TEXAS ERVER S October 23, 1981 A Journal of Free Voices 75

Illustrations by Ben Sargent Ever a Bridegroom Reflections on the Failure of Literature

By Larry McMurtry At the time the piece was thought to be in the way of praise than they really de- harsh, not because I had questioned the served. A recent attempt to retrace the ' About fourteen years ago, as I was try- literary steps that led me to that essay ing to force several rather disparate es- existence of a Southwestern literature but because my attitude toward the Holy proved very rocky going indeed. Time says to joins hands and look like a book has begun its merciless winnowing; about Texas, I complicated the problem Oldtimers Dobie, Webb and Bedichek — was less than reverent. In fact, it today the sheaves these three men by adding an essay called "Southwestern heaped up look considerably less sub- Literature?" — emphasis on the ques- wasn't much less than reverent: the tion mark. books of all three men were given more (Continued on page 8) short-circuit democracy, and not too clever a plot, at that. OBSERVATIONS Whose scheme it is, we leave to your suspicions to conclude. Most probably, the purpose is to shut out the attractive, persuasive progressive of moderate to- nalities, Land Cmsr. Bob Armstrong. If they sucked Armstrong into that trap he'd wake up trying to find his breakfast Hightower Hits Hustings in a spider's belly. "Unity and harmony" is the decades- old siren song conservative Texas Dem- ocrats sing to shut up progressive Demo- We welcome our friend and former the formation of a top - to - bottom crats. The time for unity and harmony in Observer editor, Jim Hightower, into the statewide progressive slate. He himself a party is the general election, not the race for agriculture commissioner. We might run for attorney general, maybe party's own primary. The very purpose think he's going to win this time. A few lietenant governor, if he gets enough en- of a primary is giving voters a chance to readers who blamed us in 1980, when he couragement. This may be the time for decide between the party's candidates. got 48% of the vote for railroad commis- such a ticket. Whatever the Democrats sioner, for not telling them in advance, in charge have been doing has produced Let some 200 "Democratic leaders," "Hey, he might win — get with it," stand Bill Clements and Bill Hobby and Billy selected shrewdly by a cabal of two or ••explicitly predicted-to this time. The in- Clayton and the "Democratic" legisla- three party insiders, try to tell the state's cumbent agriculture commissioner, Rea- ture's Republican redistricting. Anything Democrats, "This Is The One," and we gan Brown, has done nothing anyone has nearly would be an improvement, and might as well abolish the elections. noticed except alienate former Governor any plausible new strategy is worth a go. Whether, say, Bob Slagle likes it or not, Dolph Briscoe. Hightower's meat and If "the liberals," as they used to be democracy, guys, is democracy. Despite taters populism works with Texas vot- called, help each other and go for broke the misinformation put out that ers; he's well known; he learned from his in the primary, they well might win as a Armstrong had agreed to the plot, he mistakes last time (especially from his result of the draw-off into the GOP pri- hadn't. And we trust he won't. overconfidence about and neglect of mary, and like as not then, by next au- ). The GOP primary, a brawl tumn, the reaction against Reagan will The Delegation between very expensive cats, will draw have shuddered deep down enough into In I have been interview- off from the Democratic primary tens or the body politic, we can sweep assorted ing members of the Texas delegation in hundreds of thousands of conservative rascals and bounders out of the preparation for the Observer's special voters who'd ordinarily be there for statehouse — and assorted good guys in. issue about them. So far I have inter- Brown. Yeah, Hightower'll win. Pitch in The plan to entail the five leading po- viewed 15 of the 26 Texans; I will be for him — he'll make real differences. tential Democratic candidates for gov- seeing more of them before year's end. ernor in a "consensus" meeting of "200 Some of them made little impression In Washington Cong. Jim Mattox, who leading Democrats" to pick The One to as politicians, but some stand out. The may run statewide himself, advocates Run is nothing but an obvious plot to most surprising member so far, to me,

Incorporating the State Observer and the Democrat, TETaBSERvER which in turn incorporated the Austin Forum-Advocate. A journal of free voices Vol. 73, No. 21 7.‹.'7;r:t 141p. October 23, 1981 We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we fund it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human Editor and Publisher: Ronnie Dugger values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of Co-Editor: Joe Holley democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful Staff Reporter: Ruperto Garcia or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Washington Correspondent: Bob Sherrill Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in publishing them we do not necessarily imply Research Director in Washington: Katharine C. Fain that we agree with them because this is a journal of free voices. EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Frances Barton, Austin; Elroy Bode, El Paso; Chandler Davidson, ; Bob Eckhardt, Washington, D.C.; Sissy 600 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701 (512) 477-0746 Farenthold, Houston; Rupert() Garcia, Austin; John Kenneth Galbraith, Cam- bridge, Mass.; Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; George Hendrick, Ur- Business Manager: Frances Barton bana, Ill.; Molly Ivins, City; Larry L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Jr., ; Willie Morris. Oxford, Miss.; Kaye Office Manager: Joe Espinosa, Jr. Northcott, Austin; James Presley, Texarkana, Tx.: Susan Reid, Austin; A.R. (Babe) Schwartz, Galveston; Bob Sherrill, Washington, D.C.; Fred Schmidt, Advertising, Special Projects: Cliff Olofson Tehachapi, Ca.; Alfred J. Watkins, Austin. The Texas Observer (ISSN 0040-4519) is published biweekly except for a three-week LAYOUT: Beth Epstein. interval between issues in January and July (25 issues per year) by the Texas Observer Publishing Co., 600 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701, (512) 477-0746. Second class CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Warren Burnett, Jo Clifton, John Henry postage paid at Austin, Texas. Faulk, Bill Helmer, Jack Hopper, Laurence Jolidon, Lyman Jones, Mary Single copy (current or back issue) 75v prepaid. One year, $20; two years, $38; three Lenz, Matt Lyon, Greg Moses, Janie Paleschic, Laura Richardson, M. P. years, $56. One year rate for full-time students, $13. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates Rosenberg, Bob Sindermann, Jr., Paul Sweeney. Lawrence Walsh. on request. Microfilm editions available from Microfilming Corporation of America, Box 10, Sanford, N.C. 27330. CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS: Berke Breathed, Jeff Danziger, Ben Sargent, Copyright 1981 by Texas Observer Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Material Mary Margaret Wade, Gail Woods may not be reproduced without permission.

2 OCTOBER 23, 1981 POSTMASTER: Send form 3579 to: 600 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. was the Republican-Libertarian from ward to interviewing Senator Tower a lit- our destiny. I am filled with a vague and Houston, Ron Paul. Quick, unorthodox, tle later in the year. pervasive fear that chaos lies through the and consistent apparently without heed portals. of the consequences, Paul composes his "Today and yesterday I have gone posture out of anti-state reaction, liber- Chaos .through the motions, but my mind is tarianism on behaviorial matters, and It's difficult for me to visualize the ef- blank of all else. The assassination is so anti-militarism in foreign policy. Obvi- fects on being a person never having large and monstrous an event, its effects ously he thinks for himself — one can known a world without nuclear bombs in so multiplicitous and terrible, that one's almost hear him thinking. An impressive it. That same younger generation must own efforts to do good are dwarfed by its guy. be absorbing impacts from the assassina- evil. And how to fight it? By giving to the At present I think that the four best tions that those of us older did not have candidate of your choice? By writing a Texas members from the point of view of to try to live with, when we were young. searing expose?" the public interest are , The late Al Lowenstein was godfather Henry Gonzalez, Martin Frost, and Mat- to my son, Gary, and my daughter, Celia. The Newcomers tox. Leland, who purposes to lead the On Oct. 7 Celia, a reporter on the At- We welcome Third Coast, the serious progressive movement in Texas, is also lanta Journal, wrote me: and attractive new Austin monthly. Be- the black caucus' specialist on Cuba, "Yesterday I stayed up all night help- sides performing, in an outsize quality- which has led him into controversial ing out with the coverage of the Atlanta paper format, what one expects of city postures. Gonzalez, in the course of mayor's race (Andy Young is in a runoff magazines, Third Coast has substance. conducting many crusades, has launched with a white legislator), so I spent the In its October issue. for instance, there is important new hearings on the scandal day at home watching the news and Jackie Calmes' intelligently admiring of housing for farmworkers. Frost, al- weeping for Anwar Sadat and the Middle study of Sen. Lloyd Doggett (entitled though faced with a strong possibility of East. We are so vulnerable to terror. "Mr. Doggett Makes A Difference," minority opposition in his new district, is And these violent events have a cumula- which he does). Other good stories, too. calmly preparing to run hard for re- tive effect. For me, each time one occurs The premiere issue of Ultra, the new election. it is worse. Each one brings all the others Texas monthly that's sent free to rich Jake Pickle, the Austin Democrat and back to me as though they had just hap- people, isn't bad, either. Prepared to the most important man in the House on pened. Kennedy. King. Kennedy. Al. snicker, one finds instead a one-state Social Security, the subcommittee con- Sadat. Young said yesterday in a televi- Town and Country, with book reviews, a cerning which he chairs, is seeking what sion interview that you can kill the literary excerpt, two pages on a painter. he regards as a middle way between dreamer, but you can't slay the dream. The predictable things are here, of Reagan's drastic cuts in Social Security I'm not sure. History is different because course, too, features on richies, Deveral benefits and the Democratic liberals' these men are gone. Each time heightens D. George on "Shopping for Diamonds." fierce opposition to any cuts. Pickle's my sense that we are not in control of Handsomely printed. R.D. plan, still being worked out, comes down much closer to Reagan's than to the lib- erals'. There are hard choices to be made here, but the reduction of Social Security benefits is absolutely not necessary — if The Observer's Position the Congress will just do any of the many things that will prevent it. While Pickle is on top of the complexities of the Social Security system and its problems, I do On the Amendments: not believe he understands how angry voters are going to be if the Democrats go along even partly with the emascula- Three Yeses, Three Nos, tion of Social Security which Reagan de- sires. The famous , Boll- Weevil One Maybe -in-Chief from College Station, is a pro- fessorial sort, just as consistent as Paul, The Observer here makes recom- homes a little financial help. With federal but a totally orthodox conservative. mendations to our readers concerning aid to the cities drying up under Reagan, Calmly and at great length, as if conduct- the seven constitutional amendments to cities are going to have to find ways to ing a class, he justifies the abolition of be voted on Nov. 3. help themselves. Mayor Henry Cisneros the Social Security minimum benefit de- of San Antonio sees this as a way to help spite the hopelessness of that cause — Proposition 1: Yes poorer areas of cities. "It's a question," even Reagan has abandoned it for now. This would let cities issue revenue he says, "of whether we want two cities The dashing Charley Wilson, the bonds to finance improvements, such as in San Antonio or as they exist now-here, now-there East Texas Demo- parking garages, malls, sidewalks, and now: one poor and one prosperous." crat and friend and supporter of fascist lighting in run-down commercial areas Reducing cities' tax revenues just as dictators, deftly fielded my argumenta- and pay the bonds off with the tax reve- Reagan squeezes the cities is the other tive questions, Senator Bentsen was his nues generated by the higher property side of the issue, but the amendment may usual quiet, understated self. I was to see values, and it would also let cities tem- help some to reduce imbalances between Senator Tower one afternoon, but he porarily freeze taxes on both residential rich and poor. and commercial buildings in run-down was called to the White House for a Proposition 2: OK briefing at precisely the hour of our neighborhoods as an incentive for the interview, and forced to choose between owners to renovate them. This would let the Land Commissioner Reagan and me, he chose Reagan. Sti- This might help rebuild some commer- issue land patents to persons in situa- fling my feelings of rejection, I look for- cial areas and give owners of run-down (Continued on page 20) THE TEXAS OBSERVER 3 and in ten days 107 have come to me .. . which is one-third of one percent of the cards that were out. So I'm not con- Social Security cerned or alarmed about it. . . . I may just well have to expect that I'll have to have well-financed opposition as long as I'm in the leadership, it for no other reason than to keep me at home Can Be Cured, and reduce the amount of time that I can give to my colleagues. . . . Now whom did he [Terry Dolan of NCPAC] pick for his first three named Wright Says victims in the House? He picks Jim Jones, Dan Rostenkowski, and me. Now if he were really credible as an ideologue Washington, D.C. wanting to defeat the wild-eyed radicals House Majority Leader of Fort Worth suggests higher federal taxes on of Congress, there are several you could cigarettes or liquor to avoid cutting Social Security benefits. He suggests a system of nominate who would be more logical tax credits for persons who choose to continue working from age 65 on, encouraging targets for his tarbrush than the three of them to do so and reducing financial pressure on the system. And he is perfectly us. Because Jim Jones is a conservative. willing to turn to general revenues to finance Social Security if necessary to avoid Clearly, 95% of the members would re- cutting benefits. gard him as a conservative. His victory By these statements Wright distances himself from his fellow Texan Jake Pickle of as chairman of the budget committee Austin, chairman of the House subcommittee on Social Security, who is going along was considered broadly to be a victory with substantial cuts in Social Security. As well, Wright appears to be seeking to stake for the conservative and moderate wing out new ground for the Democratic Party in the defense of Social Security against any of the party. Then Dan Rostenkowsi cuts. never has been considered an ideological During an hour and a half interview with Ronnie Dugger of the Observer in his office liberal by any stretch of the imagination. in the Capitol late last month, Wright also related how he wheedled his fellow Texas I suppose . . . you could call Dan a mod- Democrats not to support the Reagan tax bill, to no avail. "I've never in all my years erate. Ironically the whole first six here witnessed such really craven fear of the public," he said. "Why are people more — months of this year he spent trying to Are they more cowardly than they were?" devise tax incentives for business. . . . The following excerpt from the interview opens with a discussion of full-page ads and I don't know what people call me, that have been appearing in newspapers calling for Wright's defeat, but I think up here among my colleagues although the election is next year. These ads are sponsored by the National Conserva- I'm generally regarded as a moderate. tive Political Action Committee. (NCPAC).

