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Don Graham brings together the history, color, and character of Texas's capital city since 1839 when it was selected, on the advice of Mirabeau B. Lamar, as the site for a new capital of the then-Republic of Texas. Essays, fiction, and poetry reveal the variety of literary responses to Austin through the decades and are organized in a roughly chronological fashion to reveal the themes, places, and personalities that have defined the life of the city. Austin was always about three things--natural beauty, government, and education--and thus many of the pieces in this volume dwell upon one and sometimes all of these themes. Besides O. Henry, the other most important figures in the city's history were J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, and Walter P. Webb: folklorist, naturalist, historian. During their heyday, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, they were the face of literary culture in the city. They remain a source of interest, pride, and sometimes controversy. Austin is a well-known haven of liberal political activism, represented by such well-known figures as Lyndon B. Johnson, Ralph Yarborough, Ann and David Richards, Liz Carpenter, Willie Morris, John Henry Faulk, and Molly Ivins. The city is also a haven for literary writers, many of whom appear in these pages: Carolyn Osborn, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Dagoberto Gilb, Stephen Harrigan, and Lawrence Wright, to name a few. Among the poets, Thomas Whitbread, Dave Oliphant, David Wevill, and Christopher Middleton have long been on the scene. Certain sites recur--the University Tower, Barton Springs, various watering holes of another kind--so that for anybody who has ever spent time in Austin will experience twinges of nostalgia for vanished icons, closed-down venues, long-gone sites of pleasure brought to life once again, in these pages.… (lisätietoja)
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To be perfectly honest, I will read almost anything about Austin, no matter how narcissistic or self-serving (and, even more honestly, the more it flatters the city and its residents the better). All true love of home is provincialism and vice versa, and though I wasn't born here and have spent quite a few years living elsewhere, it's going to be my home for many years to come simply because I couldn't imagine myself living anywhere else.
However, any city, no matter how proud and disdainful of outsiders, like to think of itself as civilized, and part of that means having a stable of respectable authors you can show off to your neighbors. To that end, Don Graham has put together an extremely useful collection of "Austin literature", both pieces about the city and pieces written by people who simply happened to live here. I once read a line to the effect that New York City was the only city you could write about and not sound limited or small-town. Whether that's true of all cities or not, this collection won't do anything to disprove that sentiment, because many of the pieces here are focused on things that only an Austinite would truly care about. This is either myopic navel-gazing or a sincere effort to cater to the local spirit (or both), but I think an outsider could actually appreciate the literary merits of some of these pieces without being too sickened by the constant torrents of self-love on display here. But, as the saying goes, if you don't like Austin, then Dallas is right up the road, and happy trails to you.
The book is organized chronologically into sections that detail increasingly narrow slices of time. The first section sums up Austin's dismal irrelevance in the 19th century in a swift four pieces, including one by literary hero / convicted felon O'Henry, the man who gave us the infamous "city of the violet crown" title. The next section leaps up to the 1940s and includes a quick piece about Barton Springs by Senator Ralph Yarbrough and an excerpt from Lyndon Johnson's excellent "tarnish on the violet crown" speech, one of my personal favorites of his. As Robert Caro's excellent LBJ biography details, Austin was the first city in the country to have public housing, and though the Dixiecrat-mandated segregation of those units entrenched an unfortunate situation of racial separation in the city, this small step towards alleviating poverty was an important step on the road to the Great Society.
The section of the 50s is subtitled "This True Paradise On Earth", and it marks what I think is the final period before Austin became a "real" city. Names like Faulk, Dobie, Bedichek, and Webb are prominent, as around their nucleus the first true Austin literary culture coalesces. Ann Richards contributes a funny story about the beginnings of her interest in politics, and David Richards (no relation?) has an insightful bit about Scholz Beer Garden, which has just the odd historical amnesia he describes. The 60s section is understandably dominated by UT-related content like the Whitman shooting, but there are plenty of good ones about other subjects, like Miguel Gonzales-Garth's pieces about Argentine literary badass Jorge Luis Borges, an excerpt from Billy Lee Brammer's superb political novel The Gay Place, and good snippets from novelist Larry McMurtry and historian Harry Ransom. Speaking of McMurtry, I wish his classic essay/complaint "Ever a Bridegroom" about the sorry state of Texas literature had been mentioned here, as it bears directly on the book's reason for being, but the Texas Observer recently reprinted it so you should check it out there.
