich, young, cowboy Texan, a gentleman suitor of Mina, an Englishwoman caught in Dracula’s web. Morris and other suitors pursue them from England to Transylvania. There Morris stabs, quite literally with his bowie knife, the heart of Dracula, killing him even sans wooden or silver stake: “Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart” (see Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=35364&pageno=292
Quincey’s subsequent death from a previous fatal wound does not end the story. The gentlewoman takes her other, true love (the story’s narrator) and she bears a child. “It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the same day as that on which Quincey Morris died. His mother holds, I know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him. His bundle of names links all our little band of men together. But we call him Quincey” (page 293).
Folklore begat The Texas Folklore Society. Among its many books, the TFS volume # 25 Folk Travelers: Ballads, Tales, and Talk (SMU 1953), includes the venerable Roy Bedichek’s “Folklore in Natural History” and he refers a number of times to the bloodsucking vampire bat, including (page 30) “Our own Cabeza de Vaca contributed his mite to a flourishing folklore by the tale of bloodsucking bats as "big as turtle doves…” In another TFS volume # 24 The Healer of Los Olmos: And Other Mexican Lore (SMU 1951) Soledad Perez recounts in “Mexican Folklore from Austin, Texas” (page 74) “A few believe she [La Llorona]is a vampire that sucks its victim’s blood” or “has the face of a bat.” TFS pushed the envelope further; T for Texas: A State Full of Folklore edited by Francis Edward Abernethy and Herbert C Arbuckle (Dallas: E-Heart Press, 1982) contained the article “The vampire in an age of technology” by Leslie M. Thompson.
All that remains to be found is an urban legend where the Vampire Jay Frank battles the Yaqui Crying Woman Maria Inman for their love-child Erwin Frank, a chupacabra variation, in order to install the rising dark star to control the world through Austin’s “Silicon Hills.” Indeed Erwin has already made reading Stoker’s Dracula virtually mandatory for UT freshmen http://www.lib.utexas.edu/pcl/roundup/2006.html
Can we credit the modern revival to Anne O’Brien Rice?
As a New Orleans child, Anne had written a novella about Martians and other outlandish tales. Her mother died and her father was transferred to Richardson. She spent her last year at Richardson High School where she met her future husband, Dallas-born Stan Rice the late, noted poet and artist, and she began her college days at Texas Woman’s University and North Texas State University. The two young writers were consanguine in literature. They decamped to California. Her first novel Interview with the Vampire (1976), begun in San Francisco as a short-story in 1969, marked the initial volume of her “Vampire Chronicles” series filled with evocative longing, lusting and intrigue, although not itself set in Texas but New Orleans.
Her later Queen of the Damned (1988) contains a chapter, “The short happy life of Baby Jenks and the Fang Gang,” which Rice reports to Texas readers was informed by her brief Texas experience, “As I recall, the Queen of the Damned was the only novel in which I used my Texas experience. Baby Jenks the little biker novel comes from the area around Cedar Creek lake where I lived, and I get to describe the towns.” The chapter is strong with adolescent emotion, rejection, rebellion, and self-assertion. Jenks dies. But Rice lived through her adolescence and left with her Texan who with her and Browning might find themselves, lovingly “feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.” Baby Jenks and Dallas’ Fang Gang are more than nomenclatural adornment; surely they reflect some broken fragments of light on Rice’s own passage, though “through a glass darkly.”
In 2002 after husband Stan Rice’s death in New Orleans, she wrote “In 1973, when I wrote INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, my beautiful husband Stan was the inspiration for the vampire Lestat. He had Stan's long blond hair and blue eyes and feeling grief that inspired Lestat's charm and magnetism and mesmerizing movement,” (http://www.angelfire.com/journal/riceans/messnews7.html ).
Stan’s poems are streaked with surrealism, chunks of color and emotion, and bizarre commentaries on death. His own dead father was the subject of two poems “Don't Put Him In the Freezer" and "Dad is Dead," (The Radiance of Pigs, Knopf, 1999). While not suggestive of his total corpus of his poetry, portions evince nihilism, the pursuit of physical pleasures, vanity, disloyalty, and a touch of brutality – not unknown among the fanged crowd. Obviously, Anne ascended publishing with good company at home, as the numerous uses of Stan’s poetry in her writing affirm.
