The Texas Observer

It’s a banner week for Texas book lovers, Observer nerds, and acolytes of soon-to-be-75 icon Willie Nelson.

First up, tonight, Wednesday April 23, former Observer editor and current columnist Jim Hightower stops in at Austin’s BookPeople to sign copies of Swim Against the Current, the collection of progressive success stories the straw-hatted populist penned with partner Susan DeMarco. You can read an Observer excerpt of the book here, then drop by and pick up your own autographed copy tonight at 7 p.m.

Next up is veteran journalist and Observer contributor Joe Nick Patoski, signing copies of his forthcoming tome Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, at Waterloo Records in Austin on Friday, April 25, at 5 pm. Patoski has already written definitive biographies of Stevie Ray Vaughan (co-authored with Bill Crawford) and Selena, and his Willie book is set to become the jewel in his triple crown of Texas music biographies.

And finally, come Saturday, April 26, Texas literature legend Bud Shrake, author of the novel Strange Peaches, the mega-selling Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, and some early (read: pre-archived) journalism for the Observer, celebrates the publication of Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin “Bud” Shrake Reader, published by Texas State University’s Southwestern Writers Collection Series, which just happens to include a decades-old piece on Austin’s perennially receeding hip factor originally published in the Observer’s very pages. There’ll be a reading from Shrake’s work at 7 p.m. and a book-signing with Shrake and collection editor Steven L. Davis afterward. The hoo-hah happens on the 7th floor of Texas State’s Alkek Library in San Marcos. Call 512-245-2313 for more info.

There’s no shortage of bait on the hook for film buffs this weekend in Austin, where the 11th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival takes over half a dozen screens for 9 days with a world-class selection of new releases, narrative features, documentaries and shorts. The programming starts tonight, Wednesday, April 16, with an 8 p.m. screening of Spaniard Carles Bosch’s documentary Septiembres at the Paramount Theater.

Other festival highlights include the films of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, a collection the Film Society of Lincoln Center has called “the most important body of work in the history of Brazilian and, arguably, Latin American cinema.”

Full festival scheduling is available at www.cinelasamericas.org.

And if you’re already making plans for next month, make a note that May 1 marks the opening of the very first Marfa Film Festival — a significant milestone in a town with a deep and current history in American cinema (Giant, There Will Be Blood, and No Country For Old Men all filmed in the neighborhood) but no movie screen of its own (films will be projected on an inflatable screen courtesy of Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow).

Highlights out west include a special local screening of There Will Be Blood, a potential appearance by director Paul Thomas Anderson, Austinite David Modigliani’s Crawford (read the Observer’s review here), a late-show dance-party showing of David Byrne’s True Stories, and the promised appearance of Giant’s Dennis Hopper, who’s bringing his long-lost western The Last Movie to town.

See the Marfa festival’s site for the full week’s schedule.

While we were all reading Molly Ivins — her books, her columns, her quips — what was Molly reading?

That question isn’t entirely answered by the exhibit that opened a few days ago at Texas State University in San Marcos, but it’s clear she was reading, and reading a lot. “Molly Ivins’ Library,” on view at the campus’ Alkek Library, displays just a smattering of the 3,500 books from Molly’s personal library recently gifted by brother Andrew Ivins, but the collection shows a voracious reader’s catholic breadth, from the touching (a small leather-bound Bible) to the delightful (a book of pastry recipes from the Hill Country’s Rather Sweet Bakery & Cafe) to the distasteful (Ann Coulter’s Treason).

Seems Molly had a fondness for biography (LBJ, Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov and Albert Camus all get shelf space) and a soft spot for fiction (novels by P.D. James and Stephen Harrigan, among others).

As befits an author of renown in her own right, Molly’s collection also held inscribed gems from colleagues, cohorts, and well-wishers.

“Wish I could write like you!” former Speaker of the House Jim Wright wrote on his own book’s title page.

“Dear Twin,” Maya Angelou’s inscription began.

“To Molly…who done knows how much I love her,” gushed John Henry Faulk.

Heavyweights like Jim Crumley and Bud Shrake weigh in with signed editions as well, but the capper has to be Nancy Reagan’s mysteriously giddy inscription on her own memoir: “Mooch all you can, baby…”

But as glamorous as the high-end literary back-patting must have been, the fact remains that Molly’s collection was no mere vanity, but a genuine working library.

How can you tell? The presence of The Idiot’s Guide to Positive Dog Training is a dead giveaway.

The specific story may be Austin’s, but the dilemma is close to universal: a treasured civic amenity (Barton Springs, say) inevitably attracts the attention of developers, who want to reshape the natural world in a more profitable manner (by installing sprawling subdivisions, for instance), threatening in the process the very goose that laid the golden egg. Conflict and lack of hilarity ensues, and eventually, almost always, the goose dies.