The 70s section gets into material more familiar to modern Austinites. Pat Taylor's memories of hippie water ceremonies are both amusing and touching, Jan Reid's chapter from "The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock" is still relevant for as long as Willie Nelson is, and Michael Adams' "Crossroads at the Broken Spoke" is both a wonderfully evocative work of character description and an excellent homage to the famous honky-tonk joint that's still bravely enduring the lightning-speed transformation of South Lamar near where I grew up. The 80s is when my own history with Austin begins, and I particularly enjoyed Joseph Jones' piece on enjoying Waller Creek (currently a rivulet of filth sullenly oblivious to the city's periodic and desultory plans to rehabilitate it), Molly Ivins' hilarious account of Ann Richards' election as governor, and Marion Wink's poem about the summer heat, which has only gotten more brutal:
"Insects ruled the earth. They commandeered the food supply and would not let us sleep. Willing slaves, we did nothing without orders. Only showers came from the heart."
The final and longest section covers from the 90s to 2006, the period where Austin added a quarter million people and abandoned any pretense of being a small, undiscovered oasis. Two of these pieces sum up this era the best to me. First, Robert Draper's affectionate yet firm farewell "Adios to Austin" is a thoughtful meditation on why he felt that he and the city had to part ways (though, weirdly, he now seems to live in Asheville, NC of all places). I don't agree with his sentiments, but it's a useful perspective. Second, William J. Scheick's "Gridlock" is perhaps the ultimate example of a piece that only an Austinite could love; outsiders hate our traffic, but his hilarious experiences trying to find a "secret path" across our nightmarishly overcrowded downtown will bring instant pangs of pained recognition from anyone who's ever had to put up with the consequences of our city government's stubborn refusal to acknowledge our inexorable growth.
Different people will have different opinions on the strength of the works collected here, but overall this is a great compendium of talent, and while it's been a while since Billy Lee Brammer made the last serious attempt at crafting a "Great Austin Novel", there's plenty of local talent here, and even more affection for this city that manages to retain its charm and magnetism after all these years. ( )
Don Graham brings together the history, color, and character of Texas's capital city since 1839 when it was selected, on the advice of Mirabeau B. Lamar, as the site for a new capital of the then-Republic of Texas. Essays, fiction, and poetry reveal the variety of literary responses to Austin through the decades and are organized in a roughly chronological fashion to reveal the themes, places, and personalities that have defined the life of the city. Austin was always about three things--natural beauty, government, and education--and thus many of the pieces in this volume dwell upon one and sometimes all of these themes. Besides O. Henry, the other most important figures in the city's history were J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, and Walter P. Webb: folklorist, naturalist, historian. During their heyday, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, they were the face of literary culture in the city. They remain a source of interest, pride, and sometimes controversy. Austin is a well-known haven of liberal political activism, represented by such well-known figures as Lyndon B. Johnson, Ralph Yarborough, Ann and David Richards, Liz Carpenter, Willie Morris, John Henry Faulk, and Molly Ivins. The city is also a haven for literary writers, many of whom appear in these pages: Carolyn Osborn, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Dagoberto Gilb, Stephen Harrigan, and Lawrence Wright, to name a few. Among the poets, Thomas Whitbread, Dave Oliphant, David Wevill, and Christopher Middleton have long been on the scene. Certain sites recur--the University Tower, Barton Springs, various watering holes of another kind--so that for anybody who has ever spent time in Austin will experience twinges of nostalgia for vanished icons, closed-down venues, long-gone sites of pleasure brought to life once again, in these pages.
Google Books — Ladataan...
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1
However, any city, no matter how proud and disdainful of outsiders, like to think of itself as civilized, and part of that means having a stable of respectable authors you can show off to your neighbors. To that end, Don Graham has put together an extremely useful collection of "Austin literature", both pieces about the city and pieces written by people who simply happened to live here. I once read a line to the effect that New York City was the only city you could write about and not sound limited or small-town. Whether that's true of all cities or not, this collection won't do anything to disprove that sentiment, because many of the pieces here are focused on things that only an Austinite would truly care about. This is either myopic navel-gazing or a sincere effort to cater to the local spirit (or both), but I think an outsider could actually appreciate the literary merits of some of these pieces without being too sickened by the constant torrents of self-love on display here. But, as the saying goes, if you don't like Austin, then Dallas is right up the road, and happy trails to you.