Doctor of Anthropology Sylvia Grider joined in. As Rice was enjoying her first laurels in 1976, Grider spoke to the Texas and New Mexico folklore societies under the title "Meanwhile Back in Transylvania, or: Dracula and the Texan." She took hero Quincey Morris from comparative literature to social profiles.
In 1982 look to Lubbock. Notice the nascent, literary drops coming from cognoscenti in Lubbock where the dry winds can drive you to strange alternatives. First, Texas Tech Press published Dracula: The Ballet by Peggy Willis and Bram Stoker (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1982). Then only five mysterious years later a dissertation was completed, “Magic, trick-work, and illusion in the vampire plays” by Thomas Leonard Colwin, (Ph. D.) --Texas Tech University, 1987. Something had gotten into the aquifer. Don’t blame the Red Vaiders; they were left alone on the plains, attractive to the thirsty thespians, and the national vampire revival bit their naïve, exposed neck early. Recently Tech-student Dustin’s http://www.westtexasvampires.com/ teaser began lurking in videos prepared after he studied the course “Slavistics” (the study of vampires) and chose to expand his earlier “West Texas Vampires” venture on You Tube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=L_6Cgiz9sew
Joe, Al, and Bill legitimized our local genre. Two novels in the late 1980’s appeared each by a good and successful writer: Joe R. Lansdale (Dead in the West - New York: Space and Time, 1986) and Alan R. Erwin.(Skeleton Dancer - New York: Dell Pub., 1989). Then the next year Bill Crider released his children’s book (A Vampire Named Fred. Lufkin, TX: Maggie Books, 1990). After which anti-coagulants were added to the water. Dozens undulated though the publishers’ veins. The cotton tenant farmer and stoic cowboy and the patient heroine and Old Yeller have company, and they are not all gentlemen or all men for that matter or human.
Quickly Dracula movies flickered in dark rooms , Les Vampires (1915) onward with maybe 200 versions. Quincey’s big screen roles are un-researched. Robert Rodriguez directed the 1996 From Dust Till Dawn, set in Texas and Mexico, then the sequel Texas Blood Money (1999) and the prequel The Handman’s Daughter (2000).
An independent company http://www.mistydawntexas.com/ has recently produced Misty Dawn “created and written by Terry Yates and being taped in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It is both a parody and an homage to the Dark Shadows gothic daytime soap opera. Think of it as "Dark Shadows meets Dallas", complete with a mysterious vampire and a greedy oil baron. / Terry had the idea for the TV series and started writing the scripts, but never dreamed that he would actually end up producing an end product. Together with David Moore as executive producer and a talented cast and crew that are currently giving their time and talent for practically nothing, Misty Dawn is taking shape as a very funny parody in a comedy style not unlike. See their You Tube trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvf9QCWDSCo.
If you visit You Tube http://www.youtube.com/ your search for “Texas and vampire” retrieves 98 videos. Similar to You Tube, the Metacafe at http://www.metacafe.com/ pulls up 1,000 videos, a bewildering number; maybe the “and” was not read as Boolean.
Pale short stories, and extracts from novels-in-progress appear via the net. The author “UntaintableRoses” offers “The Official Bloodline,” an El Paso passage, rating itself for young adults, and appearing at http://www.quizilla.com/users/.Chasing.bunnies./quizzes/The%20Official%20Bloodline%20%5BA%20Vampire%20Story%5D%20El%20Paso/
Also for flickering gamesters, an interactive game is found at B.R. Turner’s http://www.onr.com/user/bturner/ as “Chris’ Houston Vampire Game,” which seems to center in the housing projects, dating about 2000.
In terms of gross, suggestive gestures, the Google is searched to find the most bloodsucking Texan city. “Texas vampire” gives 621,000 hits, Dallas 495K, Austin 488K, Houston 416K, San Antonio 240K, El Paso 163K, Galveston 92K, and Lubbock 84K. Dallas’ Chamber of Commerce must be pleased with the Fang Gang, and the Austin Weird” campaign seems to be working. We’re so relieved. How are things in your locale?
Aggie Bill Page’s outstanding “Horny Toads and Ugly Chickens: A Bibliography on Texas in Speculative Fiction” (September 2001) - at TAMU’s Cushing website http://library.tamu.edu/cushing/collectn/lit/science/sci-fi/texfan.htm - set an entirely new standard in bibliography. A number of the several hundred citations invoke our topic. Page notes that 90% of his total citations were published since 1970, shadowing the wave of Texas vampirism. Even since 2001 the further growth has been remarkable. Page’s other work “Fantasyland / Aggieland: A History of Science Fiction and Fantasy at Texas A&M University and in Brazos County, Texas, 1913-1985” (2007) reveals Aggieland’s deep interests and probably profiles much of broader Texas. He even notes vampire movies shown on campus as far back as the 1930s. See http://libraryasp.tamu.edu/cushing/collectn/lit/science/sci-fi/science%20fiction%20texas%20am.pdf
Texas has always been a piece of surreal exotica for fantastic tales in the coffee and whiskey and pillow talk in Europe. And there’s the frontier bloodbath where we demonized the “savage” natives. Let’s not forget the un-human conditions of the slavery institution, fogging the distinctions of acceptable, civilized behavior and blowing the embers of secret conspiracies to overthrow the common power structure. And there’s the recent public interest in chupacabras, bloodsuckers as fearless as bats, they say.
Yes, the bats. Did you know that Texas is the national capital for bats (see http://www.batcon.org/home/default.asp). Our official state symbol for flying mammals is the Mexican Free-tailed bat.
And through it all, women have behaved increasingly more independently and, indeed, have written half the adult novels listed below and with increasing eroticism. Are you nervous yet? Check the several recent works of Diane Whiteside.
Our wide open Texas plains, dense forestlands, lapped coasts, and glittery cities invite writers to fill them, imaginatively.
Before 1980 Texas vampires, except as bats, were virtually non-existent. Then there was the trickle at the base of Texas’ long Panhandle neck. Whatever the causes or correlates or co-incidents or consequences, in the last 25 years an entirely fresh, literary vein or genre or topic has pulsed to life, as uncovered in the below thin-skinned listing. Just since 2000, over 30 titles have been published.
The works listed below (an incomplete list) are usually books of fiction with Texas settings or Texas characters (except for the D & T’s) with the vampire theme. You’ll find children’s books, YA novels, graphic stories/comics, theses, adult novels, and recent articles. If you dare, pick up a few the 60 titles and explore the new blood in Texas literature - vampires. Is Vlad a fad or the newest, loneliest, midnight cowboy?
For a free, electric copy of the bibliography, willstexana@yahoo.com
A Will's Texana Electric Monograph
The full bibliography is available free by emailing a request to willstexana@yahoo.com
The "Introduction" to the bibliography is below:
Introduction
With thanks to Texas A & M University Bibliographer Bill Page and Novelist Anne Rice, and a blood bank of librarians, TAMU Librarian Candace Benefiel, Dallas Public Librarian Rachel Howell, and Yale Librarian Eva Guggemons for allowing me to drain them of their vital, free-flowing information.
We could just point to our neighboring Creole and Cajun rich cultural mix in Louisiana where there is a stunningly high ratio of fictional vampire settings. But there may be even lurking foreign influences. J'arbre comme cadaver, by Léo Malet (Paris : Editions Sagesse: Librairie Tschann, 1937) a surreal work by the future major French detective novelist with a yen for America and Texas. It contains six poems, the first entitled “Texas” and another invoking a vampire’s street presence in Paris. The German comic book series “Pecos-Bill, der Held von Texas” [Pecos Bill, Hero of Texas] had as its 20th issue (among 60 others) the title Die Vampire der Goldstadt, [The Vampire of the City of Gold] (Hamburg: Mondial - Verl., 1954). But Bram’s behind it all.
