What do you think?
Rate this book
A Natural State: Essays on Texas
In this remarkable collection of essays, Stephen Harrigan explores, with an unfailing depth of feeling, the human longing to feel at home in the world of nature. In vivid and convincing prose, he evokes the landscape of his home territory, Texas, and his own reactions, sometimes droll, sometimes haunted, to the extraordinary power of place that Texas projects.
199 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
1 person is currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Harrigan
28 books195 followersStephen Harrigan was born in Oklahoma City in 1948 and has lived in Texas since the age of five, growing up in Abilene and Corpus Christi.
He is a longtime writer for Texas Monthly, and his articles and essays have appeared in a wide range of other publications as well, including The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Travel Holiday, Life, American History, National Geographic and Slate. His film column for Texas Monthly was a finalist for the 2015 National Magazine Awards.
Harrigan is the author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and received a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.Remember Ben Clayton was published by Knopf in 2011 and praised by Booklist as a "stunning work of art" and by The Wall Street Journal as a "a poignantly human monument to our history." Remember Ben Clayton also won a Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, given by the Society of American Historians for the best work of historical fiction. In the Spring of 2013, the University of Texas Press published a career-spanning volume of his essays, The Eye of the Mammoth, which reviewers called “masterful” (from a starred review in Publishers Weekly), “enchanting and irresistible” (the Dallas Morning News) and written with “acuity and matchless prose.”(Booklist). His latest novel is A Friend of Mr. Lincoln.
Among the many movies Harrigan has written for television are HBO’s award-winning The Last of His Tribe, starring Jon Voight and Graham Greene, and King of Texas, a western retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear for TNT, which starred Patrick Stewart, Marcia Gay Harden, and Roy Scheider. His most recent television production was The Colt, an adaptation of a short story by the Nobel-prize winning author Mikhail Sholokhov, which aired on The Hallmark Channel. For his screenplay of The Colt, Harrigan was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize. Young Caesar, a feature adaptation of Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels, which he co-wrote with William Broyles, Jr., is currently in development with Exclusive Media.
A 1971 graduate of the University of Texas, Harrigan lives in Austin, where he is a faculty fellow at UT’s James A. Michener Center for Writers and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. He is also a founding member of CAST (Capital Area Statues, Inc.) an organization in Austin that commissions monumental works of art as gifts to the city. He is the recipient of the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writers Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Stephen Harrigan and his wife Sue Ellen have three daughters and four grandchildren.
Harrigan is the author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and received a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.Remember Ben Clayton was published by Knopf in 2011 and praised by Booklist as a "stunning work of art" and by The Wall Street Journal as a "a poignantly human monument to our history." Remember Ben Clayton also won a Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, given by the Society of American Historians for the best work of historical fiction. In the Spring of 2013, the University of Texas Press published a career-spanning volume of his essays, The Eye of the Mammoth, which reviewers called “masterful” (from a starred review in Publishers Weekly), “enchanting and irresistible” (the Dallas Morning News) and written with “acuity and matchless prose.”(Booklist). His latest novel is A Friend of Mr. Lincoln.
Among the many movies Harrigan has written for television are HBO’s award-winning The Last of His Tribe, starring Jon Voight and Graham Greene, and King of Texas, a western retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear for TNT, which starred Patrick Stewart, Marcia Gay Harden, and Roy Scheider. His most recent television production was The Colt, an adaptation of a short story by the Nobel-prize winning author Mikhail Sholokhov, which aired on The Hallmark Channel. For his screenplay of The Colt, Harrigan was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize. Young Caesar, a feature adaptation of Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels, which he co-wrote with William Broyles, Jr., is currently in development with Exclusive Media.
A 1971 graduate of the University of Texas, Harrigan lives in Austin, where he is a faculty fellow at UT’s James A. Michener Center for Writers and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. He is also a founding member of CAST (Capital Area Statues, Inc.) an organization in Austin that commissions monumental works of art as gifts to the city. He is the recipient of the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writers Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Stephen Harrigan and his wife Sue Ellen have three daughters and four grandchildren.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 4, 2013
A friend gave me this book over a year ago, and I couldn't bring myself to read it until now. Texas nature writing? I know that Texas is big and chock full of varied landscapes and biology, but it's also been run through the wringer of industrial grade farming, oil drilling, privatization, and strip mall style mega development. Not much wilderness left in the Lone Star State, and much of what is wild is in private hands and off limits to the rest of us. Texas can be beautiful, but most of it has been trashed in one way or another.