• There are these big ads in the North Texas papers against you. What do you think of the methods, and what do you think of the tactics? Well, Ronnie, I may be engaging in self-deception, I hope I'm not, but if I'm any judge of reaction, this effort is backfiring. . . . I have received very few negative responses as a result of the mailings and the newspaper ads inviting people to send me cards. The NCPAC crowd said that they mailed out 10,000 . . . soliciting criticism, and I have a daily count of my mail. This is far from the top thing that I hear. And I hear from my people that they're picking up com- ments all over town, even in the country clubs and in the downtown Fort Worth Club atmosphere and the business com- munity, to the effect that who in hell do these people think they are, you know, what business is it of theirs. . . . • Coming in from out of the state. . . . That's it, it's a boomerang effect. . . . (The responses on cards) have been com- ing in now for about ten days since the first ad ran. . . They sent out 10,000 . . . each person gets three cards and is asked to give two of 'em to someone who will send them in, so 30,000 cards went out to 10,000 people, presumably .. . 4 OCTOBER 23, 1981 . . . What have you been hearing from almost all other countries that have so- idea, and I thought it'uz a damn good the people . . . especially in your district, cial security systems, tend to finance one. . . . about Social Security? them one-third, one-third, and one third: • One of the possibilities you would con- Oh, people are concerned about the ef- one-third from the employee, one-third template would be, if it became neces- forts of the Administration to cut bene- from the employer, and one-third from ary, possibly the third-third-third possi- fits. I think it is probably the overriding general revenue. That's a very common bility? emotional issue. . . . practice in Europe. Yeah. I think the tax program was sold by a • And you could see that as a precedent In other words you're not at all blitz campaign designed specifically to if it became necessary? alarmed about all this? evoke an ersatz facsimile of a grass-roots Oh, surely. response. Judged professionally, as an I'm not the least bit alarmed about Or we might do this, if necessary, we exercise in political activity, it has to be it. . . . It needs a temporary infusion into might just put in enough funds to the given high marks, but it was phony .. . that one trust fund, and then that will basic retirement program so that it would and many of the responses that it gener- carry it for a number of years — I don't be forever inviolate and then periodically ated were phony. There were at least know how many years. enrich the other two funds, the disability five national companies that employed fund and the medicare fund, as need oc- But let's look at the long range. people to make telephone calls to mem- curs, from general revenue. You could There are any number of things we can bers of Congress. They include Exxon, do that, easily enough . . . in the long do . . . to keep it from going broke, and Philip Morris, Monsanto, two others — run. we must do those things, I think it's abso- one of them a brokerage firm, the name lutely incumbent upon us to preserve the of which was not familiar to me. . . . Or if it were determined advisable for a variety of reasons, including longer life actuarial soundness of the fund and its • Now, on the long run . . . on Social span and other things, less wear and tear integrity. I think we owe it to the public Security, I have this question posited on on the human body from rough hard to assure them emphatically that (Cong.) Jake Pickle's figures about the work . . . to encourage later retirements, whatever it takes, that's what we're projections, and other people's informa- I think we could do it in a much less going to do. But it doesn't take reneging tion that the reserves are low, and so attractive way than ordering it. It seems on our promise to the retirees. forth: It seems to me that in the long run, to me that we might create an incentive, If we didn't want to enrich the fund as Pickle says, the choice is cut benefits, a carrot rather than a stick. What would from general revenues, we could dedi- raise payroll taxes, or go to general rev- be wrong, for example, with providing cate some revenue to it. It doesn't have enue, not going into the short-run (prob- that in one's 65th year, the year of one's to come from the payroll tax. We could lem). And cutting benefits can take many 65th birthday, he or she, if electing to put another nickel on a package of ciga- forms, and one of the forms I hear some work rather than to retire, would be enti- rettes, put another quarter on a gallon of of the Republican members advocating tled to $1,000 tax credit. That would save hard spirits, and dedicate those is regarding some of the benefits of So- the government several thousand funds. . . . cial Security as welfare, therefore either dollars. It would save the trust fund dispensable or convertible to the general $4,000 or $5,000. And that would be • But that's new taxes, and that's sup- fund . . . but it still comes to cutting compensated for by the $1,000 tax credit. posed to be prohibited under the present benefits: or suspending inflation risers, In the 66th year, if a person still were environment. . . . or whatever you do – willing to continue to work and post- Prohibited by whom? I'd rather do it The cost of living increases — poned retirement, he might be entitled to that way than to renege on the pledge to • The effect is to lower the benefits. a $1,500 tax credit. . . . In the year that the retirees. he's 67, he would be entitled to a $2,000 Exactly. Precisely. • I hear you saying. . . . that as a Dem- tax credit. Or some variation of that So what's the long-run answer of the ocrat you're not going to see the Demo- • plan. Democratic Party to this long-run prob- cratic Party cut benefits. lem? I think Mr. Pickle's bill cuts bene- Thus a person could not feel deprived. No, sir, I'm not if I can help it. If I can fits by going to (retirement age of) No one could feel that the government help it, I'm not. Because it seems to me 68. . . . had reneged on its pledge or its promise, that we have a good-faith commitment. but the individual would be confronted Yes, it does. with an attractive choice. If a person still • Does that extend to all benefits in the Well . . . I don't think the Social Secu- feels like working, still wants to work, Social Security system or just to the re- rity fund is on the verge of bank- would like to continue to work, and is tirement benefits? That's a different ruptcy. . . . A study by the Congressio- attracted to do so by a tax credit of this question? nal Budget Office concludes that with no kind, the government saves money on It may be a debatable question. Let's changes, the trust fund by 1990 will be everyone who does it. face it, Ronnie, we lost a fight already $75 billion better off than it is right this year, and some of those benefits now. . . . • 1 haven't heard that idea. Is it current up here? Sounds like your idea. have been lost as of this moment. The There is a temporary problem which dependent children's benefit, the educa- can be cured by interfund transfers. One It is my idea so far as Congress is con- tional benefit is cut off at 18 instead of of the funds is going to show strain to- cerned. I have expressed it to Jake, and 21, for dependent children. The mini- ward the end of next year. The other two I've expressed it in leadership meetings mum benefit of $122 a month has been project substantial surpluses from which and elsewhere as one option, one way to abolished, and that will cost the average go. But let me be truthful with you, it is funds can be transferred. . . . recipient, I am told, about $61 a not original with me, it was confided to month. . . . Now, that's a meager • Mr. Pickle wants to use general reve- me by that great fellow Texan, P. Man- nue to replenish the medicare fund. . . . amount to whittle away from the oldest gum, in the Driskill Hotel coffee ship in and the poorest. Most of those people That pleases me fine, I don't have any Austin earlier this year. . . . problem with that. I don't know any rea- are in their seventies. . . . Most of 'em son why it wasn't done that way initially. • Preston Mangum? are women, for the most part widows. Most European countries, and I think Yes, Preston Mangum gave me this Now, they have a certain pride, which THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5 disinclines them to go and ask for charity figures it's $190 billion pending requests responsible legislative craftsmanship or for what they would regard as a by 1990. was not employed, they didn't know how handout, welfare, and I think many of That's correct, I think that's about many drafting errors it contained, they them would go in want rather than doing right. . . . In the next five years it would knew it contained too many, they knew it. In fact, predicated on that very as- be something like $70 billion that they that it eliminated entire programs, it re- sumption is the idea that you're gonna would hope to squeeze out of the Social peals at least 20 public laws en toto and save money by doing it. If nobody's Security recipients to help them balance parts of 60 or 70 other public laws. going to lose any money, the gov- their budget. Well Congress isn't going Never in my recollection, and I dare ernment's not going to save any money. to stand still for that. That means that a say seldom in American history has an Now the further argument is made person who has made plans for early re- Administration succeeded in dictating against the minimum benefit that they tirement (at 62) on a lesser 80% benefit the last dotting of the last "i" and the didn't earn it. Now let's see who these would fmd 35% of his expected retire- crossing of the last "t" as they did in this people are. We don't know who all of ment income taken away from him. No Gramm-Latta II. I just don't think it's 'em are, but I know who some of 'em are. way. . . . No way we're going to tolerate ever happened. . . . Some of them are people who were that. . . . So those things are illusory. Now other people told me when we domestics for a very long time, weren't Those savings aren't going to occur. considered the tax bill . . . guys from our covered, and maybe they reached the . . . The reason for these deficits delegation from Texas, I would have 'em point of physical incapacity before they which the president so grandly de- in here and say, "Gee, fellas, you guys were able to accumulate the requisite 40 nounces is his insistence upon this ex- campaigned against this Kemp-Roth quarters of covered earnings. But they cessive tax cut. The tax cut is gonna take thing, and you won. I can show you what worked all their lives, at the most menial $280 billion away from the public treas- I think are very reliable polls that will of drudgery in some cases. As far as I'm ury in these next three years. . . . Now prove to you that the people in our area concerned they're entitled to receive it how can you keep a straight face and tell don't want a tax cut that's paid for on — they've earned it, in my book — the public that you're going to reduce borrowed money. Given a choice be- whether they've got those ten years, 40 government income by $280 billion in tween a balanced budget or getting a big quarters, of covered payments or not.* these three years and at the same time tax cut they'd choose the former. These Some others who they use as a sort of you're going to achieve a balanced fellas are running absolutely contrary to a scapegoat to justify doing away with budget in the last of those years. what your people believe." this benefit are federal retirees, people I think Mr. Reagan probably believes They'd say, "Jim, I know that, I know who have other pensions. They call it this because he has been sold a bill of that it isn't responsible, I know that my double-dipping. Well, what do they goods. I think he has bought off on this people if they knew what was in it mean, double-dipping. I know a great dogmatic ideology that the way to great wouldn't like what was in it, but they many situations, people I know person- riches for America is simply to shrink the don't know what's in it, and they won't ally, mail-carriers and other federal em- federal government. But so few people sit still long enough for me to tell 'em ployees, trying to bring up families and actually believe that among the what's in it, they just know that the Pres- economists and other knowledgeable send kids through school, who just sim- ident oughta be given a chance, and ply weren't paid enough in the govern- people in government that I can't but wonder why his secular, mystical faith in they're looking to me to give the Presi- ment employment and moonlighted. . . . dent a chance." But they are entitled to whatever they the thing hasn't been shaken al- earned. . . . My position is that if a per- ready. . . . I say, "Hey, they're lookin' to you to son has qualified for both through his or Some of us kept saying, those are radi- use your judgment. They didn't elect you her efforts, then we have little justifica- cal prunings, this isn't trimming away to come up here as a flunky, for cryin' tion in denying it. . . . fat, this is amputating arms and legs. . . . out loud, they elected you to be a man responsible in your judgments." • Can we talk about the defense spend- When people fall through those gaping ing issue now. Mr. Reagan sent up his holes in the so-called safety net, absent "Jim, I know that, but if they elect me $13 billion cut (for the next three years) these cushions they're gonna fall on bare again I'm gonna come back again and if in his second wave of cuts. . . . Pretty concrete. This is what we were tryin' to they don't I'm not." severe cuts now in social services, say, and this is what we had to say, Ron- I mean I've never in all my years maybe more to come. . . . nie, because here comes this guy running here witnessed such really craven fear This would be $2 billion in outlays dur- right down our throats, and three times of the public, and I don't know what it ing the coming fiscal year. I think that he rallied at least what passed for sub- betokens. You can sit here and pon- could be achieved. I don't regard it as stantial public clamor for his pro- tificate and try to philosophize about necessarily excessive. grams. . . . it. Why are people more — Are they • Do you think it's enough? The reconciliation bill was probably more cowardly than they were? If so, the most devastating one of all. . . . the why? Do they have less sense of re- Well, it isn't going to get him to the sponsibility? If so, when did it start? goal of a balanced budget ... by 1984. I members didn't even get to see it until the day of the vote, and yet so great was Where did it begin?"What do you do to think you can just make an axiom of the change it? I don't know the answer to fact that you simply cannot indulge the the appeal that this man Reagan had gen- erated behind it on the premise that it those questions. But I know that those biggest peacetime military buildup in questions loom very large in my mind. America's history and the biggest tax cut was essential to his economic recovery in America's history and have a balanced plan — which I think is an economic re- Mr. Rayburn had these difficulties, but budget, all three. . . . the inexorable trenchment plan, I think it's a misnomer never quite to this degree. Mr. Rayburn laws of mathematics are against it. . . . — that members of Congress who knew was disappointed on numerous occa- better supinely lay down and let them sions in votes (in) the House, but mem- I don't think you can take out of Social run over us. It was a new experience to bers who voted contrary to what he Security what he intends to take out of it. me. Four votes changed would have won wanted and what they really thought was • According to (Cong.) Jake's (Pickle's) the crucial battle. . . . best were few, and when it occurred they *President Reagan has since given up the fight to kill Members of Congress knew better were somewhat apologetic about it to the minimum benefit. than that. They knew that . . . a good, their colleagues. . . . 0

6 OCTOBER 23, 1981 sentative also predicted that Clayton will run against Garry Mauro — as a Repub- POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE lican. ✓ Republican State Sen. Walter "Mad Dog" Mengden of Houston made it offi- cial last week. He will run for the Repub- lican nomination for the U.S. Senate next year. A lawyer and independent Strauss Talks oilman, the 54-year-old Mengden claims he'll run a stronger race against Sen. than the other still unan- nounced Republican candidate, Cong. Business Jim Collins of Dallas. Mengden says his age and his hometown are advantages. Collins is 65. "There has always been a far right and Republicans to play their own game. ✓ They're always going to have more mon- A third GOP candidate, San Antonio group in the Republican Party who businessman Donald Richardson, filed ey. would rather have a-small party and rule his candidacy Jan. 21. it and never elect anyone. The same "The real test, I think, is to be able to thing is true of the Democratic Party." build an organization that in effect works ro• Another San Antonian, City Council- The sentiments are those of former year round so that you have people at the man Frank Wing who has been a staunch Democratic Party chairman Bob Strauss, precinct and county levels who are doing supporter of San Antonio's participation speaking to former Observer editor Kaye the little things between elections that in STNP, has now changed his mind and Northcott in his Washington, D.C. law make them influential. The candidates wants the city out. This development office. "We have a far left group," can't deliver anything unless there is a underscores the criticality of the Nov. 3 Strauss continued, "that would like to network of people down there talking to election in Austin on this same issue. run out everybody else and never elect the voters. . . . The real challenge of the anyone. And neither one of them serves Democratic Party in Texas and the na- ✓ President Reagan was set to name a the state very well. tion is to rebuild those cadres of party new chairman for the National Endow- "The same thing is true in national activists, not the abortion activists, not ment for the Humanities at a luncheon politics. What we need to do is to have a the labor activists as such, but people last week for his task force studying fed- party that tilts a bit left from center, a who are committed to the party as an eral support for the arts and humanities. little to the liberal side. And a Republi- organization. Now, if you ask how to do He named a new chairman for the Na- can Party that tilts a bit to the conserva- that, I'm not entirely sure I could answer tional Endowment for the Arts, but put tive side. Where the difference between that. But I think it's crystal clear that off making the NEH choice. the parties is a 15 to 20 percent shift in that's where a lot of the problem is." According to White House sources, Reagan had decided not to appoint Uni- degree, not a 180-degree shift. Then ✓ While the possibility of Cong. Jim when you change administrations, you Mattox of Dallas opposing Cong. Phil versity of Dallas professor Melvin E. don't have these dramatic changes. The Gramm in 1982 has attracted notice, Bradford, the self-described "arch- American people, pretty generally speak- there is savvy talk in Washington that conservative" who supported George ing, are pretty moderate. They don't Tom Vandergriff, who was mayor of Ar- Wallace for the presidency in 1968 and want extremism. In Texas we tend to lington 25 years, is ready to undertake was Dallas County chairman of want to give them extremism." that task. Close to House Majority Wallace's American Party in 1969-70 Strauss mentioned Jess Hay, the Dal- Leader Jim Wright, Vandergriff is well- (See TO, 10/9/81). The Reagan choice las fundraiser for Dolph Briscoe; Calvin regarded in his area. He is now the was apparently Robert Hollander Jr., a Guest, the former Democratic Party Chevrolet dealer in Arlington. professor of European literature at chairman; Charles Duncan, head of the r.0' The political future of Leonel Castillo , Princeton University, but intense pres- DOE during the Carter Administration at a statewide level probably also rides sure on Bradford's behalf from Senators — and, of course himself, as the type of with November's city election in Hous- Thurmond, East, and Helms persuaded Democrat he had in mind. "We come ton. Thrice Houston city controller be- the President to reconsider his choice. from the business community, but we're fore he became Carter's INS commis- Reagan's nominee to become not rightwingers," he pointed out. With sioner, Castillo is running for controller chairman of the National Endowment for that kind of posture you can attract the again. His major opponent is Council- the Arts is Francis S. M. Hodsoll, cur- business community back into the Dem- man Lance Lalor, who says he decided rently a deputy to presidential chief of ocratic Party. I think we can do it. I see to run after Castillo told him he would staff James A. Baker III. Hodsoll, a no reason to be pessimistic." not. Also running are Cynthia Oliphant, former New York attorney who was a a city accountant, and Richard Mills, a deputy assistant secretary and later an tor Kaye also talked politics with Clifton assistant to the undersecretary of com- McCleskey, author of the standard businessman. The present controller, Kathy Whitmire, is in the race for merce in the Ford administration, was a textbook on Texas government, who's staff coordinator in Reagan's 1980 presi- now teaching at the University of Virgin- mayor. Talk around the wine-and-cheese dential campaign, concentrating on the ia. Sitting on the front porch of his ✓ debates with Jimmy Carter and John 1830-vintage farmhouse overlooking the table at the recent Austin fund-raiser for Lloyd Doggett concerned Billy Clayton's Anderson. The only background in the Virginia hills south of Charlottesville, arts Hodsoll has, at least according to a McCleskey warned against seductive — political future. One of the speaker's House colleagues suggested that Clayton biography provided by the White House, and expensive — mass media cam- was an interest in theater and radio while paigns. "It will always be too expensive was waiting until January to announce for Land Commissioner because he he was a college student at Yale, Cam- for liberals to be successful," he said. bridge, and the Stanford University Law "And to engage in that kind of politics is wants the fate of his Water Plan decided School. to accept the challenge of conservatives before he makes a decision. The repre- ❑ THE TEXAS OBSERVER 7 nature, not enough to human nature, and they have been too ready to fall back on The death of the cowboy had been the bucolic memoir or country idyll rather than attempting novels, poems, lamented sufficiently . . . from page 1 and dramas. Minor forms only rarely prompt major books, and the lack we suffer from most is a lack of major books. stantial than they seemed only fourteen the literary result of them, that makes years ago. him seem still worthy of salute. So far, by my count, we have a total of one. J. Frank Dobie, by far the most prolific In years to ,come Roy Bedichek's Our literature is not evenly and most popular of the three, has fared Karankaway Country and Adventures minor — some Texas books are better than others much the worst. It is now clear how With A Texas Naturalist are apt to give — but none of it is major. much his books needed the support of more pleasure to readers than all the his forceful and infectious personality. books of his friend Dobie — merely be- Like Will Rogers and other raconteurs, cause they are written well. I don't think WERE I SET the task of seeking he was better in person than on paper. Bedichek had much to say, but his eye an exception to that dictum, I would Less than two decades after his death in and his whimsy were served by an excel- probably try and make a case for Walter 20-odd books are a congealed mass of lent, flexible prose style. He is as appeal- Prescott Webb. Unfortunately, I think virtually undifferentiated anecdotage: ing — if as minor — today as he ever the case would fail. Webb's achievement endlessly repetitious, thematically was. was genuine, but small. He had a first- empty, structureless, and carelessly writ- Nonetheless, I am not sure that the rate mind and he continued to extend its ten. Bedichek influence has been wholly be- reach throughout his life, but the yield, His reputation has declined so swiftiy nign. The bucolic essay may be a sweet finally, was two important books, The that it was recently possible for the form, but it is also a limited one — in- Great Plains and The Great Frontier, the editor of the state's most popular deed, almost a retrograde form, the most latter being by far the more impressive. magazine to refer to his writings as "bed- likely route of nostalgic retreat from our It is one of the few Texas books that time stories for ten-year-olds. " True, al- increasingly urban realities. I think we bespeaks a true intellectual vitality. By though the world he wrote about must have too many bucolics, too many contrast The Great Plains, comprehen- now seem irrelevant to most ten-year- Richard Jeffrieses, W. H. Hudsons, Gil- sive though it is, seems dull and rather olds. Dobie had the energies of a bert Whites. Now what we need is a Bal- wooden. Webb lost much of his energy Mencken, but not the reach. It is his zac, a Dickens, even a Dreiser. Texas to academic store-keeping, and more of energies and his application, rather than writers have paid too much attention to it to his huge romantic work on the Texas Rangers. Though he matured late, he matured fully, and might finally have Novelist Larry .McMurtry now splits To pick up McMurtry's assessment of delivered a masterpiece had he not been his time between his native Texas and Texas writing we called on him at his killed. The longer Webb wrote, the Georgetown in Washington, D.C., where bookstore in Georgetown, on a Saturday greater seemed his potential, an unusual he is part-owner of Booked-Up, a high- morning. He leaned back in a swivel thing. In writers late growth is not the quality shop that sells rare and used chair at his large desk, his feet crossed norm, in Texas or not. books. His regular returnings to Archer up on it, in the one main room of the When I say that Texas has produced City and his native Texas have led to a shop. Later we discussed the piece in his no major writers or major books, the ex- prevailing impression that, like Willie and the shop's inner sanctum upstairs. ception I most expect to hear argued Morris' return to , McMurtry Perhaps some of the more valuable against me is Katherine Anne Porter, has returned to Texas. It seems to be the books are kept on the shelves there, and Again, I think the argument would fail, case, rather, that he has taken up a regu- McMurtry sank deeply into his armchair but hers is a subtle case and merits more lar alternation of being between Texas pp there; no doubt he reads and writes prolonged address than I can give it here. and Washington. His stays in Texas last there some. three, four, five weeks. Alone among Texas writers of her generation, Miss Porter thought of her- Larry McMurtry has been musing on this essay on Texas writing for much of self as an artist and had the equipment to the summer. One evening in September he read the paper in its form at that point be one. Though often sharply critical of to an overflowing crowd at the Solarium of the Fort Worth Art Museum. Larry modernism, she touched most of the Swindell, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram book editor, reported: modernist bases, usually at a time when no one else was occupying them. A large "Texas literature, or its reputation, is reeling from the heavy assault it ab- part of her artistic equipment was dedi- sorbed Tuesday evening, when Larry McMurtry did all of the punching. . . . cation — or stubbornness, as she called "The author chose to read an essay on current Texas literature that he has it. Another part was what might be called written for a forthcoming issue of the Texas Observer. He read for 40 minutes a high neurosis, driving her from place to and fielded questions for another 40 minutes, never wavering in his conviction place and prompting her to leave, like that 'new' Texas writing is something less than has recently been made of it. . . . dumped baggage, a remarkable body of "He acknowledged a plethora of writers who have had brief modest success — evasions and misrepresentations, `one-book authors' — but maintained that even their best attainments were through which her biographers will be modest, and that Texans have produced no truly major work for American sorting for the next few decades. literature." In her Paris Review interview she From other reports we have heard, some of the audience got mad. McMurtry speaks of the various other "half- told us most of them were too young to have read much of the work under talents" she possessed: for dancing, sing- discussion, but that older persons present seemed, in their responses to him, to ing, acting. Reading through the Col- agree with him. lected Stories now — Miss Porter being OCTOBER 23, 1981 no longer around to distract one with her that drove Miss Porter to smooth her timistic document. It was written in the sentences so carefully. More likely what mid-sixties, when there was every rea- For all [Porter's] was at work was her profound evasive- son to think that Texas was about to ex- ness, an uncertainty not so much about perience a literary coming of age. There trafficking with rev- what she knew as about what she could were at least a dozen young writers loose bring herself to admit about what she in the state whose potential everyone olutionaries and knew. For all her trafficking with rev- was ready to welcome. Goodbye .to a mad poets, for all her olutionaries and mad poets, for all her River had appeared, and The Gay Place, scorn of middle-class convention, she and Adam's Footprint, all interesting be- scorn of middle-class was genteel to the core. It may be that all ginnings. A flowering seemed not merely that purification of style was undertaken imminent, it seemed already to have oc- convention, she was in order that she might conceal her own curred. experience perfectly — perfectly mean- One reason for my optimism was my genteel to the core. ing even from herself. sense that the country — or Western, or Within her terms she is very skillful, cowboy — myth had finally been worked but her terms are seldom embracing, or through. It was clear by then that this even interesting. Too often she reminds myth had served its time, and lost its po- one of a minor French belles-lettrist: an tency; insofar as it still functioned it was intense purity of style concealing a small an inhibiting, rather than a creative, fac- — very small — grain of experience. tor in our literary life. The death of the Compare her stories to Chekhov's, or cowboy and the ending of the rural way Flannery O'Connor's, and they seem of life had been lamented sufficiently, fragile, powdery, and frequently just and there was really no more that needed plain boring. to be said about it. Of course, there are a handful of noble Moreover, this realization seemed exceptions, when the artist won the bat- widespread. Most of the young Texas tle with the lady. These few fine stories writers I knew were quite willing to face satisfy — despite the alabaster prose — because Miss Porter has for once not been able to hide her own fascination with — and terror of — such primal con- cerns as lust, revenge, birth and death. But these stories are few. In too many cases the story struggles against the all but opaque language, and loses; one very seldom feels that the experience has been allowed its full life. Ironically — how often this happens to those who think they live solely by their fiction — Miss Porter's passionate, often vengeful essays now seem more alive charming accounts of their composition and probably more permanent than all (some of these are better stories than the but a few of her stories. In attack she stories) — one is forced to think that all was always quite confident, and far less but the best of her work — perhaps a half genteel. a dozen stories — is, like her singing and In her own time Katherine Anne Por- dancing, the work of a half-talent. ter virtually eluded criticism. The sur- Oh, the whole talent was there, and a face she presented, both in person and in fine talent it was: but a talent seldom her fiction, was taken to be impeccable, either fully or generously put to use. when in fact it was merely inscrutable. Miss Porter believed in a pure style; Edmund Wilson paid her a few compli- hers, at times, is purified almost to the ments, chided her gently for irrelevance, vanishing point. By her account, she did and that was about it. Both as an artist this in the name of an aesthetic, remov- and as a person she seems to have ing the local and the immediate in order needed to attract attention, and yet to to reach the timeless and universal. escape it, and in large measure she suc- Unfortunately for her aesthetic, and ceeded. Gertrude Stein, whom Miss Por- [Barthelme] is the unfortunately too for many of her ter did not like, once made a famous re- stories, the local and immediate is the mark about — I believe — Oakland, Cali- one prose writer I true street of fiction — at least of the sort fornia. There was no there there, she of realistic fiction she was trying to said. I feel very much the same way know of to whom an write. The great ones, the Dickenses and about the fiction of Katherine Anne Por- ter. The plumage is beautiful, but plum- Balzacs, Flauberts and Hardys, analogy to a trapeze Faulkners and Tolstoys, wasted none of age, after all, is only feathers. their time attempting to boil the accents artist seems exact: a of their own times and places out of their DESPITE its criticism of the Holy miss means death. fiction. Oldtimers, my fourteen-year-old essay I doubt, though, that it was aesthetics seems on the whole a surprisingly op- THE TEXAS OBSERVER 9 John Graves likes to farm, William Humphrey likes to fish, William Goyen enjoys living in L.A., and none seem much interested in slighting their absorbing pursuits to write the Great Texas Novel. the fact that they were city people; they all seemed well aware that the styles which would shape their lives and sus- tain their fiction were being formed in Houston and Dallas, not back on the homeplace, wherever it had been. For reasons I don't fully understand, my mid-sixties optimism was unfounded, generally as regards our literary flower- ing, specifically as regards the Western myth. At a time when the latter should have ceased to have any pertinence at all, drug-store cowboyism became a minor national craze. Boots became trendy in New York just as the last of the real cowboys took to wearing dozer caps and other gear more suitable to the oil patch and the suburb. I recognize now that in the sixties I generalized too casually from a personal position. In A Narrow Grave was my formal farewell to writing about the country. It had dominated four books, which seemed enough, and I began rather consciously to drain it from my work. I proceeded to write three novels set in Houston, one set in Hollywood, and — most recently — one set in Wash- ington, D.C. I didn't deplore country living — still don't — but I had no doubt at all that urban life offered me richer possibilities as a novelist. Granting certain grand but eccentric exceptions, virtually the whole of modern literature has been a city liter- Where has this experience gone? Speaking at the University of Texas a ature. From the time of Baudelaire and Where are the novels, stories, poems, year or two ago, I was confronted by a James, the dense, intricate social net- and plays that ought to be using it? Why young lady who suggested, in distinctly works that cities create have stimulated are there still cows to be milked and resentful tones, that my next book would artists and sustained them. No reason it chickens to be fed in every other Texas probably be set in Princeton, which, in should be any different in Texas, since book that comes along? When is enough her innocence, she took to be synony- we now have at least one or two cities going to be allowed to be enough? mous with the East. When I pointed out which offer the competitions of manners that I was more familiar with Virginia upon which the modern novel feeds. PART OF THE TROUBLE, I am than , she said, "Oh well, all It was thus something of a shock, as I afraid, lies with Texas readers, who, if those places up there are so close to- started looking at my shelves of Texas my experience is any indication, remain gether." books in preparation for this essay, to actively hostile to the mere idea of urban Her attitude, though severe, was not discover how few of them deal with city fiction. Virtually every time I give a lec- much different, from that of many old life. Not only are there few readable city ture in Texas I find myself being chided friends, who sigh wistfully and cast fond books, but many of the country books by someone in the audience because I glances at their copies of Leaving are filled with explicit anti-urbanism. have stopped writing "the kind of books Cheyenne when they ask me what I'm Writer after writer strains to reaffirm his I ought to write." writing now. or her rural credentials. Evidently, in the eyes of these readers, The reader's attitude, reduced to Why? The vast majority of Texas only my first three books were the kind I basics, is that the writer who doesn't writers have been urbanites for decades. ought to write - the ones that happened want to keep rewriting the book that Many are veterans not only of the Texas to deal with small towns and cowboys. pleased them most is merely being self- cities, but of the cities of the East Coast, Leaving Cheyenne forever is what my ish. Once a writer manages to write a the West Coast, and Europe. readers seem to want. book that gives a reader pleasure, his 10 OCTOBER 23, 1981 duty, presumably, is to repeat the book former. Blessed McGill is an interesting ored: literary criticism generally means so that the reader may repeat the pleas- tour de force that seemed to work when two writers having a fistfight in a bar. ure. Attempts to offer the reader more it was published — our Sotweed Factor, Not only do we need critics, we need advanced and subtle pleasures — or, in- as it were. Now, like The Sotweed Fac- writers who are willing to get along deed, pleasures that are in any way dif- tor itself, it seems alternately without one another's approval. Literary ferent — are not only unnecessary, they grandiloquent and stilted. Strange comradeship is a fine thing up to the are unwelcome. Peaches addresses itself to more com- point at which it begins to produce a This is an understandable prejudice, plex material and treats it well, with a pompous, self-congratulatory, and self- but one which any healthy writer will ig- humor and a balance that is more diffi- protective literary culture. In Texas, nore. cult to sustain than, the archaic style of rampant good - old - boy - and - girlism has Unfortunately, not enough Texas the earlier book. produced exactly that: a pond full of writers are ignoring it. Too many of them What one wonders is whether Mr. self-satisfied frogs. love repeating themselves — after all, it's Greene, or anyone, has attentively re- In my opinion the self-satisfaction is easier than thinking up something new to read those books or any of our literature entirely unjustified. There are as yet no say. Many seem to find offering up an lately. Or were his choices, like those of solid achievements in Texas letters. endless stream of what might be called the many readers who sigh for Leaving Those who fancy otherwise probably Country-and-Western literature an Cheyenne, made on the basis of fond haven't tried to reread the books. Cyril agreeable way to make a living. Easier to memory? Connolly felt that the minimum one write about the homefolks, the old folks, If I suspect the latter, it is because I should ask of a book was that it remain cowboys, or the small town than to deal now know from experience how difficult readable for ten years. When this modest with the more immediate and frequently most Texas books are to reread. There standard is applied to one's Texas books less simplistic experience of city life. are none that one would want to go back their ranks are immediately decimated — What this amounts to is intellectual to time and again, and very few that can indeed, almost eliminated, in view of laziness. Most Texas writers only know be read with genuine pleasure even which it seems the more unfortunate that one trick, and seem determined to keep twice. our in-state literary culture has begun to from learning another. The result is a If Texas Monthly wants to do us a exhibit the sort of status-consciousness limited, shallow, self-repetitious litera- real service, it ought to solicit not merely characteristic of literary society in New ture which has so far failed completely to A. C. Greene's list of 50 Texas books, York or London, without the excuse of do justice to the complexities of life in but a listing of the favorite non-Texas talent or anything resembling the intel- the state. books of 50 Texas authors. My own sad lectual density to be found in those impression is that there are plenty of cities. Texas authors who haven't read 50 The hunter who is reluctant to use a THE DALLAS CRITIC A. C. non-Texas books in the last decade. gig might as well avoid the frog-pond of Greene is plainly aware of many of these Books about Texas cross my desk con- Texas letters. Gigs are what's needed. problems. In the April issue of The Lone stantly and I search them hopefully but As it is, most Texas writers work for a Star Review he comments forcefully and in vain for any sign of the author's read- lifetime without receiving a single para- perceptively on the very anti-urbanism I ing. Where are the borrowings and subtle graph of intent criticism, and if they have been describing. A few months lat- or not-so-subtle thefts? Where are the should get one now and then it will usu- ally come from out of state. Anything re- er, in Texas Monthly, he published a echoes, allusions, correspondences, and list of his 50 favorite Texas books which, restatements with which most richly tex- sembling a tough-minded discussion of in my view, merely confirms the tenacity tured books abound? Where, in our Texas books by a Texan is thought to be of the bias he himself has criticized. books, will one get a sense of a mind unneighborly. The writers get reviewed, but reviews are merely first impressions. He was kind enough to list two of my actively in contact with other minds, or a style nervously aware of other styles? Criticism begins as the second impres- books in his selection and they were sion, or the third, and even the thumb- Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Almost nowhere, that's where. The most.shocking but also the fairest charge nail variety, which is all I can offer, is Cheyenne, the first two. It seems incred- almost never practiced here. ible to me that a critic as intelligent as that can be levelled at Texas literature is The need for hard-nosed, energetic, Mr. Greene could choose a piece of that it is disgracefully insular and unin- juvenilia such as Horseman, Pass By formed. Writing is nourished by reading and unintimidated local critics is plainly urgent. It's one thing that our literary so- over, say, Terms of Endearment, unless — broad, curious, sustained reading; it a) he hadn't read the latter, or b) was flows from a profound alertness, fine= ciety has gotten so clubby and pompous, approaching the material from a position tuned both by literature and life. Perhaps quite another that the books which con- of deep bias. we have not yet sloughed off the frontier stitute the reason for having a literary society are still predominantly soft, thin, The deep bias is the more likely expla- notion that reading is idle or sissified. At the moment our books are protein- and sentimental — not to mention dull, nation. I think this bias operates against portentous, stylistically impoverished, all Texas writers who deviate from deficient, though the protein is there to be had, in other literatures. Until we and intellectually empty. The large whatever type-casting they may have majority of them are dead where they sit, acquired. In the same essay Mr. Greene have better readers it is most .unlikely that we will have better writers. and reading them is about as pleasant as prefers Edwin Shrake's Blessed McGill eating sawdust. — a Western book — to the same au- thor's Strange Peaches, a city book. Within the minuscule context of our IF SOME of the above seems over- local literary life, Blessed McGill — like stated, it is because I've concluded that IN FAIRNESS I should point out Leaving Cheyenne — is over-praised, nothing short of insult moves people in that I realize this is a condition not Strange Peaches completely neglected. Texas. This is perhaps another aspect of unique to Texas. Minnesota hasn't pro- Not much time has passed since the two clinging frontierism. Gentle chidings go duced a great literature either, nor Idaho, books were written, but the little that has unheard. In these parts the critical act nor perhaps even . Fortunately has been kinder to the latter than to the has never been accepted, much less hon- I am not from any of those places, and THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11