The true progenitor of the Texas vampire genre begins with the modern master, if not the seminal source, Bram Stoker. Stoker’s original Dracula in 1897 included Quincey Morris, a mysterious, rich, young, cowboy Texan, a gentleman suitor of Mina, an Englishwoman caught in Dracula’s web. Morris and other suitors pursue them from England to Transylvania. There Morris stabs, quite literally with his bowie knife, the heart of Dracula, killing him even sans wooden or silver stake: “Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart” (see Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=35364&pageno=292
Quincey’s subsequent death from a previous fatal wound does not end the story. The gentlewoman takes her other, true love (the story’s narrator) and she bears a child. “It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the same day as that on which Quincey Morris died. His mother holds, I know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him. His bundle of names links all our little band of men together. But we call him Quincey” (page 293).
Folklore begat The Texas Folklore Society. Among its many books, the TFS volume # 25 Folk Travelers: Ballads, Tales, and Talk (SMU 1953), includes the venerable Roy Bedichek’s “Folklore in Natural History” and he refers a number of times to the bloodsucking vampire bat, including (page 30) “Our own Cabeza de Vaca contributed his mite to a flourishing folklore by the tale of bloodsucking bats as "big as turtle doves…” In another TFS volume # 24 The Healer of Los Olmos: And Other Mexican Lore (SMU 1951) Soledad Perez recounts in “Mexican Folklore from Austin, Texas” (page 74) “A few believe she [La Llorona]is a vampire that sucks its victim’s blood” or “has the face of a bat.” TFS pushed the envelope further; T for Texas: A State Full of Folklore edited by Francis Edward Abernethy and Herbert C Arbuckle (Dallas: E-Heart Press, 1982) contained the article “The vampire in an age of technology” by Leslie M. Thompson.
All that remains to be found is an urban legend where the Vampire Jay Frank battles the Yaqui Crying Woman Maria Inman for their love-child Erwin Frank, a chupacabra variation, in order to install the rising dark star to control the world through Austin’s “Silicon Hills.” Indeed Erwin has already made reading Stoker’s Dracula virtually mandatory for UT freshmen http://www.lib.utexas.edu/pcl/roundup/2006.html
Can we credit the modern revival to Anne O’Brien Rice?
As a New Orleans child, Anne had written a novella about Martians and other outlandish tales. Her mother died and her father was transferred to Richardson. She spent her last year at Richardson High School where she met her future husband, Dallas-born Stan Rice the late, noted poet and artist, and she began her college days at Texas Woman’s University and North Texas State University. The two young writers were consanguine in literature. They decamped to California. Her first novel Interview with the Vampire (1976), begun in San Francisco as a short-story in 1969, marked the initial volume of her “Vampire Chronicles” series filled with evocative longing, lusting and intrigue, although not itself set in Texas but New Orleans.
Her later Queen of the Damned (1988) contains a chapter, “The short happy life of Baby Jenks and the Fang Gang,” which Rice reports to Texas readers was informed by her brief Texas experience, “As I recall, the Queen of the Damned was the only novel in which I used my Texas experience. Baby Jenks the little biker novel comes from the area around Cedar Creek lake where I lived, and I get to describe the towns.” The chapter is strong with adolescent emotion, rejection, rebellion, and self-assertion. Jenks dies. But Rice lived through her adolescence and left with her Texan who with her and Browning might find themselves, lovingly “feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.” Baby Jenks and Dallas’ Fang Gang are more than nomenclatural adornment; surely they reflect some broken fragments of light on Rice’s own passage, though “through a glass darkly.”
In 2002 after husband Stan Rice’s death in New Orleans, she wrote “In 1973, when I wrote INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, my beautiful husband Stan was the inspiration for the vampire Lestat. He had Stan's long blond hair and blue eyes and feeling grief that inspired Lestat's charm and magnetism and mesmerizing movement,” (http://www.angelfire.com/journal/riceans/messnews7.html ).
