God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State(28)

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PERIODICALLY, Larry McMurtry erupts to deprecate the state of literature in Texas, which he has called “disgracefully insular and uninformed,” and produced by “a pond full of self-satisfied frogs.” He particularly singled out the overworked cowboy myth for undermining the literary project of the state, before producing the best cowboy book ever, Lonesome Dove, four years later. In his essay “Ever a Bridegroom,” published in the Texas Observer in 1981, he singled out only one writer in the entire state worthy of his unequivocal admiration: Vassar Miller, a little-known poet in Houston.

McMurtry is one of my favorite writers, and after his article came out, I conceived what I thought was a hilarious idea. Every year, the Texas legislature selects a writer to be the poet laureate of the state—typically, back in those days, an elderly schoolteacher from Port Arthur or Burkburnett. I decided to start a political action committee and lobby legislators to pick a real poet for the post. POPAC, I called it. Steve nominated Glenn Hardin, a talented poet known to be cantankerous and profane and certainly not in the mold of the usual laureate. Steve used to publish him in a poetry magazine he founded called Lucille. My object was to see how much money it would take to get my candidate accorded the state’s highest literary position—its only one, in fact.

Just then, rather suspiciously in my opinion, the Texas Senate decided to formalize the selection process, sabotaging my scheme to bribe the legislators. Jack Ogg, a handsome senator from Houston, convened a panel, proclaiming that its purpose was to “select the next poet lariat of Texas.” After that, every speaker who addressed the panel carefully spoke of “lariats,” not “laureates.” A few days after this perfunctory panel, the senators announced they had chosen a new poet lariat: Vassar Miller. This was the only time in Texas history that literary criticism has had an effect on state affairs.

One book often nominated as a candidate for the Great Texas Novel was The Gay Place, by Billy Lee Brammer. It’s actually three novellas pressed together, with a single towering figure, Governor Arthur “Goddam” Fenstemaker, based on Brammer’s real-life mentor, Lyndon Johnson. Billy Lee had worked for Johnson in Washington, when he was Senate majority leader.

Billy Lee had died of a methamphetamine overdose by the time I moved to Austin, so I never got to meet him. In the book, the only one he ever published, he captured a brief moment in Texas history, in the late 1950s, when liberals had a foothold in the capitol and Austin was a highly sexed beatnik outpost (that hasn’t entirely changed). It was the first novel to stake a claim on modern, urban Texas. Billy Lee was unfortunately too chaotic to produce another book that might have secured his reputation as a true Level Three artist. I once had lunch with one of his ex-wives, Nadine Brammer, who remembered the time she took Billy Lee to a hypnotist to try to cure his smoking habit. As they were going up on the elevator, she suggested that maybe Billy Lee should also try to get rid of his kleptomania. “No, I want to keep that,” he said.

Billy Lee wrote for the Texas Observer, the muckraking liberal rag in Austin that had been home to Willie Morris, J. Frank Dobie, and a number of writers I admired. In 1971, I drove down to Austin from Dallas for an interview. Roberta and I had just returned to the United States from Egypt, where we had taught for two years at the American University in Cairo. We were living with my parents while I searched for a job.

The Observer was a beacon for ambitious, smart-ass youngsters like me. It was co-edited by Molly Ivins and Kaye Northcott. Molly was six feet tall, red-haired and big-boned. At her side was a black dog named Shit. Molly could spin out resonant Texas witticisms that became classics as soon as she uttered them. Jim Mattox, the attorney general, was “so mean he wouldn’t spit in your ear if your brains were on fire.” Kaye was Molly’s physical opposite—diminutive, with small, fine features and large, scholarly eyeglasses. They were the Mutt and Jeff of Texas liberals, respected even by the politicians they lampooned, because the Observer made Texas politics into a recognizable genre, something to be savored. It set us apart. Perhaps because of Molly’s continental education, the Observer began to resemble a left-wing French publication, with its satire and scathing exposés. We all became a little more Parisian, more amused by ourselves, and disdainful of newcomers who couldn’t crack the code. I desperately wanted to be a part of the scene, but my interview with Molly went nowhere. I had no experience and nothing to show, so I drove back home, despairing of ever becoming a writer.

Molly refined Texas stereotypes into an art form, like a Jewish comedian in the Catskills. Her 1991 collection of columns spent twenty-nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, making her a national celebrity at the same moment that Ann Richards got elected as governor. They were lashed together in the public imagination, the pair of them defining a particular kind of Texas woman—earthy, progressive, sharp-tongued, and unafraid of men, no matter how big their belt buckles.

McMurtry hasn’t delivered another broadside on the current state of Texas letters, so I asked Steve what he thought. “The state of Texas literature is defined by writers worrying about the state of Texas literature,” he said grumpily. “Why is everyone in Texas so anxious about defining a regional literature when nobody else feels the need to do that? Anything you say reinforces the provincialism. Just let it be what it will be.”