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their failings are not my concern. learned to write in French, without, ally one or two a yeaf, but Barthelme This brings me to another point, or however, ceasing to be Irish. keeps working; the recently published another aspect of our literary immaturity I am mainly going to hew to the simple Sixty Stories, despite many misses, is an —i.e., the habit we have of attempting to rule that only those born and raised in impressive achievement. annex any writer who happens to stray Texas have the dubious honor of literary across the state line. Recently I received citizenship. Even writers who become N THE HASTY SURVEY which a prospectus for a bibliography of Texas absorbed in the state, and make good use I authors which included such well-known follows I am going to concentrate mainly of some part of it — as Beverly Lowry on books published since 1950 — it Texas boys as Max Apple (Detroit), has of Houston, in Daddy's Girl — Michael Mewshaw (Takoma Park, Mary- seems to me it has been within this 30- shouldn't have to consider themselves year span that Texas literature has land), and Willie Morris (Yazoo City, Texas writers. Graham Greene has used Mississippi). clearly failed to realize itself. I would a great many places well, while remain- prefer to talk mainly about fiction, but The inclusion of Willie Morris is par- ing thoroughly English. see no way to avoid some discussion of ticularly amusing, since he has spent The one case that could be called the reminiscential literature which has, much of his life proclaiming — with al- either way is Donald Barthelme, who has from the first, been so popular with most every waking breath — that he is a lived enough of his life in Texas to be Texas writers. One explanation for this Mississippian. considered a Texas writer if he wants to. may be that lying doesn't come easy to Whether such a designation matters to children of the frontier. It is ironic that Michael Mewshaw has probably spent him I have no way of knowing, but what Texans, known the world over for being more time in the south of France then he is obvious is that his fiction has no need big liars, still can't lie well enough to has in Texas. Does a job at the Univer- of Texas. Barthelme is a brilliant, high- write interesting novels, preferring, for sity of Texas automatically make one a risk modernist, who operates on a hair- the most part, the milder fabrications al- Texas writer? If this strange standard line, with no greater margin of error than lowable in reminiscence. were rigorously applied I would have to that of a lyric poet. In quality, his work As I said in my previous essay, there is consider myself a Virginia writer, since I has almost no middle. The stories that once held a teaching job there. not much Texas fiction earlier than 1950 are perfect are wonderful; those that are that needs to be looked at, other than There is no point in wasting space on off by a millimeter fail completely. He is that of Miss Porter. James Phillips' The these claims, which are almost never the one prose writer I know of to whom Inheritors (1940) seems wooden as any made by the writers themselves. At- an analogy to a trapeze artist seems plank; the same can be said for Edward tempts to bolster our ranks with late- exact: a miss means death. In the best Anderson's Thieves Like Us. George comers or temporary residents won't stories, just watching him not miss pro- Sessions Perry's fiction is now as dead as work. Joyce found it convenient to live vides an intellectual excitement so high the magazines he wrote it for. Hold Au- much of his life in France. Did this make that it often brings emotion with it. The tumn In Your Hand, his farming novel, him a French writer? Beckett even perfect stories accumulate slowly, usu- seems workaday indeed when compared Two new books on TEXAS POLITICS

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12 OCTOBER 23, 1981 to Edith Sumners Kelley's Weeds, the his best book first. Good books in every field has the lonely one masterpiece of this genre. The Devil Rides Outside, JENKINS PUBLISHING CO. In general, the best Texas books of distinction of being the best French The Pemberton Press novel ever published in Fort Worth. It is this period confuse honesty with artistry. John H. Jenkins, Publisher Their writers produced, without self- a strange, strong book whose verbal energy — a quality very rare in our fic- consciousness, what might be called Box 2085 Austin 78768 novels of information, for readers who tion — still seems remarkable after al- 6 had not yet grown accustomed to getting most 30 years. In the mostly all-too- their information off a television screen. healthy and sunlit world of Texas fiction, Such writers told it like it was, but unfor- the book remains an anomaly, dark, tunately didn't tell it very well, and their feverish, introverted, claustrophobic, books now have only a period interest. tortured. In the mid-fifties a considerably more It was so complete and so explosive an interesting generation began to be heard outpouring of intellectualized emotion from, its principal voices being John that Griffin seemed, from then on, a sort Graves, William Humphrey, William of emptied man. His second novel, Nuni, Goyen, and John Howard Griffin, all of had neither energy nor force. He then whom differed significantly from the wrote a history of a Midland bank, and Texas writers who had come before finally, perhaps in desperation, turned them. In their differing ways they were himself black, in a last effort to find our first literary aesthetes, the first something strong to write about. writers after Miss Porter to feel that lit- There are reports that Griffin left at erature should be elegant as well as hon- least one completed novel, perhaps sev- est. Also, they were internationalists, eral. When these are published his career well-educated and well-travelled; and all may seem less strangely truncated then had been to school to the masters of is the case now. modern literature. They were more William Humphrey has had a consid- ' ginnysCOPYING SERVICE likely to echo Faulkner or Joyce or the erably more satisfying, not to mention French Symbolists than to imitate J. more intelligible development. The short Frank Dobie or Roy Bedichek. stories collected in The Last Husband, Copying • Binding his first book, were fairly conventional, The most obvious thing that can be Printing •Color Copying said about this gifted group is that they but did make clear that he was working have not produced very many books. toward a style of his own, one which was Graphics •Word Processing Granting that the three or four best not to mature fully until The Ordways. books — Goodbye to a River, The Ord- Home from the Hill succeeds to the ex- Austin • Lubbock • San Marcos ways, The House of Breath, The Devil tent that it does on the strength of the Rides Outside — are among our very story and is actually somewhat hindered best books, it seems nonetheless a slim by the style, which had not yet worked yield. itself clear of Southern portentousness Perhaps an admirable desire to put and Faulknerian hype. quality over quantity has held their yield Full clarity came with The Ordways, in down — or then again it may be that in 1964, a beautifully crafted novel which their travels they acquired a rather more turns the traditional family chronicle into LUNCH Mediterranean outlook on life than is a kind of dance of the generations. The ON THE RIVER common between the Red River and the Ordways is funny, moving, elegantly OR THE BALCONY Rio Grande. They have managed the written and firmly controlled. It was as if nice trick of sustaining their ambitions a less prolix Thackaray had turned his without being absolutely driven by them, attention to East Texas, though rather BRUNCH in the process acquiring a balance that too briefly, as it now appears. ON SUNDAY! In the succeeding 17 years Humphrey may be good for their souls while keep- ... and Sandwiches, Chili, ing a brake on their output. John Graves has produced a couple of fishing books Tacos, Chalupas, and likes to farm, William Humphrey likes to and a graceful memoir, but no more restaurant baked desserts. fish, William Goyen enjoys living in novels. One of the fishing books, The Haagen Dazs Ice Cream L.A., and none seem much interested in Spawning Run, is very charming, but I and fresh yoghurt. Soup slighting their absorbing pursuits in would still rather have a successor to and salad bar. And of course, we may get 11:30 am until 5:00 pm order to write the Great Texas Novel. The Ordways. Monday thru Sunday. Each has made it plain that he doesn't it. There is no indication that William 224-4515 intend to be a blind slave to the Protes- Humphrey is exhausted, or even tired. tant work ethic. Like Humphrey, William Goyen is an the Two of them, Griffin and Humphrey, East Texan who adroitly managed to es- seem to have been pressed into fiction by cape both the region and the state. the force of one compelling traumatic Goyen, too is a stylist; in fact he is prob- greenhouse experience, the like of which never hap- ably more styled-obsessed than any Above the Kangaroo Court pened again. In the case of the late John Texas writer. It was language, rather Downtown Riverwalk Howard Griffin, this resulted in an odd, than story, that immediately marked The 314 North Presa lop-sided career, of the sort that often House of Breath as something new in San Antonio, Texas happens when a writer has the always Texas letters. There had been no sen- serious, usually fatal misfortune to write tences quite that well-considered, in our THE TEXAS OBSERVER 13 books. Goyen went to school to the. 411111111.• French, and worked hard to make his prose as elegant and firm as that of the French masters. The journalists are usually smart For a few years, at least, he suc- ceeded, and the fact that he succeeded and quite often write excellent prose, constitutes his most fundamental prob- lem as a novelist. Goyen has the instincts but all are insecure in relation to of a prose poet and is slightly resentful of the demands of narrative, with which an readers. extreme concern with style must often be in conflict. His fiction tends to break into• moments, or memories, each highly textured and embellished. But in arrest- ing the moment in order to describe it in its fullest intricacy, he also arrests the movement of his story; the prose gathers so much attention to itself that virtually none is left for his characters; in the end one comes away with a sense of having passed through something gorgeous but ultimately vague. This tendency to weave spells with his prose has per- sisted. Goyen is aware of it and now and then makes an attempt to write more simply, but simplicity is not really his metier. Since his language at its best is beautiful most readers prefer the seduc- tions of the early books to the conde- scensions of the more recent.

THIS BRINGS US to John Graves, the nature of whose work seems to me to be a good deal more complicated than it is popularly thought to be. Thanks partly to his geniality, partly to his relative ac- FAlin( cessibility, and partly to the fact that he 4 *Tw°77q(1111111111111111111117 writes about the country, Graves has to 4 some degree been made heir to the Dobie - Webb - Bedichek tradition, with the I I , surely unwelcome responsibility of keep- \\0110tInnifilnillI III ing that branch of Texas letters vital. RIMIIMEMIHMILIIMION101111' That he is quite restive in this role is constantly apparent in his writing: one of z, his most frequent rhetorical devices, N used almost to the point of abuse, is to undercut himself: questioning a story he has just retold, doubting an observation he has just made, twisting out from under he is not eager to arrive at too many cer- today is not the natural description, but a position. Often he simply reverses his tainties, or any certainty too quickly. the harshness of the experience which field and abandons whatever line of The persona he adopts most frequently is the traveler recapitulates. It is rich in thought he has been pursuing. that of the man who considers. He may massacres and feuds, old angers and bit- He is popularly thought to be a kind of choose to consider a goat, a book, an ter defeats. country explainer, when in fact he seems anecdote, or some vagary of nature, but The gentle style in which these angers more interested in increasing our store of the process of considering is more im- and defeats are described is an end prod- mysteries than our store of knowledge. portant to the texture of his books than uct whose beginnings are hidden in the He loves the obscure, indeterminate na- any conclusions that may get drawn. unpublished fiction. It is a lovely style ture of rural legend and likes nothing bet- John Graves differs from many Texas whose one disadvantage is that it tends ter than to retell stories the full truth of writers in that, apart from a few short to suck the rawness out of experiences which can never be known. If nature stories, he did not publish his apprentice which need to remain raw if they are to continues to stimulate him it may be be- work; instead he sprang into view full be fully felt. An idiom that is perfect for a cause it too is elusive, feminine, never grown in Goodbye To A River, a book boat trip won't necessarily serve for a completely knowable. that represents not so much an aban- massacre. The cogency of Goodbye To A donment of fiction as a form of accom- River, and the fact that it encompasses in Certainly he is not looking forward to modation with it. Though based on a real concentrated form so much that is cen- becoming the Sage of Glen Rose. His trip, it is essentially an imaginary voyage tral to Graves' experience and feeling, best writing is based on doubt and am- whose affinities stretch back to Gulliver has left him with the problem of exten- bivalence — or, at least, two-sidedness; and beyond. What strikes one about it sion: how to go beyond himself? This is a 14 OCTOBER 23, 1981 problem all writers eventually come to, of journalism, in particular sportswriting. he frequently gets away with it. He has a but the writer who starts late and starts Brammer came out of it, for example, strong, vivid style that works well when well is apt to feel it more acutely. and fairly far out: The classic analysis of one considers his pieces in isolation, in the dangers of journalism to a writer who the magazines where most of them ap- aspires to move beyond it was made by peared. When these pieces are then Leonard Woolf, in Beginning Again, pp. gathered into collections it is evident that LOOKING AT IT HARD, these 132-35. It is too long to quote: suffice to he tends to splash the same colors and four talents — Humphrey and Goyen, say that it is very brilliant and very accu- repeat certain characteristic verbal de- Graves and Griffin — produced between rate. The journalist trains to write some- vices a good deal too often. them only six or seven keepable books in thing which will be read once and thrown He has written an acute piece about some 25 years, which is not exactly spin- away. Moreover, the writing will gener- playing cowboy, without perhaps noting ning them out. Add to that the list of ally have to compete with eggs and that he constantly does just that in his Texas writers who have so far produced bacon and the chatter of the domestic prose — though he has written ruefully book and a view emerges of a only one breakfast table. To do such writing suc- and perceptively of the effects of writing literary climate productive either of early cessfully requires no mean skill — but it everything to a dead-line. As his career blight or extreme constipation. does need skills different from those re- advanced, he began to make himself a The one-bookers would include Wil- quired if one is competing with Shake- character in his own reportage, some- liam Brammer, William Casey, Hughes speare and Tolstoy, or Hemingway and times too self-consciously, in the manner Rudd, Tom Horn, Dorothy Yates, Walter Faulkner, or — to come on home — of Mailer. Perhaps naturally, he is more Clemons, Mack Williams, Sherry Kafka, William Humphrey and John Graves. of a presence in these pieces than many and probably numbers of others whose In reading through the books of our of the people he was sent to report on. one book I can't find. Of these Brammer several journalist-novelists, I have come Read from start to finish, his collected and Casey are dead, Rudd and Clemons to think that a crucial problem has to do journalism is a kind of reverse Pilgrim's busy at other tasks; the rest, so far as one with an attitude toward readers. The Progress, with Larry being the rather ag- can tell, simply stopped. None of their journalists are usually smart and quite gressive pilgrim, at large in contempor- first books was an absolute heartstopper, often write excellent prose, but all are ary life. yet each had some strength and some insecure in relation to readers. Trained Unfortunately, very little of this work appeal, good enough to encourage one to to write columns that can be read in a has made any demands on his emotions. look for the next book. My Escape from few seconds, or articles that take at a Consequently, when his emotions are the C.I.A. and The Poison Tree each most a few minutes, in their novels they tapped, as in the brief, beautiful essay on contain one or two excellent short seem desperate to affect the reader his father called "The Old Man," the ef- stories; A Shroud For A Journey, The every few seconds, or at least every fect is wonderful and makes us wish it Shallow Grass, Hannah Jackson are the minute or two. weren't so uncommon. "The Old Man" sort of first novels that seem to promise puts everything else he has written in the But, obviously, novels aren't columns, development. All that one can say is that deep shade. Now that The Best Little their rhythms are often extremely long it hasn't happened. Whorehouse has freed him from jour- ones, and the reader's attention — if it is nalism one hopes more of that kind of The only book by the one-bookers that to be held — must be allowed varying work will result. still enjoys any currency is the The Gay levels of intensity. A rat-a-tat-tat effect, Place. Bill Brammer is not the first with a joke, an apercu, or a dazzling rhe- writer to lose control of his life before torical move every few lines, quickly be- OMETHING ought to be said, I gaining full control of his art, but his loss comes intolerable in a novel. S The Best Lit- is one Texas readers might justly lament suppose, not merely about This tendency is particularly notice- the most. He brought to our letters an tle Whorehouse but also about the sec- able in the work of Edwin Shrake, in my easy and natural urbanity then almost ond most popular Texas drama, Preston view the best of our journalist-novelists. What I can say is unknown in these parts. Also, he was Jones' Texas Trilogy. Shrake has always been an intriguing tal- that I found the latter obnoxious on al- fortunate in his moment: the flea-circus ent, far superior to most of his drinking of state politics as it existed in Johnso- most every level, but principally on the buddies. He has energy, skill, imagina- level of dialogue and attitude. The nian Austin was the perfect feeding tion, and persistence. Not many writers ground for his talent. He was alert, curi- dialogue, with its numerous adjectival start out with a paper-back Western "By-gods," is collegiate-suburban ous, and witty, happy to use the absurd- and go on to up-date (Blood Reckoning) County-Western, as affected as Tom ities which lay so abundantly to hand; The Satyricon, as he does in Peter Arbi- McGuane's ghastly dialogue in The Mis- and, in the end, just romantic enough to ter. All of his books begin well, and yet make it all seem more charming and less all are difficult to finish, in my view be- souri Breaks. The three plays are simply destructive than it really was. But The cause Shrake can't resist the constant little strings of weakly dramatized anec- Gay Place is material searching for de- hit. He is a genuinely funny writer with dotage, appealing mainly to those who sign. Brammer had the talents and dis- no sense of how to space effects — being like to think sweet thoughts about Texas position of a Silver Poet — our Catullus, funny too often in the same vein is as bad small towns. Both the musical and the not our Balzac — and the big novel de- as not being funny at all. Perhaps I'm Trilogy succeed to the extent that they manded by the age was the wrong form wrong, but this seems to be a hold-over do by sentimentalizing small-town life, for him. He could neither resist nor con- from sportswriting, since much the same though the article from which Larry trol his material and so buried an elegant thing happens in the (to me) much less King derived the musical is by no means small novel about capitol debaucheries interesting fiction of Dan Jenkins and sentimental. and the pathos of ambition in a large con- Gary Cartwright. In a novel, trying to fused book about a little bit of every- keep the reader alert every single second thing. Still, of all our beginnings that is the one sure way to insure that the THERE ARE, so far as I know, turned out to be endings, it remains the reader will go to sleep. only four Texas writers who have been most appealing. Larry King's prose suffers a little from able to reverse the tendency toward nos- A word, now, about the journalists. A this same tendency, but since the basic talgia, sentiment, and small-town great many Texas writers have come out unit of his work is the magazine article mythicization. These are Terry THE TEXAS OBSERVER 15 fiction and favorable to journalism has already to some extent retarded their de- velopment, and may stop it altogether, Crumley, Crawford, and Irsfeld unless they're lucky. I hope they survive — our fiction needs the critical element are to our fiction what Willie and as badly as the trans-Pecos needs rain. Waylon were to our music before AND WHAT of that odd trio of writers who are alike in nothing except they got popular. that they inhabit the trans-Pecos: Tom Lea, John Rechy, and Elroy Bode? If Tom Lea reaches the next genera- tion of Texans it will likely be as an ar- iii tist. He has a good eye but a poor ear; the more his characters talk the less con- vincing his fiction becomes. He is more interesting visually than verbally. Both The Wonderful Country and The Hands of Cantu contain excellent descriptive writing but fail to create characters of much depth or much interest. Ear, on the other hand, was John Re- chy's major strength. City of Night re- mains a readable first book precisely be- cause he rendered what he had heard and seen so perfectly, with such fine atten- tion to costume, expression, and idiom. But he wrote it in practically the last moment before the description of sexual life-styles became cliched and then passe. Though certainly aware of this development, Rechy has not been in- ventive enough to side-step it, and has basically repeated himself, with ever- diminishing returns. Elroy Bode is our minimalist, a con- firmed nostalgic who has pinned his hopes on prose style. Fortunately for him, his is attractive, at least in the short sketches in which he exposes it. Like planes that fly under radar, the sketch slides under criticism. You either like them or you don't. Quite a few of Bode's are very appealing, though an equal number seem mannered and precious. Southern, Max Crawford, James Crum- tle Kingdoms and Coming Through Come upon individually, in magazines, ley, and John Irsfeld. (Irsfeld) are our Outlaw books, critical, the sketches often delight; reading them hardbitten, disrespectful to the point of in the aggregate, in books, is not so pleas- The first, Terry Southern, escaped contempt. Instead of having a love-hate ing. One gets tired of his taking every quickly and devoted only a few stories to relationship with the old state, these little Texas thing he bumps into quite so Texas, but these few have an edge that at writers mostly just hate it. When they seriously. A really good book will seem the time was rare. The Magic Christian look at the small town, they look at it as to be more than the sum of its parts, but a and Red Dirt Marijuana are good enough critically as Samuel Butler looked at the collection of sketches only adds up to the to make one regret that Southern seems Victorian family. In contemplating sum of the very best sketches, which to have left fiction for screenwriting. Texas life they are unawed, almost to the may constitute only 20 percent of the Slowing down just when they should be point of savagery, and the fact that they book. One admires Bode's individ- speeding up is too common a pattern enjoy complete neglect is not making ualism, while wishing he weren't so with our writers. them any tamer. The folksy satire of the locked into a form whose resources he Crumley, Crawford, and Irsfeld are to Texas Trilogy or The Best Little has long since exhausted. our fiction what Willie and Waylon were Whorehouse is like sugar candy in com- to our music before they got popular. In parison to the Swiftian acids of Waltz IT IS HARD to say much about the a state that over-rates almost every Across Texas or The Backslider. reminiscers, of whom there have been a writer who publishes a book, they have All three men are smart, tough. skilled, great many. It all depends upon the qual- managed the rare feat of being not only and educated; also, they are geared to ity of the mind that's doing the reminisc- under-rated, but almost unknown. One fiction as naturally as the writers of an ing, and down here the quality has been, to Count Cadence and The Last Good earlier generation were geared to jour- if not pedestrian, at least quite .conven- Kiss (Crumley), The Backslider and nalism or reminiscence, or both. Unfor- tional. An intellectual autobiography on Waltz Across Texas (Crawford), and Lit- tunately a literary climate poisonous to the order of The Education of Henry 16 OCTOBER 23, 1981 Adams would be nice to have, but we don't have one. Our reminiscers tend to be nostalgic and simplistic, interested . . here's the mainly in paying tribute to colorful an- cestors and vanished life styles. A few charm, most bore. They are valuable in- Observer's sofar as they provide grist for the histo- . rian, pernicious to the extent that they encourage reaction and ruralism. coverage, Texas consists of dozens of sub- regions, many of which have prompted a novel or two. I am partial, for example, this year, of to Jack Sheridan's Thunderclap (1952), largely because it happens to be set in democracy's the much-neglected Wichita Falls- Vernon area. Natives of other sub- regions can doubtless name similar inaction in books, most of which do little more than provide field-notes to the sub-region. I once had the misfortune to see a list of Texas." some 350 books about Texas — novels, From the introduction mostly — compiled by an earnest but by Ronnie Dugger misguided researcher. It consisted of 345 dead books and four or five whose vital NOW AVAILABLE! signs were growing ever more faint. Ninety-four pages of Observer reporting on the 67th Texas legislative For that matter, six of my own eight session. books seem to have stopped breathing in The Anthology compiles articles taken from Observers dated Jan. 30 through the last few years. I am not surprised. It Aug. 28, 1981. The water trust fund, wiretapping, hazardous wastes, and redis- took me until around 1972 to write a tricting are some of the topics covered in this special reprint issue. book that an intelligent reader might want to read twice, and by 1976 I had Copies are $3 each, plus 50 cents per order charge for postage and handling. once again lost the knack. There is noth- Professors: Send for complimentary textbook-review copy. ing very remarkable in this: writing THE TEXAS OBSERVER novels is not a progressive endeavor. 600 W. 7th, Austin, Texas 78701 One might get better, one might get worse. If I'm lucky and industrious I might recover the knack, or then again I might be very industrious and never re- cover it. There is always that gamble in- volved, in writing. Too many writers, in Texas and out, have been coddled into believing that art is a more acceptable, Printers — Stationers — Mailers — Typesetters less obdurate thing than it actually is. It is quite difficult to write a book that an — High Speed Web Offset Publication Press — intelligent reader will want to read twice, and near and not-so-near misses are the rule, rather than the exception. Counseling — Designing Some misses trouble one more than Copy Writing — Editing others. The flubbed Texas book that bothers me the most is Robert Flynn's Trade — Computer Sales and Services North to Yesterday. Flynn had a world- class idea — Cervantes' idea; a Don — Complete Computer Data Processing Services Quixote of the trail drives — but it was his first book and his powers weren't adequate to the visionary tragi-comedy that would have done justice to it. He had the right material, but at the wrong *FUTURA time. PRESS AUSTIN There are at least a couple of dozen TEXAS Texas writers I haven't considered in this essay. There is the late Ben K. Green, hopefully the last and certainly the most pretentious of the yarners. FILITIUIRA Then there are Robert Flynn and Al Dewlen, Benjamin Capps and C. W. 512/442-7836 1714 South Congress Smith, Shelby Hearon, Warren Leslie, Marshall Terry, Dillon Anderson, Nolan P.O. Box 3485 Austin, Texas 78764 Porterfield, Allan Weir, Leonard Sanders, Suzanne Morris, Madison Cooper, Peter Gent and a host of others.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER 17