That’s the broad-brush outline of the substantially more nuanced The Unforeseen, produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, and directed by Laura Dunn. The film premiered at Sundance last year. You can read the Observer’s review here. Or read our 2001 profile of director Dunn here.

The film opened its theatrical run in Austin last weekend.

Check out the Alamo Draft House South Lamar screening schedule here.

If you already have a read on this story from your time in the Austin trenches, you’ll want to see what the filmmakers got right and/or wrong. If you’re a newbie, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better (or prettier) primer on this town’s defining development/preservation dynamic.

See and discuss.

Observer readers, perhaps more than most, are accustomed to reading the ugly truth, but never let it be said that our writers don’t enjoy making stuff up, too. Case in point: The Truth, the debut novel by former Observer editor and current contributor Geoff Rips, who also happens to sit on the board of the Texas Democracy Foundation, which publishes the Observer, but who has never, ever looked over our shoulder as we pecked out a blog post promoting his book. Honest.

Rips will be signing copies at Austin’s BookPeople (603 N. Lamar) on Thursday, March 27, at 7 p.m., then again next month at San Antonio’s The Twig (5005 Broadway) on Wednesday, April 30, at 5 p.m.

Want a taste before committing your precious time? Check out the excerpt we published in our January books issue.

Regular readers will be pleased to learn that former Observer editor and syndicated columnist/rabble-rouser Jim Hightower is back between hardcovers with Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow (John Wiley & Sons). A breezily positive-thinking antidote to the necessary negativity that pervades so much of the non-mainstream muckraking media (mea culpa! mea culpa!), Swim Against the Current unearths the success stories of activists, dissidents and go-their-own-way go-getters who’ve abandoned apathy and found ways to buck whatever oppressive, greed-guided or simply wrongheaded system was telling them no. It’s downright inspirational.

And in the spirit of doing well by doing good, Hightower and co-author/accomplice Susan DeMarco are celebrating the book’s release with a “hoo-rah” and booksigning on Thursday, March 20, from 5 to 8 pm at Austin’s Boggy Creek Farm (3414 Lyons Road; 512-926-4650). There’ll be music by The Lovers and La Strada, plenty of local food and drink, and, as befits an event promoting the work of a former Texas Ag Commissioner, the $10 suggested donation benefits the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.

For more Hightower appearances nationwide, check out the schedule on his website.

And just to put it on your radar, look for an excerpt from Swim Against the Current in the April 4 issue of the Texas Observer.

Anyone interested in journalism — can we get a show of hands, please? — ought to make a point of taking in Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the mad genius/incorrigible iconoclast who most famously offed the American Dream with the literary shotgun blast of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and later killed himself (in 2005) with a single bullet to the head.

(Even if journalism isn’t your thing, you should still check Gonzo out, if only to remind yourself that this most apologetic of contemporary professions once played in the big leagues of American star-culture, right alongside politics and rock and roll.)

Thompson’s full bibliography and influence are too rich to repeat here, but director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; The Trials of Henry Kissinger) has gained access to never-before-seen archival film of Thompson at work and at play, and it’s revelatory, though it leaves unanswered the most enduring of HST trivia questions: How could a grown man who lived in snow country (Aspen-area Colorado) spend so much of his life wearing shorts?

With the addition of a few unfortunate but brief dramatic reenactments, Gibney has assembled a reasonably full biography and a monument to Thompson’s best years that doesn’t ignore the fact that they were relatively few. Or that having stared down Hells Angels and Richard Nixon alike with his twin senses of humor and rage intact, it was ultimately an enemy as insubstantial as fame that robbed the writer of his mojo.

Remembrances by running-buddies including Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, Margaritaville tycoon Jimmy Buffett, illustrator/collaborator Ralph Steadman and likable xenophobe Pat Buchanan polish the already well-worn legend. Son Juan and two wives add painful human perspective to the apparently more-or-less true mythology of an uncomfortable but irrepressible cartoon character (HST is the model for Doonesbury’s Raoul Duke, of course).

The wealth of firsthand footage is a treat for fans, of whom there was no shortage Saturday night at the Alamo Draft House for the documentary’s SXSW regional premiere. The film shows one more time during the festival, at the same venue, at 10 p.m. on Thursday night, March 13th. If you don’t want to get stuck in a folding chair in the aisle, we recommend you arrive on the early side.

Special if potentially depressing treat for political junkies, of which Thompson was emphatically one: The film’s recollection of the 1972 presidential race, in which an exceedingly Bush-like Nixon beats ascendant out-of-Vietnam-now candidate George McGovern like a bad dog in the general election, is a tart and timely reminder of just how much hope and idealism can be squandered — even in the face of a compellingly evil alternative — by a few stupid mistakes. The contemporary parallels are unavoidable. And, one can hope, imprecise.