Stan’s poems are streaked with surrealism, chunks of color and emotion, and bizarre commentaries on death. His own dead father was the subject of two poems “Don't Put Him In the Freezer" and "Dad is Dead," (The Radiance of Pigs, Knopf, 1999). While not suggestive of his total corpus of his poetry, portions evince nihilism, the pursuit of physical pleasures, vanity, disloyalty, and a touch of brutality – not unknown among the fanged crowd. Obviously, Anne ascended publishing with good company at home, as the numerous uses of Stan’s poetry in her writing affirm.
Doctor of Anthropology Sylvia Grider joined in. As Rice was enjoying her first laurels in 1976, Grider spoke to the Texas and New Mexico folklore societies under the title "Meanwhile Back in Transylvania, or: Dracula and the Texan." She took hero Quincey Morris from comparative literature to social profiles.
In 1982 look to Lubbock. Notice the nascent, literary drops coming from cognoscenti in Lubbock where the dry winds can drive you to strange alternatives. First, Texas Tech Press published Dracula: The Ballet by Peggy Willis and Bram Stoker (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1982). Then only five mysterious years later a dissertation was completed, “Magic, trick-work, and illusion in the vampire plays” by Thomas Leonard Colwin, (Ph. D.) --Texas Tech University, 1987. Something had gotten into the aquifer. Don’t blame the Red Vaiders; they were left alone on the plains, attractive to the thirsty thespians, and the national vampire revival bit their naïve, exposed neck early. Recently Tech-student Dustin’s http://www.westtexasvampires.com/ teaser began lurking in videos prepared after he studied the course “Slavistics” (the study of vampires) and chose to expand his earlier “West Texas Vampires” venture on You Tube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=L_6Cgiz9sew
Joe, Al, and Bill legitimized our local genre. Two novels in the late 1980’s appeared each by a good and successful writer: Joe R. Lansdale (Dead in the West - New York: Space and Time, 1986) and Alan R. Erwin.(Skeleton Dancer - New York: Dell Pub., 1989). Then the next year Bill Crider released his children’s book (A Vampire Named Fred. Lufkin, TX: Maggie Books, 1990). After which anti-coagulants were added to the water. Dozens undulated though the publishers’ veins. The cotton tenant farmer and stoic cowboy and the patient heroine and Old Yeller have company, and they are not all gentlemen or all men for that matter or human.
Quickly Dracula movies flickered in dark rooms , Les Vampires (1915) onward with maybe 200 versions. Quincey’s big screen roles are un-researched. Robert Rodriguez directed the 1996 From Dust Till Dawn, set in Texas and Mexico, then the sequel Texas Blood Money (1999) and the prequel The Handman’s Daughter (2000).
An independent company http://www.mistydawntexas.com/ has recently produced Misty Dawn “created and written by Terry Yates and being taped in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It is both a parody and an homage to the Dark Shadows gothic daytime soap opera. Think of it as "Dark Shadows meets Dallas", complete with a mysterious vampire and a greedy oil baron. / Terry had the idea for the TV series and started writing the scripts, but never dreamed that he would actually end up producing an end product. Together with David Moore as executive producer and a talented cast and crew that are currently giving their time and talent for practically nothing, Misty Dawn is taking shape as a very funny parody in a comedy style not unlike. See their You Tube trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvf9QCWDSCo.
If you visit You Tube http://www.youtube.com/ your search for “Texas and vampire” retrieves 98 videos. Similar to You Tube, the Metacafe at http://www.metacafe.com/ pulls up 1,000 videos, a bewildering number; maybe the “and” was not read as Boolean.
Pale short stories, and extracts from novels-in-progress appear via the net. The author “UntaintableRoses” offers “The Official Bloodline,” an El Paso passage, rating itself for young adults, and appearing at http://www.quizilla.com/users/.Chasing.bunnies./quizzes/The%20Official%20Bloodline%20%5BA%20Vampire%20Story%5D%20El%20Paso/
Also for flickering gamesters, an interactive game is found at B.R. Turner’s http://www.onr.com/user/bturner/ as “Chris’ Houston Vampire Game,” which seems to center in the housing projects, dating about 2000.
