All posts by John Davidson
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Arte and Soul
Thirty years ago, Monterrey had no galleries, no museums, and no collectors. Today, it’s an art market that rivals Dallas and Houston.
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The Man Who Crushed Texaco
Judges take his money. Juries buy his bull. And when clients like Pennzoil need a tiger in their tank, they hire Joe Jamail.
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Every Good Boy Does Fine
In the late seventies, celebrated pianist Val Cliburn inexplicably disappeared from public life. No tortured artist in hiding, Cliburn is having the time of his life sitting around his Fort Worth mansion in his bathrobe.
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The Empress of Fort Worth
Anne Bass married one of the richest men in America. With his money and her ambition she became an important cultural force in Fort Worth and New York. Life was perfect. Then her husband left her.
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Leaving the Bottle Behind
Like any disease, alcoholism has specific symptoms. Like many religions, drying-out programs require abstinence, blind faith, and confession.
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“My, Don’t You Sparkle!”
Elyse Robins will sell you that gaudy bauble she’s wearing at dinner for only forty. Thousand, that is.
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The Man Who Dreamed Up Luckenbach
Hondo Crouch went from being a champion athlete to being the sad clown of Texas’s fun-and-games capital.
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Uncivil Wars
Civil Wars is armed with first-rate writing; Free Agents is a grab bag of Max Apple’s short fiction; Edisto is a precocious first novel; Group Therapy doesn’t probe deeply enough; Lords of the Earth is yet another Texas oil saga.
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Another Pilgrim’s Progress
The last book by native Texan William Goyen, Arcadio is a weird and wonderful fable about a search for self-acceptance and peace.
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Larger Than Life
Tom Lea, the grand old man of Texas painting, grew up among giants. No wonder he always used a big canvas.