Lone Star Literature: From the Red River to the Rio Grande: A Texas Anthology

by Don Graham, Larry McMurtry (Foreword)

A vast land combining the West, the South, and the Border, small dusty towns and gleaming modern cities, Texas has a history and identity all its own, and a mythology bigger than the Lone Star State itself. In this anthology, selected as a Southwest Book of the Year in 2003, Don Graham has rounded up a comprehensive collection of writings that provides an overview of the diversity and excellence of Texas literature and reveals its vital contribution to America's literary landscape. The result is a sometimes rowdy, always artful panorama of fable and truth, humor and pathos—all growing out of the state that continues to stimulate the collective imagination like no other.

Genres: Literature, Fiction, American Fiction

512 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Don Graham was the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature at The University of Texas at Austin. He was the author or editor of numerous books and articles, including Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire (2003), which won the Carr P. Collins Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters as best nonfiction book of the year, No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy and Lone Star Literature: A Texas Anthology (2006). He was a past president of the Texas Institute of Letters and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly.

Reviews

[(Lonestarlibrarian) Keddy Ann Outlaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lone Star Literature kept me entertained for many weeks. Some pieces were nonfiction, such as Stephen Harrigan's excellent essay entitled "What Texas Means to Me". Most were fiction. And I have to admit that for a few of the pieces I wasn't 100% sure if they were tall tales or true tales!

Since I read this slowly, it would be challenging to write a detailed review. I believe there was good representation of our state, divided into four sections: The West, The South, The Border and Town and City. Most absurd: Donald Barthelme's "I Bought a Little City", wherein the narrator buys Galveston and makes a mess of his ownership. Most enjoyed: a karmic tale by Naomi Shihab Nye, "Tomorrow We Smile". Generally I related to the women's fiction more than the men's tales, though there is special place in my heart for Larry McMurty's The Last Picture Show, from which a section is represented here. Carolyn Osborn's wonderful "My Brother is a Cowboy" tells the tale of of a young woman marginalized and held down by her brother, father and mother until she finally manages to escape from under their thumbs.



I wish the book had closed with Molly Ivins' "Texas Women: True Grit and All the Rest" because I would have loved her to have the last word (!), but two other nonfiction pieces followed hers chronologically. By my count, there were 17 female contributors out of 63, and most of the women were from the 20th century. I understand the how and why of that, since women were not commonly writers in earlier centuries.



I can not keep all the books I've collected. This was a "rainy day book" -- one I brought home years ago as a backup for times when I ran out of library books to read. But after I dropped two library books in to my bath waters (embarrassing for a retired librarian) and had to pay replacement fees, I got smart and started taking non-library books with me into my baths. And that is how I finally got around to slowly reading Lone Star Literature. Now I can pass it on to other readers...

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Properly summing up Texas literature in a single-volume anthology is a blatantly impossible task (preparing even a cursory survey is daunting), but it would be hard to do a better job than Graham has here. Ranging from the expected cowboy/settler/ranch tales of early Texas through to the social commentary and "real literature" of the modern era circa the publication date of 2003, Graham surveys the regions of the state - rendered here as West, South, Border, and Town/City - and does a great job showcasing characteristically Texan literature, neatly avoiding the age-old identity debate of what makes a piece of work "really" about a state - does the work have to be by an author from there, or living there, or about there, or inspired by there, etc - by cheerfully selecting representatives of all of the above. O'Henry, Webb, Dobie, Porter, Bedichek, Caro, McMurtry, Brammer, Wright, Barthelme, Ivins - they're all here, along with plenty of other authors that you probably won't have heard of. While you could wish for a few more selections from more adventurous genres like science fiction, and of course partisans of one specific region will wish for more of their favorites, this is a wonderful introduction to Texas literature that provides dozens of jumping-off points to further discoveries. There's a whole world in here!

[Tom Hartman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I retired to Texas two years ago and thought reading this would give me a better feel for my new home state. It did, but the overall impression I got was one of people grow up in small towns and leave them. Lots of hardscrapple lives lived as cowboys, ranchers or oil workers. I found too many of these stories were the same. A lot of the earlier stories are more preserved first-hand accounts as opposed to literary stories.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not that many anthologies hook me into reading them from front to back non-stop, but this one did. The writers range from early pioneers to our contemporaries. Almost all have lived at least some protion of their lives in Texas. Their stories cover all parts of the large and varied state. The book has a lose thematic flow, so that for a while the reader is immersed in the Kennedy assassination, or in relationships along the border with Mexico, or in West Texas ranch life. Though I spent a total of 22 years as a resident of Texas and still own a home there, I've never really identified with the concept of being a "Texan." I suppose my familiarity with some of the places and references in these stories made it easier for me to appreciate them, but I believe those who have nothing more than stereotyped impressions of the Lone Star state will also enjoy these well-chosen selections.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured almost all 736 pages of this--one story was too 'cute' for me to swallow. I haven't read "The Greats" (J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, & the other one), but I wasn't super impressed by the selections from them in this anthology. It was cool to recognize, half-way through one of the stories, the plot of the movie Urban Cowboy. Apparently it was an article (was it in Esquire?) first. And there were a few very good pieces on the JFK assassination--if I had the book with me here, I'd give you a killer quote and point you to a must-read essay on it (IMHO) for Dallasites.

Overall, reading it was nearly as sweet as being back there.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A massive anthology, filled with the work of lots of people I've heard of, but never read. There were very few pieces I didn't enjoy, and several were breathtaking. I will definitely be referring to this book often and will probably be trying some new authors after discovering them here.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories by Texas authors about Texas.