In terms of gross, suggestive gestures, the Google is searched to find the most bloodsucking Texan city. “Texas vampire” gives 621,000 hits, Dallas 495K, Austin 488K, Houston 416K, San Antonio 240K, El Paso 163K, Galveston 92K, and Lubbock 84K. Dallas’ Chamber of Commerce must be pleased with the Fang Gang, and the Austin Weird” campaign seems to be working. We’re so relieved. How are things in your locale?
Aggie Bill Page’s outstanding “Horny Toads and Ugly Chickens: A Bibliography on Texas in Speculative Fiction” (September 2001) - at TAMU’s Cushing website http://library.tamu.edu/cushing/collectn/lit/science/sci-fi/texfan.htm - set an entirely new standard in bibliography. A number of the several hundred citations invoke our topic. Page notes that 90% of his total citations were published since 1970, shadowing the wave of Texas vampirism. Even since 2001 the further growth has been remarkable. Page’s other work “Fantasyland / Aggieland: A History of Science Fiction and Fantasy at Texas A&M University and in Brazos County, Texas, 1913-1985” (2007) reveals Aggieland’s deep interests and probably profiles much of broader Texas. He even notes vampire movies shown on campus as far back as the 1930s. See http://libraryasp.tamu.edu/cushing/collectn/lit/science/sci-fi/science%20fiction%20texas%20am.pdf
Texas has always been a piece of surreal exotica for fantastic tales in the coffee and whiskey and pillow talk in Europe. And there’s the frontier bloodbath where we demonized the “savage” natives. Let’s not forget the un-human conditions of the slavery institution, fogging the distinctions of acceptable, civilized behavior and blowing the embers of secret conspiracies to overthrow the common power structure. And there’s the recent public interest in chupacabras, bloodsuckers as fearless as bats, they say.
Yes, the bats. Did you know that Texas is the national capital for bats (see http://www.batcon.org/home/default.asp). Our official state symbol for flying mammals is the Mexican Free-tailed bat.
And through it all, women have behaved increasingly more independently and, indeed, have written half the adult novels listed below and with increasing eroticism. Are you nervous yet? Check the several recent works of Diane Whiteside.
Our wide open Texas plains, dense forestlands, lapped coasts, and glittery cities invite writers to fill them, imaginatively.
Before 1980 Texas vampires, except as bats, were virtually non-existent. Then there was the trickle at the base of Texas’ long Panhandle neck. Whatever the causes or correlates or co-incidents or consequences, in the last 25 years an entirely fresh, literary vein or genre or topic has pulsed to life, as uncovered in the below thin-skinned listing. Just since 2000, over 30 titles have been published.
The works listed below (an incomplete list) are usually books of fiction with Texas settings or Texas characters (except for the D & T’s) with the vampire theme. You’ll find children’s books, YA novels, graphic stories/comics, theses, adult novels, and recent articles. If you dare, pick up a few the 60 titles and explore the new blood in Texas literature - vampires. Is Vlad a fad or the newest, loneliest, midnight cowboy?
For a free, electric copy of the bibliography, willstexana@yahoo.com
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Texas Literary Drought of the 1910's
Judy Alter in Mike Merschal's "Books Blog" at http://books.beloblog.com/archives/2007/08/top_ten_texas_books.html
recently started a string on Texas literature. I responded as below:
"Here's a list of Texana novelists made to fit a chronology for the 20th century, selected sometimes for first effort and other times for my preferred. Oddities include, I gave only one entry per novelist, so, e.g., having entered the 'Horseman' I passed by the 'Dove.' "
Andy Adams. The Log of a Cowboy. Boston: Houghton, 1903.
Dorothy Scarborough. The Wind. New York: Harper, 1925.
Katherine Anne Porter. Pale Horse, Pale Rider. New York: Knopf, 1939
George Sessions Perry. Hold Autumn in Your Hand New York: Viking, 1941.
William Goyen. House of Breath. New York: Random House, 1950.
William Humphrey. Home from the Hill. New York: Knopf, 1958.