Harrigan knows all this, and his essays probe all sides of a handful of "natural" spots in the state, warts and all. He doesn't shy away from the darker side of things, such as toxic waste on the beach or garbage at the bottom of a crystal clear spring. AT the same time, he doesn't fixate on the negative either, and is able to find beauty and even occasional moments of transcendence in places you'd expect it (Big Bend) and places you wouldn't (an underwater "mermaid" show at a tourist trap on the San Marcos River). His writing is engaging--funny, but not flippant, educational but never dull, and, occasionally, almost spiritual. For the most part, he keeps his opinions to himself, and does a masterful job of showing rather than telling--he simply immerses himself in a place and reports what he saw. Never preachy or cynical.
On the wilder side, there's two pieces about the west Texas desert, the closest thing the state has to "wilderness". There's two about the seashore, one about a beautiful but developed river, one about the Houston zoo, and two (the first and last essays) that range widely and are a bit philosophical. The opening essay describes a sunrise in Texas and gives you a sense of the state's monumental size and variety, an excellent starting point.
4 stars for the writing, at least if you like this sort of thing, but I gave this collection of essays only 3 stars due to its brevity and lack of landscape diversity. With a fellow like Harrigan in the driver's seat, I would have loved to learn more about other parts of the state, such as the pine forests of the east, the Llano Estacado, or the Cross Timbers. Recommend this to anyone who likes natural history or nature writing, or personal essays in general. Some of the info. may be a bit dated (written in the 80's and early 90's) but worth the read, and at 180 pages, it's a quick one.
Harrigan knows all this, and his essays probe all sides of a handful of "natural" spots in the state, warts and all. He doesn't shy away from the darker side of things, such as toxic waste on the beach or garbage at the bottom of a crystal clear spring. AT the same time, he doesn't fixate on the negative either, and is able to find beauty and even occasional moments of transcendence in places you'd expect it (Big Bend) and places you wouldn't (an underwater "mermaid" show at a tourist trap on the San Marcos River). His writing is engaging--funny, but not flippant, educational but never dull, and, occasionally, almost spiritual. For the most part, he keeps his opinions to himself, and does a masterful job of showing rather than telling--he simply immerses himself in a place and reports what he saw. Never preachy or cynical.
On the wilder side, there's two pieces about the west Texas desert, the closest thing the state has to "wilderness". There's two about the seashore, one about a beautiful but developed river, one about the Houston zoo, and two (the first and last essays) that range widely and are a bit philosophical. The opening essay describes a sunrise in Texas and gives you a sense of the state's monumental size and variety, an excellent starting point.
4 stars for the writing, at least if you like this sort of thing, but I gave this collection of essays only 3 stars due to its brevity and lack of landscape diversity. With a fellow like Harrigan in the driver's seat, I would have loved to learn more about other parts of the state, such as the pine forests of the east, the Llano Estacado, or the Cross Timbers. Recommend this to anyone who likes natural history or nature writing, or personal essays in general. Some of the info. may be a bit dated (written in the 80's and early 90's) but worth the read, and at 180 pages, it's a quick one.
May 3, 2019
A tour guide for the Texas wildlife adventurer.
May 30, 2024
Enjoyed this - but SO many more special places, historically and naturally, in Texas. Needs a sequel or expanded edition!
October 21, 2012
This collection of essays from the 80s was just okay. I wasn't particularly moved by his writing, or his topics (the Houston zoo, a Galveston beach, the Chihuahuan Desert). The essay on Padre Island was more interesting (I was surprised he drove his car all over the beach, given his purpose there as a naturalist), and I actually enjoyed the one on the San Marcos River ("The Perfect River"). He makes a few solid observations in the essay "What Texas Means to Me", but overall I was disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews