Consultants to the University of Texas System, which controls the university, have listed the ranch as one of nine possible places to relocate an ecological research lab that's now on the northeast bank of Lady Bird Lake in Austin.
While that might be a bit mild, they gave voice to many a more frightened literati.
"We simply must keep spaces open for humane, imaginative work," [novelist Mylène Dressler] said. Otherwise, "we lose not just an invisible hoot in the trees; we lose each other."
Even Sandra Cisneros got in on the hand-wringing, stressing the importance of institutions like the Paisano ranch, which apparently inspired her to forever be a Texan.
"I think that writers are healers," Cisneros said. "You have to have the healers who go off by themselves, do their work and come back to take care of the community at large."
While we'd be the first to chain ourselves to the gates in protest of any proposed demolition of Paisano, the reality of the ranch being usurped by an ecological field lab is hardly looming, as the article briefly admits. First off, the future of the Brackenridge Tract (where the lab is currently located) has yet to be decided and probably won't be for at least another year. Then, Paisano, with its limited biological diversity (only "cedar and oak," according to the article) and famous inaccessibility (residents and visitors have to travel down miles of dirt roads and navigate across a low-water crossing), make any conversion simply not worth its while.
So rest assured, connoisseurs of Texas literature. While The Dallas Morning News' more than 2,000-word Paisano puff-piece may have sounded like a sentimental farewell, we're certain that the ranch will still keep facilitating best-selling, proudly Texan literature the same as it always has.
While he has published everything from poetry to prose, University of Texas at El Paso professor Benjamin Alire Sáenz is quickly becoming one of Texas' most celebrated young adult and children's book authors. His talent for penning YA fiction was first exhibited in his 2004 novel, Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood, which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His newest book, Last Night I Sang to the Monster, is another YA title that recently received a starred review from Kirkus, and is due out next month from Cinco Puntos Press. The story follows Zach, an inquisitive 18-year-old who wakes up one day in a rehab center with nothing but a vague recollection of the past and a probing therapist named Adam. Sáenz reads from the novel's opening pages in the video below:
In advance of his Austin BookPeople appearance, Rice professor Douglas Brinkley dropped by Jon Stewart's The Daily Show last night to stump on the conservation credentials and manic personality of Teddy Roosevelt, the subject of Brinkley's new book, The Wilderness Warrior. In the interview, Brinkley hinted that the Roosevelt book might be part of a larger project to document the origins of the modern environmental movement, including bios of conservationist authors Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson.
In other Brinkley news, America's busiest historian is set to release another book chronicling the life of the late University of Texas-educated news anchor Walter Cronkite. While we were originally expecting (read: hoping for) a May publication date, his publisher, HarperCollins imprint William Morrow, has postponed release until September 2010. The third volume of Hunter S. Thompson's letters, The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop, 1977-2005, which Brinkley edited, is also set for release in 2010.
Though Molly Ivin's frequently described Texas politics as the "finest form of entertainment ever invented," we think she might agree with us that Kathleen Turner's newest theater project is likely to give our bungling statesmen a run for their money.
Earlier this week, Turner read a one-act, one-woman play called Red Hot Patriot to its first audience, portraying our beloved former co-editor, the late Molly Ivins. The play, written by twin sisters and journalists Margaret and Allison Engel, chronicles much of Molly's life, from her River Oaks rearing to her work at the now-defunct Dallas Times-Herald.
While the Houston Chronicle is convinced of their likeness, we're not so sure — maybe in the nose. At any rate, the Chron assures us that some of Molly's best one-liners (including her famous evaluation of the ultraconservative then-U.S. Rep. James M. Collins' IQ) are present and accounted for.
In a Kinky Friedman-esque justification for penning the play, one of the sisters Engel rhetorically questioned in an interview with the Washington Post:
If you can have A Night With Mark Twain or A Night With Will Rogers, why not Molly Ivins?
Even if it was an honest inquiry, we still wouldn't be able to come up with a good answer. Our only real response is: When is it coming to Texas?
According to Margaret, that's probably still a ways off since the sisters are still working on revising the play. Arena Stage in D.C., where Turner did the first reading, is interested in staging it once the Engels are finished, but only after it has been thoroughly workshopped. Engel did assure us, however, that they "definitely want many productions in Texas because of her thousands of friends and fans there."
Yet another Texan has found herself embroiled in a national controversy concerning secession, though this time it isn't an attempt to woo Republican primary voters. Victoria Bynum, a Texas State University history professor, is accusing Washington Post writer Sally Jenkins and Harvard scholar John Stauffer of rewriting the history of a Mississippi county that refused to join the Confederate cause.
Bynum, author of the now nearly decade old The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War, spent most of July blogging it out with the pair of yankee writers, who recently published a similarly titled recount of Jones County's opposition to Confederate forces (which was featured on The Daily Show). She claims that the new book is replete with inaccuracies and exaggerations, including the myth that Jones County succeeded in its attempts at secession.
To add insult to injury, the new book actually began as a film adaptation of Bynum's book commissioned by Universal and the screenwriter, Gary Ross, is acknowledged by Jenkins and Stauffer as an "inspiration." That bit of historical detail didn't get past Bynum either.
“I am appalled at the manner in which these authors have written what is touted as a scholarly work. I am also deeply hurt by the manner in which they have appropriated, then denigrated, my work.”
As to be expected, Jenkins and Stauffer fired back.
“Bynum sees scholarship as a form of turf warfare, with only one valid interpretation of the past, which effectively renders history useless.”
As far as we see it, there is only one valid interpretation of the past when it comes to historical non-fiction — the one based on fact. If bending those facts simply to spin a good yarn doesn't "render history useless," than we're not sure what does.
For a more detailed account of academia's newest controversy, The New York Times chronicled the entire feud in an article published last week.
The Dallas Morning News gave us a mild case of déjà vu this morning when the paper reported that Larry McMurtry, pillar of Texas literature and habitual hat-hanger, announced that his forthcoming novel, Rhino Ranch, would probably be his last. After such an impressively prolific career, we feel far from cheated, but we're beginning to think the man can craft an ad campaign almost as well as a plot. Here's his pitch:
"It's a finite gift, for sure," he says of novel writing. "I'm about at the end of it. I can write certain things. I don't think I can write fiction any more. I think I've used it up over 30 novels. That's a lot of novels."
We're used to seeing that sort of quasi-substantial and self-congratulatory statement from Texas' slickest politicians, not its literary icons. McMurtry might flirt with the idea of riding off into a soft sunset, but it seems deep down he may prefer the flattering glare of the spotlight (and perhaps the sentimental career recaps each successive farewell inevitably triggers).
Despite our indignation, we'll still devour the thing as if it was his last. Who know—maybe, this time it really will be.
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