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Jack Ruby and the Origins of the Avant-Garde in Dallas: And Other Stories
What really (might have) happened when Jack Ruby, nightclub owner, brass knuckle-slinger, and inveterate fan of Corbusier, decided to kill the killer of JFK? In this first-ever trade publication of Bob Trammell’s work, Jack Ruby mythos loops between fact, fiction, and spectacle to satirize Dallas’ place on the world stage. Jack Ruby & The Origins of the Avant-Garde in Texas caricaturizes everyone from Bob Thornton to Joseph Beuys; fodder for JFK conspiracy theorists, innuendo-readers, ingenious speculators, and pursuers of The Truth About Dallas At Large.
With an introduction by Ben Fountain and afterword by David Searcy, this volume also includes Trammell’s “Quiet Man” stories from over the course of his long, countercultural writing career, lamenting a generation that lost much by embarking on a search for themselves in a city—and world—unwilling to support its brightest artists.
With an introduction by Ben Fountain and afterword by David Searcy, this volume also includes Trammell’s “Quiet Man” stories from over the course of his long, countercultural writing career, lamenting a generation that lost much by embarking on a search for themselves in a city—and world—unwilling to support its brightest artists.
- GenresFictionUnited States
308 pages, Paperback
Published November 9, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 29, 2021
Shout out to Deep Vellum for giving me a galley of this book. I expected a conspiracy-brained make me feel weird novel and got a wonderfully written, slice of life short story collection that made me feel sad. Like Neon Skyline and Bukowski if he was spacy and empathetic.
February 5, 2023
The title alone makes this book worth reading and the story lives up to it. Added bonus, a series of somewhat connected short stories about a Dallas bar that are stylistically different than the novella but equally as good.
March 22, 2023
Ah yes, an itch that I will never get tired of scratching. I cannot express how much joy it brings me to uncover another forgotten piece of Dallas history. No, I am not talking about Jack Ruby. The majority of this book, though you can't tell by the cover, is a collection of short stories called "The Quiet Man" stories. It revolves around true (or true-adjacent) characters that frequented The Quiet Man, a bar on Knox St that was around in the 60's and 70's. The characters are interesting, and it just makes you want to travel back in time and be a fly on the wall during those days.
December 9, 2024
There should be a widely recognized genre called Texas Gothic. I think most folks could agree on some of the books that belong there: a couple of the early McMurtrys, about half of Cormac McCarthy's work, Lansdale's best stuff, David Searcy's novels. The title piece of this excellent collection of work by Dallas poet Robert Trammell definitely belongs, Texas in its roots and mingling a certain kind of decadent, primeval dread with love/hate for this enormous, flawed state, or at least for the big city that largely defined Texas in the middle of the 20th Century.
The title story is told in post-modernist fragments and reimagines a world wherein Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey as a kind of performance art. The fragments include detours into Charlie Starkweather country and other notably dark moments in the era. It's an excellent piece of writing.
The majority of the pages though are taken up by a collection of interwoven shorts under the title THE QUIET MAN STORIES, vignettes about the lives, loves, and fates of the patrons of a now-vanished local bar in Dallas that catered to the ragged tribe of bohemians somehow surviving in a big city that would rather watch football than read poetry. There's a little bit of a Bukowski vibe, but with more compassion and not much snark.
The gem of the collection for me is a story called "Benjamin Murchison Hunt Smith," about one of the bar's regulars who claims to be an illegitimate son of H.L Hunt, one of the great villains of Texas' recent past and a cultural ancestor of the guys running the state today. Hunt gets tagged in most of the who-killed-JFK theories and definitely ran in the circles of the folks who would have liked to see an end to the New Frontier before it ever got started. His book ALPACA advocates a system where the more money one has, the more votes one can cast. In Trammell's story, Hunt's legitimate but lobotomized son (or his revenant) haunts the shores of White Rock Lake, where he may be looking to find the ghostly Lady of the lake, one of the US' most prominent hitchhiking ghosts. I read this one around 9 o'clock in the morning and it gave me midnight chills.
Texas Gothic for danged sure.
The title story is told in post-modernist fragments and reimagines a world wherein Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey as a kind of performance art. The fragments include detours into Charlie Starkweather country and other notably dark moments in the era. It's an excellent piece of writing.
The majority of the pages though are taken up by a collection of interwoven shorts under the title THE QUIET MAN STORIES, vignettes about the lives, loves, and fates of the patrons of a now-vanished local bar in Dallas that catered to the ragged tribe of bohemians somehow surviving in a big city that would rather watch football than read poetry. There's a little bit of a Bukowski vibe, but with more compassion and not much snark.
The gem of the collection for me is a story called "Benjamin Murchison Hunt Smith," about one of the bar's regulars who claims to be an illegitimate son of H.L Hunt, one of the great villains of Texas' recent past and a cultural ancestor of the guys running the state today. Hunt gets tagged in most of the who-killed-JFK theories and definitely ran in the circles of the folks who would have liked to see an end to the New Frontier before it ever got started. His book ALPACA advocates a system where the more money one has, the more votes one can cast. In Trammell's story, Hunt's legitimate but lobotomized son (or his revenant) haunts the shores of White Rock Lake, where he may be looking to find the ghostly Lady of the lake, one of the US' most prominent hitchhiking ghosts. I read this one around 9 o'clock in the morning and it gave me midnight chills.
Texas Gothic for danged sure.
October 27, 2021
Holy cow, I love this 'un! I saw in Ben Fountain's preface that the author discovered Donald Barthelme during a stint in a Texas prison (marijuana, meh.). Well, I discovered DB while dumpster diving, broke and living in an attic in Tallahassee, so dingdingding I checked it out! The title story reads like a great conspiracy zine from the 70s, about JFK's assassination (including Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald) all being one elaborate work of performance art created by Ruby to introduce internationally acclaimed avant-garde art to stingy Dallas. But that's just a preview for the main attraction. The bulk of the book is around 20 short stories that all revolve, in some way, around a beer bar (you want liquor, you gotta bring it yourself). The bar is a safe-is haven in the belly of the beast (1960s Dallas) that lives in the mouth of the king of beasts (anytime Texas). Every style of story lives inside this collection. I'd say it's equal parts Donald Barthelme, Terry Allen and W.G. Sebald. It comes out in November and I will be talking this one up a ship ton! That's right: tonnage is different on ships. A ship ton different!
January 18, 2022
This book was received as an ARC from Deep Vellum Publishing - Consortium Book Sales & Distribution in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.
Wow, this book literally blew my mind. This was the one history unit we did in Middle School History that was the most memorable due to all of the action and drama that connected with the historical event AND it is the one memory that my father remembers vividly. Reading this book and knowing now there was more to the story blows my mind even more. Hearing all of these different points of view from various people, really sparked my interest and it was amazing to read what these guys had to say about the whole situation and the conspiracy theories that came with them. We have a lot of people who are history enthusiasts that will appreciate this book very much.
We will consider adding this title to our Non-Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.
Wow, this book literally blew my mind. This was the one history unit we did in Middle School History that was the most memorable due to all of the action and drama that connected with the historical event AND it is the one memory that my father remembers vividly. Reading this book and knowing now there was more to the story blows my mind even more. Hearing all of these different points of view from various people, really sparked my interest and it was amazing to read what these guys had to say about the whole situation and the conspiracy theories that came with them. We have a lot of people who are history enthusiasts that will appreciate this book very much.
We will consider adding this title to our Non-Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.
December 15, 2023
Not really my cup of tea but fun to read a book set in Dallas!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews