Reviews, profiles, and interviews that capture the diverse voices adding to Texas’s rich literary tradition
“She taught us, she fed us, she entertained us, and best of all, she wrote down the how-to of Corbitt hospitality in five cookbooks, giving us confidence that the civilizing pleasures of the table were within our reach.”
Madeline at Neiman Marcus, the Capitol, the Alamo: A classic children’s heroine comes to the Lone Star State—and a bookstore near you.
Forget the critically panned Instinct, which was “suggested by” his novel Ishmael. Houston’s Daniel Quinn wants you to know what he really thinks about the modern world.
Which Américo Paredes book was made into a movie starring Edward James Olmos?
Like the coffee and pie in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, the Arlington-based fanzine Wrapped in Plastic is damn fine.
CDs by the Jiménez brothers, the Old 97’s, and Lee Hazlewood; books by Joni Rodgers and Scott Zesch.
The Town Lake soccer fields in Austin, shopping at Kathleen Sommers in San Antonio, sunsets in Big Bend: Good-bye to all that and (sniff) a whole lot more.
Hot CDsTexas honky-tonker Floyd Tillman is best known for heartbreak lyrics like “Slipping Around” and “It Makes No Difference Now.” But on Herb Remington Instrumentally Salutes Floyd Tillman (Glad), the chiming steel guitarist for Bob Wills’s post-war Texas Playboys demonstrates that Tillman’s poppish material is equally strong on melody and
Meet El Paso novelist James Carlos Blake, who writes critically acclaimed literary westerns with lots of violence but few female characters. Sound familiar?
David Hale Smith rejects more than three hundred manuscripts each month, but when he accepts one, publishers take note. Since 1994, when he left the tutelage of Dallas superagent Jan Miller and founded his own agency, DHS Literary, the thirty-year-old has established himself as one of the industry’s young lions,
Long before Lonesome Dove and other cattle-culture classics defined Texas for the world, Hold Autumn in Your Hand—a novel that wasn’t about cowboys or Longhorns—won critical acclaim. With good reason.
When someone says she loves George Bush these days, she’s almost certainly talking about the man William Bennett recently christened “W.” But at least one novelist prefers the ex-president to the presidential hopeful. Next January Simon and Schuster will publish Lydia Millet’s George Bush, Dark Prince of Love, which she
Dan Jenkins has just published his eighth novel. It’s called Rude Behavior. Spend a few hours with him and you’ll know why.
Hot CDsDistancing themselves further still from their earlier banjo-punk novelties, Austin’s Bad Livers go with what they know on Industry and Thrift (Sugar Hill). There is too much attitude and eclecticism at work to call this traditional bluegrass, yet despite a couple of electric interludes, the musical leanings of composer-singer
He writes legal thrillers, he is a practicing lawyer, and he has been at it since 1990—one year longer than John Grisham. But even if San Antonio’s Jay Brandon hasn’t matched the success of the author of The Firm and The Pelican Brief, he logs remarkably good sales and keeps
In the heady world of romance novels, our state’s writers—and readers—are passion players.
Texas is filled with giants in the science-fiction field these days, but none loom larger than Bruce Sterling and Michael Moorcock.
The first commandment of fiction writing is: Show, don’t tell. Rick Bass knows it well, though he still struggled through many drafts before finishing his first novel, Where the Sea Used to Be (Houghton Mifflin, $25), which will be published this month. “Paint the images and trust the readers to
I THINK I GOT interested in writing when I was in the fifth grade. I started writing short stories, and I remember wanting to get them published in the Saturday Evening Post. In high school I wrote a lot of poetry, but I wasn’t a good student; I think I
SUNBURNED AND HUNGRY after a day of tubing down the Guadalupe, you head back to Austin for dinner at one of your favorite Tex-Mex restaurants—a garish, festive joint called Chuy’s. You are seated and slurping on a margarita when you spot a striking man in a nearby booth. A little
Hot CDsThis month Texas music shines on the silver screen. The soundtrack for The Horse Whisperer (MCA) not only features cuts from Don Walser, George Strait, and Steve Earle but also a Butch Hancock—Joe Ely— Jimmie Dale Gilmore reunion (long removed from Lubbock, they are now called the Hill Country
Except for the time she spent as a police officer in Plano and Tyler—when she couldn’t get past the “emotional shutdown” required by the job—Kim Wozencraft has always been a writer. She kept a journal as a child, as a student at Richland College in Dallas, and later, during a
So says Larry McMurtry, Texas’ best—and best-known— novelist. But that doesn’t mean he’s giving up literature altogether; in fact, his days are quite booked.
Two new volumes signal a reawakening of interest in the former president.
Hot CDsFew voices evoke the pathos of country and western tragedy as genuinely as the rich, honeyed timbre of George Jones. By 1962, the year Jones signed with the United Artists label, the East Texan had been divorced, jailed, and was already as legendary for his hard drinking as his
Getting published was supposed to be a cure-all, but for Austinite Louise Redd, it was just another chapter in the life of a struggling novelist.
Hot CDsRunning on equal parts inspiration and gumption, Austin’s Damnations are the alternative to alternative country, going way back for tunes like “Copper Kettle,” forward for a romp through Lucinda Williams’ “Happy Woman Blues,” and their own way with impressively traditional-progressive originals. The mostly acoustic Live Set (Damnations), pressed in
Hot CDsWest Texas bluesman Long John Hunter plays even more guitar than usual on Swinging From the Rafters (Alligator), and that’s a lot of guitar. Hunter represents the party-down end of the blues spectrum; he’s gotta poke fun at himself even when he’s ostensibly down-and-out, as on “I’m Broke.” With
Hot CDsThe Horsies are an extremely unusual outfit, so it figures that the perverse, polymorphously percussive Austin combo’s second record, Touch Me Columbus, is only available on the relatively obscure Japanese label Benten (though some Texas record stores will be carrying it). A giddy three-man, three-woman band with five often
For El Paso physician Abraham Verghese, writing about life and death in the age of AIDS is a prescription for literary success.