Larry McMurtry. Horseman, Pass By. New York: Harper, 1961.
Capps, Benjamin. The Trail to Ogalla. New York: Duell, 1964.
Robert Flynn. North to Yesterday. New York: Knopf, 1967.
Shelby Hearon. Armadillo in the Grass. New York: Knopf, 1968.
Elmer Kelton The Day the Cowboys Quit. New York: Doubleday, 1971.
Tomás Rivera. . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra. Berkeley: Quinto Sol, 1971.
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. Estampas del Valle y otras obras. Berkeley: Quinto Sol, 1972.
Edwin Shrake. Strange Peaches. 1973.
R.G. Vliet. Rockspring. New York: Viking, 1974
Donald Barthelme. The Dead Father. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1975.
Beverly Lowry. Daddy’s Girl. New York: Viking, 1981.
Sarah Bird. Alamo House. New York: Norton, 1986.
Lionel G. Garcia. Hardscrub. Houston: Arte Publico, 1990.
Americo Paredes. George Washington Gomez. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1990.
Cormac McCarthy. All the Pretty Horses. New York: Knopf, 1992.
J. California Cooper. The Wake of the Wind. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
A friendly, email pot-shot was taken for my 1910's gap. There really weren't adequate titles. The Texas novels were few, folks being interested in folklore, cowboy songs, the Soutwest, Mexico, nature, recollections, and such. Stark Young did start the "Texas Review," now the "Southwest Review," in 1915. Women were looking elsewhere. Some of the period titles include:
Joseph Atlsheler. Texan Scouts: The Story of the Alamo and Goliad, 1913 (a juvenile sequel to The Texan Star) and The Texan Triumph: A Romance of the San Jacinto Campaign, 1917.
Everett McNeil. In Texas with Davy Crockett: A Story of the Texas War of Independence, a 1918 variant of a 1908 issue(?).
Lewis Miller. Saddles and Lariats, 1912. (almost all true, a drive to California, maybe in the vein of Adams "Log" that went to Montana.)
O. Henry's shorts ended with his death in 1910.
Edwin Sabin. With Sam Houston in Texas: A Boy Volunteer..., 1916.
Zane Grey. Riders of the Purple Sage, 1912. and The Lone Star Ranger, 1915.
recently started a string on Texas literature. I responded as below:
"Here's a list of Texana novelists made to fit a chronology for the 20th century, selected sometimes for first effort and other times for my preferred. Oddities include, I gave only one entry per novelist, so, e.g., having entered the 'Horseman' I passed by the 'Dove.' "
Andy Adams. The Log of a Cowboy. Boston: Houghton, 1903.
Dorothy Scarborough. The Wind. New York: Harper, 1925.
Katherine Anne Porter. Pale Horse, Pale Rider. New York: Knopf, 1939
George Sessions Perry. Hold Autumn in Your Hand New York: Viking, 1941.
William Goyen. House of Breath. New York: Random House, 1950.
William Humphrey. Home from the Hill. New York: Knopf, 1958.
Larry McMurtry. Horseman, Pass By. New York: Harper, 1961.
Capps, Benjamin. The Trail to Ogalla. New York: Duell, 1964.
Robert Flynn. North to Yesterday. New York: Knopf, 1967.
Shelby Hearon. Armadillo in the Grass. New York: Knopf, 1968.
Elmer Kelton The Day the Cowboys Quit. New York: Doubleday, 1971.
Tomás Rivera. . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra. Berkeley: Quinto Sol, 1971.
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. Estampas del Valle y otras obras. Berkeley: Quinto Sol, 1972.
Edwin Shrake. Strange Peaches. 1973.
R.G. Vliet. Rockspring. New York: Viking, 1974
Donald Barthelme. The Dead Father. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1975.
Beverly Lowry. Daddy’s Girl. New York: Viking, 1981.
Sarah Bird. Alamo House. New York: Norton, 1986.
Lionel G. Garcia. Hardscrub. Houston: Arte Publico, 1990.
Americo Paredes. George Washington Gomez. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1990.