• Fatigue, rather than charity, inclines me creativity mainly to convince themselves to pass them without extensive com- that they are working well when in fact Terrains of the Heart ment, though I will say that Sironia, they are hardly working at all. The and Other Essays on Home Texas is the book that makes the best majority of our most talented writers doorstop. Some of the rest have talent, have not yet produced even one book by Willie Morris but none .so far has used it to write a with a real chance of lasting. Forget sec- book likely to last ten years. Most get ond acts, in Texas literature: so far we YOKNAPATAIVPHA PRESS by, to the extent that they do, on modest have only a bare handful of credible first capacities for straight-grain narrative acts. WATSON & COMPANY realism. They are story-tellers who tell Meanwhile, as the cities boom and the ordinary stories rather ordinarily. If this seems harsh, pick up any one of their state changes, a great period is being books and try reading it. There will be wasted. Fiction in particular thrives on BOOKS numerous passages that charm, but no transitions, on the destruction of one life OPEN TUES-SAT 10-6, SUN 10-4 style by another. Houston and Dallas 604 BLANCO (PECAN SQ.) 472-4190 book that compells acute attention. A. C. Greene's attempt to make a case have sucked in thousands of Rubempres, for I and Claudie is so much mouthwash. but where are the books about them? These cities are dripping experience, but instead of sopping up the drippings and the legendary converting them into literature our THE OTHER DAY it occurred to writers mainly seem to be devoting me,- appropos of nothing, that the mil- themselves to an ever more self- RAW DEAL lenium is only 18 years away. Horses conscious countrification. Steaks, Chops, Chicken routinely live 18 years, but books don't. open lunch and evenings There is no point in belaboring the ob- 6th & Sabine, Austin No Reservations It is quite possible that no book written vious. Until Texas writers are willing to in Texas in the last two or three decades work harder, inform themselves more will still seem worth reading 18 years broadly, and stop looking only back- hence. ward, we won't have a literature of any "The Miracle of the KILLER The problem is not so much shallow interest. BEES" by Robert Heard. Honey talent as shallow commitment. Our best Hill Publishing Co., 1022 Bonham writers' approach to art is tentative and Terrace, Austin, Texas 78704, $7.95 intermittent: half-assed, to put it bluntly. plus $1.03 tax and shipping. Instead of an infinite capacity for taking THAT SAID, I want to reverse my pains they develop an infinite capacity thrust and pay tribute in closing to the for avoiding work, and employ their one Texas writer for whose work I have

DS cPRHA ICE "G 130015 MAcl%C1C AN I ES The following is a selected list of titles John Howard Griffin. Black Like Me, Houghton mentioned by McMurtry in his essay. Mifflin, 1962. DALLAS BIG MAIN STORE. The Devil Rides Outside, Smith's, 1952. OP. 4528 McKinney "OP" stands for out of print. Dalias. i. 75205 DOWNTOWN Austin Alley Nuni, Houghton Mifflin, 1956. OP. across Irons El Centro College 7 11 Idnx Deltas, Tx 75202 Dillon Anderson. I and Claudie, Little Brown, 1951. Tom Horn. Shallow Grass, Macmillan, 1968. FORT WORTH William Humphrey. Home from the Hill, Knopf, 3306 Fairfield OP. (5301 Carrie Bowie 13tv2) to fadd. Stspg Cntr 1958. r or: Worm, Is 76116 Edward Anderson. Thieves Like Us, Stokes, 1937; AUSTIN Avon, 1974. Both are OP. ellt.try STORE. 1514 Lavaca The Last Husband and Other Stories, Knopf, Austin. T x 78701 Donald Barthelme. Sixty Stories, Putnam's Sons, 6103 Burnet no 1953. Austin. Tx 78757 1981. 1914 0 Riverside The Ordways, Knopf, 1965. OP. Austin, I x 78741 Roy Bedichek. Adventures With a Texas Naturalist, FARMER'S BRANCH The Spawning Run, Delacorte, 1971. FarnonN Branch 50T9 Cntr University of Texas, 1961. (Originally pub- v•llrx %new 6 Jnsey Ln Tom Lea. The Hands of Cantu, Little, Brown, 1964. armor's branco, Tr. 75234 lished by Doubleday, 1947.) GARLAND OP. astnalc Shay CM , Karankaway County, University of Texas, 1974. a560 N The Wonderful Country, Gregg, 1979. (Originally c: Mend, r. 75041 (Originally published by Doubleday, 1950.) HOUSTON published by Little Brown, 1952.) 1408 Ityde Parr, Elroy Bode. Elroy Bode's Texas Sketchbook, Texas Houston, Tx 77006 820 rM 1960 Western, 1967. John Irsfield. Coming Through, Putnam's Sons, oktustnn. r 77090 7537 instransttY Elroy Bode's Sketchbook II, Texas Western, 1972. 1976. OP. 110..1511,, , 1 77005 Little Kingdoms, Putnam's Sons, 1975. OP. KILLEEN Billy Lee Brammer. The Gay. Place, Texas Monthly, 3327 Her 1978. (Originally published by Houghton ..li•en. I 70541 Preston Jones. Texas Trilogy, Hill and Wang, 1976. HURST Mifflin, 1961.) otr Morrow, 1966. OP. 43..1. nipehne Rd William Casey. A Shroud for a Journey, Houghton Sherry Kafka. Hannah Jackson, ti :1st 15 76053 Weeds, Harcourt Brace PLANO Mifflin, 1961. OP, Edith Sumners•Kelley. Walter Clemons. The Poison Tree and Other Jovanovich, 1923. OP. RICliARDSON .oc ■ Stories, Houghton Mifflin, 1959. OP. Larry L. King. Of Outlaws, Con Men, Whores, narasnn, t, 15000 Madison Cooper. Sironia, Texas, Houghton Mifflin, Politicians and Other Artists, Viking, 1980. SAN ANTONIO 3707 Broadway 1952. OP. WE SELL AND I3UY `An Anton.. x 76209 Larry McMurtry. Horseman, Pass By, Penguin, tacon Callan: , in Rd Max Crawford. Backslider, Farrar, Straus and ,1 0 Ill,(11f1 10. 1 e '87:8 1979. (Originally published by Harper and ANYTHING PRINTED TEMPLE Giroux, 1976; Avon, 1978. 2 700 S Loou 361 Row, 1961.) ienipte Square Waltz Across Texas, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, OR RECORDED ren.toc. Ts 75,541 In a Narrow Grave, Simon and Schuster, 1968. WACO 1975; Avon, 1978. 807 It yam, Vats in Leaving Cheyenne, Popular Library, 1963; Pen- was 767in James Crumley. Last Good Kiss, Random, 1978. guin, 1979. One Count to Cadence, Random, 1969. OP. Terms of Endearment, Simon and Schuster, 1975. There 0 more to us than many people rewire Like Robert Flynn. North to Yesterday, Knopf, 1967. OP. our big selection of hack Issue magazines some are The House of Breath, Random, Vassar Miller. Approaching Nada, Wings Press, real collectors' items Like OUT new and used hardcover William Goyen. books on an amazing range of suLlec.ls And now, I,k!t• 1975. (Originally published in 1949.) 1977. our growing record department. with new and used L P for a sanely of music al tastes And you thought .ve wee John Graves. Goodbye to a River, Knopf, 1960; If I Could Sleep Deeply Enough, Liveright, 1974. lust second hand rivvrbacksi University of , 1977. My Bones Being Wiser, Wesleyan U. Press, 1960.

pHR A L& GRECQRDS Gr300I5 M AUANESZI

18 OCTOBER 23, 1981

an unequivocal admiration: that is, Vas- - FOE sar Miller. Adam's Footprint was pub- lished in 1956, and from that time until rather recently Miller has been the one Subscribe to poet of genuine distinction in the state. I think it no hyperbole to suggest that her dozen best poems will outlast all the the Observer books mentioned in this essay, plus the 50 on A. C. Greene's list as well. That Dan Bak in the Washington Post, Feb. 21, 1981 or she is to this day little-known, read, "The Observer is one of the noble experiments in American jour- praised in Texas is the most damning nalism, an underfunded, understaffed biweekly that has been a beacon comment possible on our literary cul- for endangered liberals in Texas and the scourge of a state legislature ture. She works in the hardest form — that has more often than not acted with cavalier disregard for the citi- the lyric poem, the form where the per- zenry. Over the years it has produced not only memorable journalism, centage of failure is inevitably highest. but memorable writers: Willie Morris, Bill Brammer, Larry L. King, Many of hers do fail, of course, but the Ronnie Dugger and others." ones which succeed come as close as any MN IMO I= MI =I MI MN =IM MII NM MN MI NM =I MI writing done in Texas to achieving what can fairly be called excellence: the prod- EI this subscription is for myself IF YOU ARE an occasional reader and gift subscription — send card in my name uct of a high gift wedded to long- The Texas Observer ❑ would like to receive sample copy only — you may use my name regularly—or if you are a subscriber and ❑ sustained and exceedingly rigorous ap- • • • • plication. would like to have a free sample copy or a one-year gift subscription sent to a friend— ❑ $20 enclosed for a one-year subscription I am not seeking to sanctify her, but here's the order form: ❑ bill. me for $20 merely to point out that we do have one MY NAME & ADDRESS (if different): very gifted writer who has continued for SEND THE OBSERVER TO— some 30 years to do what a writer is sup- posed to do: write. Adam's Footprint name and the volumes which succeed it are among the very few Texas books to which one can, with confidence, always address return. There is definitely a there there: THE TEXAS OBSERVER

hard-won, high, intelligent, felt, finished, . city state zip 600 W. 7th, Austin, Texas 78701 profound. To Vassar Miller, if to anyone 4.•■•■ we have, belongs the laurel. ❑

Onions and Roses, Wesleyan U. Press, 1968. Small Change, Wings Press, 1977. Wage War on Silence, Wesleyan U. Press, 1963. Who's Winning Tom McGuane. The Missouri Breaks, Ballantine, 1976. George Sessions Perry. Hold Autumn in Your Hand, at Petroleum Politics inTexas? University of , 1975. (Originally published by Viking, 1941.) James Phillips. The Inheritors, Dial, 1940. OP. A. Oil Industry Giants Katherine Anne Porter. Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, Harcourt Brace B. Independent Producers Jovanovich, 1965. Collected Essays and Occasional Writings of & Small Landowners Katherine Anne Porter, Delacorte, 1970. John Rechy. City of Night, Grove, 1962; Ballantine, C. Consumers 1977. Hughes Rudd. My Escape from the CIA and Other Improbable Events, Dutton, 1966; repub- D. Others: lished as My Escape from the CIA and Into CBS, Dutton, 1976. Both are OP. Edwin Shrake. Blessed McGill, Doubleday, 1968. OP. David Prindle Strange Peaches, Harper and Row, 1972. OP. Terry Southern. Red-Dirt Marijuana, New Amer- sets the record ican Library, 1967. OP. Walter Prescott Webb. The Great Plains, Grosset and Dunlap, 1973. (Originally published by straight. Ginn, 1931.) The Great Frontier, University of Texas, 1964. (Originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1951.) Petroleum Politics The Texas Rangers, University of Texas, 1965. and the Texas Railroad Commission (Originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1935.) By David F. Prindle Leonard Woolf. Beginning Again: An Autobiog- $14.95 at booksellers raphy of the Years 1911 to 1918, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964. Compiled by Nina Butts University of Texas Press BOX 7819 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78712

THE TEXAS OBSERVER 19

..#!•{47..."741, .• , criminally underfunds aid and services for dependent children, the deaf, and the blind — what are we doing, dedicating A Big No billions to a still-secret plan?" The League of Women Voters op- poses the plan. President Diana Clark of Dallas said, "This amendment would on #4 . . . from page 3 siphon off half of the so-called 'excess' state tax revenues in each biennium for tions where property taxes have been lobby is opposed. As we explained Sept. water projects. These drains on the state paid for at least 50 years, but there are 11, it will be better to trust the legislature treasury can lead to cuts in state funding land title problems. This seems OK. than this super-conservative committee for schools, human services, the justice system, and other state needs — or these Proposition 3: No of seven, as of now composed entirely of the Clements-Hobby-Clayton power drains can lead to new taxes. Under this scheme, the governor, the structure in state government. The per- "What is incredible," said the spokes- lieutenant governor, the speaker of the son in charge of the campaign for this person for the nonpartisan League, "is House, and the lieutenant governor's amendment is Don Cavness, the lobbyist that this plan is really no plan at all. It chairpersons of the Senate appro- for the Texas Bankers Assn. Five of the gives an elusive amount of Money to the priations and state affairs committees proposed seven super-budgeteers are not Texas Water Development Board to do and the speaker's chairpersons of the elected statewide. something equally elusive about Texas House appropriations and ways-and- water problems. . . . It denies future means committees would "manage" the No. legislatures the flexibility needed to meet state's spending when the legislature is Proposition 4: No! changing water needs. Texas deserves a not in session. This is the big one. better plan for managing its water re- The argument is that decisions need to In the Observer Aug. 28, to which we sources than this pig-in-the-poke be made responsive to federal and other refer our readers, we contended at length amendment." changes during the year the legislature that this scheme should be defeated, say- Speaker Clayton tours the state speak- doesn't meet. The correct answer is an- ing: ing for the plan, denying it's mainly for nual sessions, to which the business "This plan, if adopted, will jeopardize , but the opponents are right the funding for every program and activ- in their slogan — "Your taxes — their ity of the state government except water water!" and will therefore dramatically increase The committee for the plan has col- the pressure for new taxes. . . . In es- lected $500,000 for a high-powered sence the Clayton Plan is a tax bill faked media campaign. The finance co- as a water bill. . . . The state already chairmen are Jim Keay, CEO of Repub- lic of Texas Corp., Ben Love, CEO of Texas Commerce Bankshares, and Glenn Biggs, CEO of the First National Bank of San Antonio. Naturally the ban- kers are interested in the profit to be made from up to a billion dollars in at's state-guaranteed water bonds. The ftr5111 About? committee's treasurer is the CEO of Cap- ital National Bank of Austin, Robert T. Parisian Charm. Omelette & Present. Area co-chairmen include Jeff Champagne Breakfast. Beautiful Austin, president, First National Bank of Crepes. Afternoon Cocktails. Jacksonville; ex-Gov. Dolph Briscoe, Gallant Waiters. Delicious chairman of Alamo National Bank of San Quiche. Evening Romance. Antonio; ex-Gov. John Connally, a Continental Steaks. Mysterious member of Vinson & Elkins, which rep- Women. Famous Pastries. resents First City Bankcorporation; and Cognac & Midnight Rendezvous. T. C. Frost, chairman of Cullen/Frost In short, it's about everything Bankshares. a great European style Sen. Kent Caperton, Bryan, says the restaurant is all about. water fund plan would "line the pockets of the water developers." Sen. Lloyd Wed Doggett, Austin, says: Across from the Alamo National Bank "The State of Texas has never before done anything like this. Proposition 4 135 East Commerce, San Antonio Cafe )1. 225-0231 310 East 6th St. would commit us for the first time to a Austin, Texas guarantee that the state will bear the re-