The book is organized chronologically into sections that detail increasingly narrow slices of time. The first section sums up Austin's dismal irrelevance in the 19th century in a swift four pieces, including one by literary hero / convicted felon O'Henry, the man who gave us the infamous "city of the violet crown" title. The next section leaps up to the 1940s and includes a quick piece about Barton Springs by Senator Ralph Yarbrough and an excerpt from Lyndon Johnson's excellent "tarnish on the violet crown" speech, one of my personal favorites of his. As Robert Caro's excellent LBJ biography details, Austin was the first city in the country to have public housing, and though the Dixiecrat-mandated segregation of those units entrenched an unfortunate situation of racial separation in the city, this small step towards alleviating poverty was an important step on the road to the Great Society.
The section of the 50s is subtitled "This True Paradise On Earth", and it marks what I think is the final period before Austin became a "real" city. Names like Faulk, Dobie, Bedichek, and Webb are prominent, as around their nucleus the first true Austin literary culture coalesces. Ann Richards contributes a funny story about the beginnings of her interest in politics, and David Richards (no relation?) has an insightful bit about Scholz Beer Garden, which has just the odd historical amnesia he describes. The 60s section is understandably dominated by UT-related content like the Whitman shooting, but there are plenty of good ones about other subjects, like Miguel Gonzales-Garth's pieces about Argentine literary badass Jorge Luis Borges, an excerpt from Billy Lee Brammer's superb political novel The Gay Place, and good snippets from novelist Larry McMurtry and historian Harry Ransom. Speaking of McMurtry, I wish his classic essay/complaint "Ever a Bridegroom" about the sorry state of Texas literature had been mentioned here, as it bears directly on the book's reason for being, but the Texas Observer recently reprinted it so you should check it out there.
The 70s section gets into material more familiar to modern Austinites. Pat Taylor's memories of hippie water ceremonies are both amusing and touching, Jan Reid's chapter from "The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock" is still relevant for as long as Willie Nelson is, and Michael Adams' "Crossroads at the Broken Spoke" is both a wonderfully evocative work of character description and an excellent homage to the famous honky-tonk joint that's still bravely enduring the lightning-speed transformation of South Lamar near where I grew up. The 80s is when my own history with Austin begins, and I particularly enjoyed Joseph Jones' piece on enjoying Waller Creek (currently a rivulet of filth sullenly oblivious to the city's periodic and desultory plans to rehabilitate it), Molly Ivins' hilarious account of Ann Richards' election as governor, and Marion Wink's poem about the summer heat, which has only gotten more brutal:
"Insects ruled the earth.
They commandeered the food supply
and would not let us sleep.
Willing slaves, we did nothing without orders.
Only showers came from the heart."
The final and longest section covers from the 90s to 2006, the period where Austin added a quarter million people and abandoned any pretense of being a small, undiscovered oasis. Two of these pieces sum up this era the best to me. First, Robert Draper's affectionate yet firm farewell "Adios to Austin" is a thoughtful meditation on why he felt that he and the city had to part ways (though, weirdly, he now seems to live in Asheville, NC of all places). I don't agree with his sentiments, but it's a useful perspective. Second, William J. Scheick's "Gridlock" is perhaps the ultimate example of a piece that only an Austinite could love; outsiders hate our traffic, but his hilarious experiences trying to find a "secret path" across our nightmarishly overcrowded downtown will bring instant pangs of pained recognition from anyone who's ever had to put up with the consequences of our city government's stubborn refusal to acknowledge our inexorable growth.
Different people will have different opinions on the strength of the works collected here, but overall this is a great compendium of talent, and while it's been a while since Billy Lee Brammer made the last serious attempt at crafting a "Great Austin Novel", there's plenty of local talent here, and even more affection for this city that manages to retain its charm and magnetism after all these years. (