Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover Lewis Reader

by W.K. Stratton (Editor), Jan Reid (Editor), Grover Lewis

"Dave Hickey gets it exactly right in his preface to this collection of journalism, poetry, fiction and memoir: Lewis, who died in 1997, was indeed 'the most stone wonderful writer that nobody ever heard of.' Writing for Rolling Stone in the early '70s, he almost singlehandedly invented the movie set piece, and no one's ever improved on his flint-eyed profiles of Sam Peckinpah and the Allman Brothers. But the best piece here is his searing memoir of his white-trash Texas parents, who died in what was ruled a double suicide. Etched in acid and heart's blood, it is a terse masterpiece."

—Malcolm Jones, Newsweek

"The least known of the New Journalism's founding fathers, Grover Lewis has long been a legend among nonfiction writers, and this overdue collection shows us why. A beautiful stylist blessed with a blistering honesty, Grover saw it all and wrote it like nobody else could. Put Splendor in the Short Grass up on the shelf with the best of Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and Gay Talese. It belongs there."

—Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio's Morning Edition

"Grover Lewis, the most literary of journalists, did things his way, simultaneously inventing a genre and setting the standard. These days ambitious feature writers, whether they know it or not, all strive to do it Grover's way. But, as this long overdue collection shows, not only did Grover do it first, he did it best."

—Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My OwnBackyard and Hold the Enlightenment

"Grover Lewis was a gift to American letters. He had a hard eye, a sharp eye for hidden reality, and the unique ability to raise a popular journalism piece to the level of a universal truth. Plus he wrote like an angel. This collection, Splendor in the Short Grass, is not just a terrific read, it's an important work. I loved every page of it."

—James Crumley, author of the hardboiled mysteries Dancing Bear, The Last Good Kiss, and The Final Country

"Your gonzo journalism library isn't complete without him."

—Ruminator

"Grover was, after all, the most stone wonderful writer that nobody ever heard of....His job was to hammer the detritus of fugitive cultural encounters into elegant sentences, lapidary paragraphs, and knowable truth; and, in truth, the loveliness and lucidity of Grover's writing always rose to the triviality of the occasion."

—Dave Hickey, from the foreword

Grover Lewis was one of the defining voices of the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s. His wry, acutely observed, fluently written essays for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice set a standard for other writers of the time, including Hunter S. Thompson, Joe Eszterhas, Timothy Ferris, Chet Flippo, and Tim Cahill, who said of Lewis, "He was the best of us." Pioneering the "on location" reportage that has become a fixture of features about moviemaking and live music, Lewis cut through the celebrity hype and captured the real spirit of the counterculture, including its artificiality and surprising banality. Even today, his articles on Woody Guthrie, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, directors Sam Peckinpah and John Huston, and the filming of The Last Picture Show and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest remain some of the finest writing ever done on popular culture.

To introduce Grover Lewis to a new generation of readers and collect his best work under one cover, this anthology contains articles he wrote for Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Playboy, Texas Monthly, and New West, as well as excerpts from his unfinished novel The Code of the West and his incomplete memoir Goodbye If You Call That Gone and poems from the volume I'll Be There in the Morning If I Live. Jan Reid and W. K. Stratton have selected and arranged the material around themes that preoccupied Lewis throughout his life—movies, music, and loss. The editors' biographical introduction, the foreword by Dave Hickey, and a remembrance by Robert Draper discuss how Lewis's early struggles to escape his working-class, anti-intellectual Texas roots for the world of ideas in books and movies made him a natural proponent of the counterculture that he chronicled so brilliantly. They also pay tribute to Lewis's groundbreaking talent as a stylist, whose unique voice deserves to be more widely known by today's readers.

Genres: Fiction, Essays

291 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Shay Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was still in high school, Grover Lewis's book of poetry "I'll Be There In The Morning If I Live" blew the top of my head off. This book, on the other hand, is a collection of his articles, essays, and other writings for magazines from Rolling Stone to Texas Monthly (as well as a few poems from the aforementioned collection.) It is divided into three sections: Movies, Music, and Loss.

The first two entries are impressions from the sets of "The Last Picture Show" and "The Friends Of Eddie Coyle." Both will dull your starry notions about movie people. The latter does a particularly sharp-edged--but dispassionate--job of portraying Robert Mitchum as a rather (okay, very) miserable drunken boor. At this point I wasn't enjoying the book all that much. Then I read the third (and shorter) similar piece from the set of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" entitled "Who's The Bull Goose Loony Here?" which is an absolutely absorbing account of a nuthouse full of name actors and chronic defectives, the author's unease and star Jack Nicholson's electric presence.

The collection then hits its only major snag, in my view, with an excerpt from an unpublished novel by Lewis. It deserved to remain unpublished. It's wordy and confusing, overpopulated and profiles lives and a world so circumspect as to be suffocating. It would be the last and only misstep here.

The "Music" section roars from pieces on Charlie "Bird" Parker to American icon Woody Guthrie to Lightnin' Hopkins, before a cool-eyed recounting of six days on the road with the coke-fueled Allman Brothers Band and ends with the violence and confusion of Altamont. It's a hell of a ride, but the best of this collection comes after, in the section entitled "Loss."

Grover Lewis senior, or "Big Grover", was the author's father. After his wife left him in the early '40's, he stalked her and a son (the author) and a daughter until he found them. Then he shot his wife dead. Depending on whose account you believe (or want to believe), either the dying woman or a next-door neighbor retrieved the pistol that Big Grover had dropped and plugged him with a bullet through the eye, fatally wounding him. Big Grover died the next day, leaving the 8 year old future author an orphan. He was sent to live with relatives who were a mix of abuse and old time religion before, after five years torment, he landed with a bachelor Uncle who took him in and gave him the chance to pursue his beloved books and writing. This last section deals with all of this personal drama, as well as a return--as an adult--to his old neighborhood, a piece of writing that will move anyone who has ever gone home again to find that it no longer exists.

In summary, this collection is like a a car with no brakes headed downhill. It starts rolling slow, hits a bump or two, steadily picks up speed and by the end it leaves the reader breathless. A fantastic collection by the "most stone wonderful writer nobody ever heard of." Highly recommended.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a rare case where some of a writer's best stuff was about himself. But the writing about Altamont and movie cowboys will make me read it the second time.

[Dan Lalande · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robust sampler from the underrated and tragically forgotten Lewis, the Gonzo journalist with the elegiac soul. The pieces, from his formative years in the 50s to his last days in the 90s, cover his pet themes: music, movies, and the eroding West. His intellectual and sensorial interest was the communal experience, even when profiling individuals (usually fringe deities: Lightnin' Hopkins, Robert Mitchum, etc.) yet each piece is deeply, palpably personal. Fave entry: the excerpt from his unfinished novel on Hollywood's urban cowboys.