Personal Service — Quality Insurance Life Insurance and Annuities ALICE ANDERSON AGENCY INSURANCE & REAL ESTATE Martin Elfant, CLU 4223 Richmond, Suite 213, Houston, TX 77027 808A E. 46th, Austin, Texas (713) 621-0415 SoYtile 459-6577

20 OCTOBER 23, 1981 Water, Inc., works "To promote the of this area," emphasizes Ellison. "The economic and social well-being of the in- whole economy out in this area is built habitants of the area now or hereafter on irrigated agriculture." And the West served by this corporation by supporting Texas economy is not hurting; the area A Look at programs for the acquisition of a suffi- has 8% of the residents of the state who cient water supply for present and future pay 20% of the taxes (in other words, needs of agriculture,. ranching, industry, there are some rich West Texans). Water Inc. municipalities, and inhabitants therein." Speaker Clayton was the paid execu- Their pamphlet explains, "That is where tive director of Water, Inc., from 1969- 1973, while he was also in the Texas Lubbock Water, Inc., comes in as the only area- wide organization working full time to- House. Members of the current advisory "We wear the white hats," claims ward water importation." The pamphlet board include Clayton, Rep. Tom Crad- Duncan Ellision; and he smiles. He has continues, "By joining Water, Inc., you dick of Midland, Cong. Kent Hance of Billy Clayton's old job, executive direc- will assure the High Plains of West Lubbock, Rep. Bill Heatly of Paducah, tor of Water, Inc. Texas and Eastern New Mexico of a un- Cong. Jack Hightower of Vernon, Rep. Water, Inc., was formed in 1967 as a ified voice strong enough to demand ac- Pete Laney of Hale Center, Rep. Nolan non-profit corporation with 1,000 charter tion and get results. "Buzz" Robnett of Lubbock, Rep. Jim members. The membership peaked in The pamphlet optimistically describes Rudd of Brownfield, Rep. Froy Salinas 1973 during the energy "crisis" with importation planning: of Lubbock, Sen. Bill Sarpalius of 2,600 members, but has leveled off to Amarillo, Rep. Bob Simpson of • Importation is receiving its fair share about 1,900 now. Amarillo, Rep. Larry Don Shaw of Big of consideration as the Texas Water De- Spring, Sen. E. L. Short of Tahoka, Rep. The original members, Ellison asserts, velopment Board continues to update Chip Staniswalis of Amarillo, Cong. were "civic leaders throughout West the Texas Water Plan. Texas and New Mexico who were con- of Stamford, Rep. cerned about the High Plains region and • An importation office has been set up Foster Whaley of Pampa, and many oth- the Texas Water Plan. . . . They recog- within the Texas Department of Water ers who are not legislators. nized that unless the people in this area Resources. Water, Inc., has the university re- banded together, we'd end up just like • Members of the Texas Water Devel- searchers, the government bureaucrats, the tentative plan said. You know, they opment Board, including two former the politicians, and even the construction drew a circle around the Plains and said Water, Inc. presidents, are committed to company for the up-to-$26 billion impor- these people are going to have some real seeing the area's waters needs are met. tation project. They are examining water problems, but there's not a hell of a lot Behind all the benevolent concern for sources in Arkansas, Louisiana, even that can be done about it." water is money. "Water is the economics Canada. Amy Johnson sponsibility for one-half of one-billion local debt to far exceed this figure by In the parlance of bond hustlers this is a dollars of public debt for future water applying a leveraging principle . . . and typical pyramid financing scheme, and in projects. And the proposal would allow multiplying the actual bond issues. . . . more common terms is known to many

SOLIDARITY WITH T SALVADOR. T-shirts; size (red, white, CisPES, 3509 Gulley America's.. leading tons, posters, bumper s Arian A t mews and analysis of cur- available. For fur Alta' political a omie trends. Contrib- 375-3715. :Szasz, Murray firs KNOW YOUR hard, Nathaniel Karl Hess. If u are concerned with personal freedom, in', Renting ct AineriCan'triends- ervice Ornmt Stratford, Austin:. ")N is for y isarmament, peace and justice, Finance Issue $ BACKPACKING - - 11i, Austin 78703. es TRADING CC2011°7iPnf—A&TtUrnisIsruP, eAl7C$12125F. :15°C.).); RAFTING. Outback Expel Itljoin Texas Paradise Retreat Congr_ _s Ave.; AustlNGin. Texas 78704. ( 44, Terlingua, Texas 79852: ftil secluded acres of peaceful request, or visit 441-4565. Free booklist on FREEWHEELING BICYCLE Swini, fish, hunt, canoe, our 4de. Private cabins. Meet- T-SHIRT, (1) Do It Reagan's Way, Screw Gabriel, Austin. For whatever needs. P.; charter flight service. Somebody Poor Today, (2) Men Who Say r exquisite color brochure, photos, Anatomy Is Destiny Should Be Left Alone JOIN THE ACLU. Membership $20. texa With Theirs, (3) I Think, Therefore I Am A Civil '..iapplication. G. I. Mose & Co., Liberties Union, 600 West 7th, Austin I nc ,iatherbrook Drive, Dallas, Texas Democrat. $8 each, plus $2 postage 78701. & han- 75228: dling. Specify color (Red, Blue, Green, White, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COMMON Tan), size (SMLXL). Order now from: CAUSE. Ability to work with volunteers and HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT SER- T-Attoyac, Box 4112, Austin, Texas 78765. government officials on activist issues. VICES offers complete housekeeping ser- COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS — ACORN $17,000/yr„ 40 plus hours per week. Send re- vice: Cleaning. repairs, shopping, deliveries„ needs organizers to work with low and mod- smile to 302 West 15th #205-A, Austin 78701. small parties, home health care.for children. erate income families in 16 states for political and economic justice. Direct action on neigh DUGGER & SON INC. flomebuilding, re Free estimates, insured. 478-9293 in Austi modeling, additions, repairs. fences. Call Elaine Doherty Leach and Marjorie liershe borhood deterioration, utility rates, taxes, ',4.4 • s health care. Tangible results and enduring re- Gary Dugger at 452-1013 in Austin. wards — Jong hours and low pay. Training BOOK-HUNTING? No obligation search for Classified advertising is 30¢ ?per word. Di* provided. Contact ACORN at (214) 823-4580, rare or out-of-print books. Ruth. and John counts for multiple insertions within a 12;: Dallas; (817) 924-1401, Ft. Worth; (713) 523- McCully, ARJAY Books. (512) 263-2 iod: 25 times, 50%; 12 times, 25%; 6 6.984, Houston; (512) 442-8321, Austin. River Hills Road, Austin 7874.6..a THE TEXAS OBSERVER 21 as funny money." whose past record clearly shows a pre- try from property taxes. Field crops and Ordinarily you'd think bankers would disposition toward more irrigation farm- farm equipment are exempt now. Ac- oppose what Proposition 4 also does — ing projects, less conservation, little cording to Rep. Susan McBee of Del as Doggett says, it "effectively repeals flood control and a disinterest in urban Rio, leader of the fight for this, livestock the limit on state spending that we have water needs. . . . and poultry taxes amount to less than a written into our state constitution." Ap- "There is nothing conservative in fourth of one percent of all Texas prop- parently it's all right to have a welfare breaking two promises to the people of erty tax receipts, about $6 million. ceiling, but not a bankers' ceiling. Texas. In 1979 the people spoke when With Reagan killing federal aid to edu- they passed a constitutional state spend- cation as fast as he can, we are in general The Tyler Morning Telegraph, doubt- ing limit. In 1978 the people asked for tax opposed to lowering property taxes ex- ing Gov. Clements' statement to it that relief and were promised a return of cept for very good causes. Repairing the plan is not primarily for the West urban blight (Proposition 1) may be one Texas farmers, added: "It also looks like surplus state funds. Three years later, the legislature responded with this pro- such cause. McBee raises the point con- some sloppy thinking has gone into it. posal which circumvents the spending sumers should consider about livestock With Bill Clayton in the picture, it is hard and poultry: No other food products are to have a lot of confidence in what is limit and steals the state surplus instead of returning it to the people. . . . taxed in Texas. Also, under Reagan going to be done anyhow." "I repeat, there is nothing conserva- farmers and ranchers are going to need Republican Rep. Frank Gaston of Dal- tive in a water plan which will raise our all the help they can get. las, please step forward to have the last school taxes and tie the hands of the We are of two minds here, but on bal- word: people of Texas for years to come. ance, Yes. "There is nothing conservative in "The people of Texas should not stand spending billions on one state need while by and let a few West Texas special Proposition 6: No other needs — including education, pro- interest groups, with their gold-plated grams for the aged, public safety, and divining rods tapping East Texas rivers, This would allow local governments to health care — will be excluded from ac- claim that the Water Fund is a conserva- exempt from property taxes up to 40% of tive plan." the market value of owner-occupied cess to these funds. . . . homes in 1982-'84, 30% in 1985-'87, and "There is nothing conservative about Proposition 5: Yes 20% after 1987. Clearly this would sharp- giving more money to a water board This would exempt livestock and poul- ly reduce the property tax base, which

speakers will focus on the nuclear problem from var- ious perspectives. The conference is sponsored by the Gulf Coast Council on Foreign Affairs; call 713- 938-1211 x2% for more information. ACLU BENEFITS Two annual fall fundraisers for the ACLU have been announced for Nov. 7: San Antonio, at 3102 Valley View Place, 8 p.m., with speaker Jim Har- rington, no admission, cash bar. Houston, 8 p.m., with speakers Bob Eckhardt and Larry King, loca- tion to be announced, call 713-524-5925. FAMILY ON EXHIBIT Women and Their Work, an Austin-based arts group, is presenting a new photographic exhibit enti- tled The Ties That Bind on Nov. 7-Dec. 6 at the Dougherty Cultural Arts Center, Barton Springs Rd., Austin. The exhibit includes the work of eight Texas photographers who portray different aspects of contemporary family life and relationships. Plans are for the show to travel throughout Texas after this opening. Progressive Organizations In no hurry, the Observer is building up lists of the political organizations we regard as progressive, their meeting evenings where that is applicable, and a phone number for each, in Texas cities. The editor invites communications recommending organiza- tions for inclusion, by city. Photo by Alan Pogue AUSTIN ACORN, 8. nghbrhood groups, 442-8321; Am- nesty Intl., Group 107, Cindy Torrance, POBx. 4951, Aus. 78765; Austinites for Public The Social Cause Calendar Transportation, 3rd Tue., 441-2651; Aus. Lesbian-Gay Political Caucus, 4th Tue., & also Lesbian-Gay Demos. of Tx., 478-8653; Aus. Notices on upcoming events must reach the Ob- HOUSTON FICTION FESTIVAL Nghbrhood, Ccl., 4th Wed., 442-8411; Aus. Nghbr- hood Fund, 3rd Mon., 451-2347; Aus. Tenants' server at least three weeks in advance. The Texas Arts & Cultural Organization is spon- Ccl., 474-1961; Aus. Women's Political Caucus, 1st soring a giant fiction festival in Houston on Oct. & 3rd Tues., 472-3606 or 447-4409; Black Aus. De- 28-29. Participants include Mary McCarthy, Muriel mos., 3rd or 4th Thu., 478-6576; Spark, Toni Morrison, and P. D. James. Contact TACO, 4601 Univ. Oaks, Houston 77004. Center for Maximum Potential Buildg. Systems WHEATSVILLE GRAND OPENING (appropriate technology,) 1st Sat., 928-4786; Cen- Wheatsville food co-op in Austin will celebrate NUCLEAR CONFERENCE tral Aus. Demos., 3rd Wed., 477-6587; Central Tx. the opening of its new store at 3101 Guadalupe on A weekend conference on "The Nuclear Question ACLU, 477-4335; Citizens' Coalition for an Eco- Oct. 25, 1:30-9 p.m. Music, entertainment, booths, — Who Has the Answer?" will be held at Dunfey's nomical Energy Policy, 474-4738; Demo. Socialist and speakers including Texas Agriculture Commis- Motor Inn, Nov. 6-8. John Henry Faulk, Dr. Helen Organizing Cmte., 2nd Wed., 453-2556; Gray sioner candidate Jim Hightower. Caldicott, David Cortright of SANE, and other Panthers, 4th Thu., 345-1869; Lignite Group, 479-

22 OCTOBER 23, 1981 finances our schools. If the base is re- rate of up to 10% (instead of the pres- led by Lanny Sinkin and Peggy Buch- duced, either the schools suffer or the ently impracticable 6%). This is a good horn, the public would be in the dark; tax-rate percentages go up. With Reagan program that has helped veterans buy indeed, things might be going on as cutting federal education spending, this land. Yes. usual. Instead, after the critics exposed proposal makes no sense. R.D. Houston Lighting & Power criticism of Brown Sr. Root's role as project en- Secondly: the Senate killed a House gineers, HL&P bit the bullet on Sept. 24 provision that would have limited the and removed B&R from the job. Now, total exemption on a house to $40,000. prodded again by the critics' whistle- Some data suggest that in Dallas, 53% of the total tax break would go to people blowing to the press, HL&P releases a devastating report that it ordered from with homes valued at $70,000 or more. Quadrex Corp., an independent consult- "It benefits the rich," said June Karp, No on ing firm. legislative director of the Texas Federa- tion of Teachers. Quadrex found six generic or general As the teachers' union-president, John design engineering problems at STNP Cole, says, "Billy Clayton's West Texas that "pose a serious threat to plant li- Water Works," Proposition 4, "is bad Nuke censeability." Quadrex also found four news for schools, school children,' and other generic defects that - may have a school teachers," and if Proposition 6 serious impact on plant licenseability." passes along with it, "we can see no way Now, mind, this is the report the com- for local schools to survive without large pany ordered. increases in the local tax rates, and we know how popular that would be." In the Nov. 3 election, the voters of The Quadrex report suggests two out- Austin certainly should withdraw the comes. Perhaps the STNP plant is so Proposition 7: Yes city from its 16% of the South Texas Nu- basically mis-designed, it will not be li- This would authorize an additional clear Project. censed. In that case, the investment is a $250 million in general obligation bonds STNP has been one calamity after total waste of money. More likely, how- for the veterans' land fund at an interest another. Had it not been for the critics ever, the Reagan Administration is so