Cormac McCarthy. All the Pretty Horses. New York: Knopf, 1992.
J. California Cooper. The Wake of the Wind. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
A friendly, email pot-shot was taken for my 1910's gap. There really weren't adequate titles. The Texas novels were few, folks being interested in folklore, cowboy songs, the Soutwest, Mexico, nature, recollections, and such. Stark Young did start the "Texas Review," now the "Southwest Review," in 1915. Women were looking elsewhere. Some of the period titles include:
Joseph Atlsheler. Texan Scouts: The Story of the Alamo and Goliad, 1913 (a juvenile sequel to The Texan Star) and The Texan Triumph: A Romance of the San Jacinto Campaign, 1917.
Everett McNeil. In Texas with Davy Crockett: A Story of the Texas War of Independence, a 1918 variant of a 1908 issue(?).
Lewis Miller. Saddles and Lariats, 1912. (almost all true, a drive to California, maybe in the vein of Adams "Log" that went to Montana.)
O. Henry's shorts ended with his death in 1910.
Edwin Sabin. With Sam Houston in Texas: A Boy Volunteer..., 1916.
Zane Grey. Riders of the Purple Sage, 1912. and The Lone Star Ranger, 1915.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Will's Texana Annual: A compendium of Texas
Will's Texas Annual, offered first in March of 2007, is a cumulation and re-arrangement of columns in Will's Texana Monthy (a free e-journal for your asking at willstexana@yahoo.com) and with extra added attractions, total 600 pages. Available on CD, USB Flash Drive, and paper.
Part 1: The WTM columns constitute about 200 pages.
Part 2: A TRIO of "Current Bibliographies" of about 75 pages in length
New Current Trade Books" about Texas published during 2006, about 800 titles.
"New Texas Government Publications" recently acquired by the Texas State Library, about 400 titles.
"New Dissertations and Theses of 2006," about 200 titles.
Part 3:
A "Directory of Texana Depositories in Texas," about 800 institutions, libraries, archives, and museums, about 125 pages in length
Part 4:
Added Elements (a variety of about 50 pages)
Including "Map Notes," Archival Notes", a "List of Texas State Agencies, etc." and a "Directory of Texas County Historical Commissions."
Part 5:
Hot Words Appendix (a variety of about 100 pages)
Including "Web site maps of selected organization" (Texas Association of Museums, Texas Library Association, Texas State Historical Association), - "Notes on Local and State Government Information ," - templates for two online "Reference Source Bibliograhies (one from TLA and one from TSLAC), - "Notes on Radio, Television, and Film," - and a list of "Archival History" articles in the Handbook of Texas Online.
The Annual is available on CD, USB Flash, and in printed form.
Contact willstexana@yahoo.com
The Parlor is a companion to, yet different from, the Monthly and Annual
Part 1: The WTM columns constitute about 200 pages.
Part 2: A TRIO of "Current Bibliographies" of about 75 pages in length
New Current Trade Books" about Texas published during 2006, about 800 titles.
"New Texas Government Publications" recently acquired by the Texas State Library, about 400 titles.
"New Dissertations and Theses of 2006," about 200 titles.
Part 3:
A "Directory of Texana Depositories in Texas," about 800 institutions, libraries, archives, and museums, about 125 pages in length
Part 4:
Added Elements (a variety of about 50 pages)
Including "Map Notes," Archival Notes", a "List of Texas State Agencies, etc." and a "Directory of Texas County Historical Commissions."
Part 5:
Hot Words Appendix (a variety of about 100 pages)
Including "Web site maps of selected organization" (Texas Association of Museums, Texas Library Association, Texas State Historical Association), - "Notes on Local and State Government Information ," - templates for two online "Reference Source Bibliograhies (one from TLA and one from TSLAC), - "Notes on Radio, Television, and Film," - and a list of "Archival History" articles in the Handbook of Texas Online.
The Annual is available on CD, USB Flash, and in printed form.
Contact willstexana@yahoo.com
The Parlor is a companion to, yet different from, the Monthly and Annual
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