Texas Christian University Press
Literary Austin
Key Metrics
- Don Graham
- Texas Christian University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780875653426
- 10.38 X 7.15 X 1.52 inches
- 2.4 pounds
- History > United States - State & Local - West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Essays, fiction, and poetry reveal the variety of literary responses to Austin through the decades and are organized in a roughly chronological fashion to reveal the themes, places, and personalities that have defined the life of the city.
Austin was always about three things--natural beauty, government, and education--and thus many of the pieces in this volume dwell upon one and sometimes all of these themes.
Besides O. Henry, the other most important figures in the city's history were J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, and Walter P. Webb: folklorist, naturalist, historian. During their heyday, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, they were the face of literary culture in the city. They remain a source of interest, pride, and sometimes controversy.
Austin is a well-known haven of liberal political activism, represented by such well-known figures as Lyndon B. Johnson, Ralph Yarborough, Ann and David Richards, Liz Carpenter, Willie Morris, John Henry Faulk, and Molly Ivins.
The city is also a haven for literary writers, many of whom appear in these pages: Carolyn Osborn, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Dagoberto Gilb, Stephen Harrigan, and Lawrence Wright, to name a few. Among the poets, Thomas Whitbread, Dave Oliphant, David Wevill, and Christopher Middleton have long been on the scene.
Certain sites recur--the University Tower, Barton Springs, various watering holes of another kind--so that for anybody who has ever spent time in Austin will experience twinges of nostalgia for vanished icons, closed-down venues, long-gone sites of pleasure brought to life once again, in these pages.
Author Bio
GRAHAM, Don Ballew Don Ballew Graham, the J. Frank Dobie professor of English and American literature at the University of Texas at Austin, author, critic, and the pre-eminent scholar of Texas film, literature and popular culture died suddenly on Saturday, June 22nd.
He was the author of ten books and editor of another six, including "No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy" (1989), "Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Family" (2003), and "Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber and the Making of a Legendary American Film" (2018).
He was also a writer at large for Texas Monthly and past president of the Texas Institute for Letters, the leading advocate for the state's literature. He was born in Collin County in 1940, when it was still mostly cotton farms, and he was generally amused by students who had never seen a cotton boll. After graduating from Carrollton High School, he earned his bachelor's degree at the University of North Texas (then North Texas State University) and a PhD at UT Austin in 1971, and worked at the University of Pennsylvania, before returning to Texas in 1976. He also taught in the Normandy program in France, and at Université Paul Valéry in Montepellier, and at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia. A brilliant and beloved teacher, he won multiple teaching awards at the University of Texas and in 2014 was named one of Alcade's Top Ten Professors Ever.
He wore his achievements lightly, but he wore them well. Irreverent, funny, fearless, loyal, incisive, to use adjectives he might have abhorred, his powerful and singular voice will be much missed. He is survived by his gorgeous wife of 28 years, Betsy Berry, brother Bill Graham, and other relatives alongside Tom and Viv, two rather literary cats.
Source: Dallas News
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