0678 & 512-321-5250 (Bastrop); LULAC, 2nd Wed., Amnesty Intl., U.S. Group 189, Renee Berta, 915- HOUSTON 451-3219; 584-4869, and Group 205, William H. Winn, 214- 361-4690; Armadillo Coalition, 1st Wed., 349-1970; ACLU, 524-5925; ACORN, 523-6989; Magnet Coalition, (managed growth), 441-2651; Action, 522-9544; Amnesty Intl., Group AMIGOS, 339-9461; Bois d'Arc Patriots, 827-2632; for Demo. Mxn.-Amn. Demos., 1st Mon., 444-7668 or 472- 23, Anne Chastang, 6006 Saxon, Houston 77092, and Brown Berets, 337-4135; Bread for the World, 9211; New Amn. Movement, every other Sun., Citizens' Anti-Nuclear state, Joe Haag, 741-1991 x298, and 495-1494 (Dist. Eileen at 869-5021 x42; 454-2888 or 478-2096; Nurses' Environmental Concilio de Or- 3); Citizens' Assn. for Sound Energy (CASE), Info. Team (CAN IT), 522-3343; Health Watch, 454-3932; Northeast Aus. Demos., ganizaciones Chicanos, P.O. Box 9, Houston 2nd Tue., Dr. Gary Witt, 8512 Grayledge; Phogg 946-9446; Clean Air Coalition, 387-2785; Com- anche Peak Life Force, Wed. wkly. 337-5885; 77001; Demo. Socialist Organizing Cmte., 921- Foundation, POBx. 13549, Ax.; Save Barton 6906; Gay Political Caucus, 1st and 3rd Weds., Creek, every Tue., 472-4104; Sierra Club, 1st Tue., Cmte in Solidarity with the People in El Sal- 521-1000; Harris Cty. Concerned Women, 674- 478-1264; Socialist Party of Tx., 2nd Tue., 452- vador (CISPES), 375-3715; Dallas Gay Alliance, 6798; Harris Cty. Demos., quarterly, 528-2057; 3722; South Aus. Demos., 3rd Tue. or 3rd Thu., 2nd Mon., 528-4233; Fellowship of Reconciliation Houston Area Women's Center, 528-6798: Lesbian 447-4091; (FOR), 1-370-3805; E. Dal. Nghbrhood Assn., 3rd and Gay Demos. of Texas, 521-1000; Mxn.-Amn. Tx. Consumer Assn., 477-1882; Tx. Mobilization Mon., 827-1181; Frederick Douglass Voting Demos., 6944 Navigation, Houston 77011; Moc- for Survival, Sun., wkly., 474-5877; Travis Audu- League, 428-2407; Nghborhood Info. & Action kingbird Alliance, 747-1837; NAACP, 1018 bon Scty., 3rd Thu., 447-7155 or 477-6282; Travis Service, 827-2632; NOW (Dallas Cty.), 1st Mon., Clebourne, Houston 77001; PASO, 6716 Fairfield, Cty. Demo. Women, every Fri., 453-3243; Travis 742-6918; NOW (North Dal.,) 3rd Tue., 690-8971: Houston 77023; Senate Dist. 15 Demo. Coalition, Cty. YD's, 453-3796; Univ. Mobilization for Survi- No. Lake College Solar Club, 659-5254; 862-8431; Tx. Coalition of Black Demos.. 674-0968; val, wkly., 476-4503; UT YD's, 452-8516; West Aus. Progressive Voters League, 372-8168; Sierra Tx. Demos., 667-6194; UofH YD's, 749-7347; Demos., 2nd Thu., 454-1291; Zilker Park Posse, Club, 2nd Wed., 369-5543; Txns. for Handgun Westside Demos., 464-2536. 472-1053. Control, 528-3985; Tx. Cmte. on Natural Re- sources, 352-8370; Tx. Tenants Union, 823-2733: THE ACLU SAN ANTONIO Dallas UN Assn. (DUNA), 526-1853, 387-2785; UN American Civil Liberities Union chapters, not ACLU, 224-6791; Amnesty Intl, U.S. Group Children's Fund (UNICEF cards), 241-7807; War listed elsewhere: Denton, 387-5126; El Paso, 127, Julia Powell, 828-4141; Women's Political Resisters League, 337-5885. 545-2990; High Plains (Amarillo), 806-373-7200; Caucus, 2nd Tues., 655-3724; Civil Rights Litiga- FORT WORTH Houston, 524-5925; Lubbock. 806-765-8393; Rio tion Center, 224-1061; Citizens Concerned About Grande Valley, Bill Fulcher, 541-4874 Nuclear Power, 1st & 3rd Weds., 655-0543; Com- ACLU, 534-6883; ACORN, (11 nghbrhd. groups),. (Brownsville); Sabine area, 713-898-0743; South munities Organized for Public Service (COPS), 924-1401, board meets mthly; Armadillo Coalition, Texas Project, Jim Harrington, 787-8171 (San Juan); 2nd Th., 222-2367; Demos for Action, Research & 927-0808; Bread for the World, 924-1440 (Dist. Waco; Prof. Frank Newton. 755-3611. (At present Education (DARE), rsch. volunteers needed, 4th 12), 923-4290 (Dist. 6); Citizens for Fair Utility there are no active chapters in Corpus Christi or Wed., 674-0351; Latin-American Assistance, alter- Regulation, 478-6372; Coalition of Labor Union East Texas.) nate Sats., 732-0960; Mxn.-Amn. Demos., 3rd Mon., Women, 469-1202. Dist. 10 Demos., 2nd Sat., 535-7803; First Friday, 1st Fri., 927-0808; F.W. Walter Martinez, 227-1341; NAACP, 4th Fri., 224- LONE STAR ALLIANCE Tenants' Ccl., 923-5071; IMPACT, (telephone 7636; Organizations United for East Side Devel- The Alliance is made up of member groups op- opment, last Tue., 824-4422; People for Peace, 2nd chain, works largely through progressive Protestant churches), 923-4506. meets on call; Mental Health posed to nuclear power. The groups, not listed Th., 822-3089; Physicians for Social Responsibil- elsewhere: ity, 1st Mon., Dr. Martin Batiere, 691-0375; Poor Assn., 2nd & 4th Tue., 335-5405; NOW, 3rd Th., People's Coalition for Human Services, 923-3037; 336-3943; Precinct Workers Cl., 3rd Th., 429-2706; Bryan: Brazos Society for Alternatives to Nu- Residents Organized for Better and Beautiful Senatorial Dist. 12 Demos., 2nd Sat. or 2nd Wed., clear Energy, 822-1882. Environmental Development (ROBBED), 3rd 457-1560; Sierra Club, 3rd Wed., 923-9718; Stu- Nacogdoches: Pineywoods Coalition, 218 W. Tue., 226-3973; S. A. Demo. League, 1st Thu., 344- dents Against the Draft (UTA), 261-1935; Tarrant Austin St. 1497; S. A. Gay Alliance, last Wed., Metropolitan Cty. Demo Women's Club, 2nd Sat., 451-8133, Commnty. Church, 102 S. Pine; Sierra Club, 3rd 927-5169; Tx. Coalition of Black Demos (F. W. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Tue., 341-5990; United Citizens Project Planning chap.), 1st Tues., 534-7737; Women's Political Caucus, 1st Wed., 336-8700. Contact persons for Amnesty International in and Operating Corp. (federal funding), 3rd Mon., Texas, not elsewhere listed: 224-4278. GREATER TEXAS' Beaumont, Group 221, Karen Dweyer, 420 DALLAS Amarillo: Panhandle Environmental Aware- Longmeadow. Beaumont 77707; Regional member- ACLU, 2001 McKinney, Suite 330; ACORN, ness Committee, 376-8903; Northwest Tx. Clergy ship coordinator, Rita Williamson. 512-441-8078 823-4580; Amn. Friends Service Cmte., 321-8643; and Laity Concerned, 2nd Tues., 373-8668. (weekends).

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ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES TWO JEFFERSON SQUARE ATISTIN, TEXAS W. 131 512 453-1533 Send me your list. - pro-nuclear, it will license STNP hostage to our corporations' profits? whether it's basically safe or not. In that "Radioactive wastes from nuclear Name case, the voters of Austin (and . San An- power plants, nuclear weapons produc- Street tonio, too) might plausibly wind up being tion, and the production of the uranium liable for another Three Mile Island. to sustain them (much of which comes City Zip Astonishingly, the Reagan Administra- from South Texas) cannot be decon- tion is now advocating that plutonium, taminated. The claim that they can be which is produced as a waste by-product stored safely has yet to be established The Liberal Religious of nuclear power plants, be recovered despite expenditures of billions of indus- , Alternative from those plants and used for nuclear try and government money trying to do bombs. If this happens, because of the it. . . . Once a large nuclear power plant First Unitarian Church of U.S. example, nuclear weapons will pro- is used up —,after, say, 40 years — liferate much faster around the world what's to be done with it? Decommis- Austin than they would otherwise. Do the tax- sioning is so expensive, these tombs of 4700 Grover Ave. — 5121452-6168 payers of Austin want to be responsible the human spirit may have to be sealed for accelerating the proliferation of nu- up and placed under perpetual guard Sundays: Church School & clear weapons in foreign countries? No while the hot cores decay for centuries. Forum, 10 a.m. wonder the nuclear power industry re- For aeons? Some of these deadly wastes Worship, 11 a.m. gards this new Reagan "initiative" as "a can kill for tens of thousands of years. public relations disaster." It's a policy How dare we assume our society will disaster. last long enough to stay responsible for Permit us, on the virtual eve of the crit- such consequences? Chuck Caldwell's ical Austin vote, to repeat from the Ob- 800-424-2463 "We are not supposed to ask these ST ` Call Toll Free server's Position of the April 17th issue: questions, we are supposed to be good V r E I. "Nuclear power is dirty and costly, ra- little Germans and take the power we're 1731 Ave., N.W. dioactive and reactionary. It requires the given. But . . . if we contaminate this Washington, D.C. 20009 production of uranium — even of earth we will have to answer for it From $29 up. Best buy in D.C. plutonium — that is also the basis of the through all time. nuclear psychosis that has the human "So let's draw the conclusion: Kill nu- race on the brink of extinction in a nu- clear power — stop it — end it — finish clear war. Nuclear power is the oil and it." ..,\A-1 and Associates utility companies' way of killing off solar E 502 W. 15th Street Austin, Texas 78701 power, which is clean and on its way to The Austin election is an opportunity REALTOR (' being cheap. Killing off nuclear power is VJ Representing all types of properties to deliver a message to the country and in Austin and the same thing as championing sun- the world: Hey, a majority of the ordi- Interesting & unusual property a specialty power; they are the no and the yes of the nary citizens of this ordinary middle- 477-3651 same two questions, Shall we survive America city are fed up with the mess of and Shall we stop making our posterity nuclear power and want out. El

S TATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP. MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION

I Do roilloCAO.C. The Tura. Messer :11: I . F41 d 1 9 Up. 10, 1981 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,„ •? e..ttet.. •••■■ ••■10 IV .11.1.4 NOMC..... abookly inept for a Ch.. anek interval 120.00 bootee. isaus• twine . roar• in Jan 4 Jaly 75 through the two news services that the 4 M.A. 111Aomm op,.00 ...Cr, COOK. Co Solo.Cotolo a,. Coy 60:, W►in 71.1a, Austin, 01.1. Tana 78701 Beaumont paper published a piece on the . cmomoco. ...1.1.“6.046.... .0 Tom 1...... ,.....I.NA, ...... pp," co om ....mom ...... ,, 600 Mt 7th, Auotin, Tx•seie, fix.. 78701 DIALOGUE subject.. • ...., ewes Ye CCO.Ill M., •COMIOG 00 ...... 11.10o A. mommOoNO [WOO Ma ro. NW .0 , ..../ kat,ti NLIar, 600 11. t 7th, Aualin film 78701 Thank you for clarification on this F1,,..re--,...c...... : Austin, Tama 78701 item. tannia Duper, 600 Mt 7t1, mc.c. , , o.e.a.t...... ,...*...... 7:-...., ...... r . Scott McElhaney, Managing Editor, ".....117;:n==...... 7.7.1 ...... :7•.,+ ...XL... I write in reference to a short item in ...... 1.••••••• O. ft.& m.1 C.1.1, MIA, WPM Port Arthur News, P.O. Box 789. Port 101 at 71.1, amt. Tau. 787 01 your publication's "The World from Veneta An..., Texas" feature (TO 9/11/81). Arthur, Tx. 77640 . :7 . - ..,:::.' ...... You credit the Beaumont Enterprise Items of Advice Iv. MMAII COIMOI , C Momoo0 MAIOM for reporting that Arab investors had purchased three oil refineries on the I enclose a small check to give encour- . 013., apPliCabla Texas Coast. The Port Arthur News first agement. Texas without the Observer, at . • '.7;n1,'N'Oot Elita.4■1" ■',,,,,...,1,31.`ZeZT, published an article on this subject June even at its lowest of ebbs, would be de- --4a0, pressing...... 7...Z.',...172.:r ''.."... '"" art uss 21. We released the story to Cox News ....• a.m..... 9.7%4 12,126 Don't waste money trying to go 'slick.' , •,....,•,.....,...... ,. Service and United Press International. 10,779 VAL_ Other stories on the same subject ap- . . . Leaven your Austin focus a bit. . . . :.7..1V:Zt?..!::::Z:roll::::=."" _2171 ...... -...... -,, ... .--12416_ Deal seriously and authoritatively with ...... :-..• peared in the News June 28, June 29, and S/1 ...... July 19. Texas books, drama, dance. . . . ---J4i_ Jal LLZ? 11,990 Bill Martin, 1205 Frey St., Stephen- .• ,,,a.vve. tr, o,.,.i .tneco,Lm=, ,1 mroteyr> :=:::::::::R7Z, It was after the story first appeared in ..---a 1emAger---- the Port Arthur News and was released ville, Tx. 76401. ay•