ustxtxb_obs_1962_12_27_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

Personality cultists among our subscribers have remonstrated with me my failure to identify the writers in the first issue of the Observer as a fortnightly. When Larry Goodwyn, at 15, and I, at 14, were the sports writers in charge of vivid verbs at the San Antonio Express, we chalked many a cue together at a little bookie joint in a basement across the street from the Express. Goodwyn went on to the oil business in Dallas; thence he came to the Observer as associate editor, producing important studies of the Texas legislative syndrome; and subsequently he was a publicist for the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners’ Assn. More recently he eggheaded Don Yarborough’s campaign for governor ; he is now putting out a Democratic newsletter for a group of people who participate in the Democratic coalition of the state. Roger Shattuck is the author of The Banquet Years, first published by Harcourt-Brace, now in paperback. He is a rare college teacher who, though he does not have the M.A. or the Ph.D., is a full professor. \(Romance languages, at the Univercialty is pataphysics, an interdisciplinary study originally conceived in Central Patagonia and involving E.S.P., bird watching, and post-Hiroshima metaphysics, especially ZenCatholicism, I think. Georgia Earnest Klipple is a school teacher in Corpus Christi. She has written for us before, and I have another good article from her in hand. At the University of Texas, Chandler Davidson, a graduate philosophy student then, was active in Students for Direct Action, the University of Texas branch of Southerners for Maximum Agitation. Davidson also wrote columns for the University of Texas students’ ex-newspaper, many 16 The ‘”–was Observer 1:ty o 0 0 #:!`z-; ;:;b’ ” 6 n / 42, / 0 0 0 11 Observations of which were permitted publication by the estimable Harrell Lee, the Texan censor. Davidson studied a year at the Sorbonne and returned to a four-month turn as Observer associate editor. As for our contributing editors, in addition to Goodwyn, Shattuck, and Davidson : Bill Brammer, at first a journalist for Texas dailies, then Observer associate editor, then a staffer for Lyndon Johnson in Washington, arrived with The Gay Place, the HoughtonMifflin $10,000 award-winning novel, now in paperback. At present he is at work on a second novel and is living in Dallas, although occasionally he ducks down to a friend’s house in Austin for the weekend, causing twitterpation in our city’s lit’ry community. Lyman Jones has also worked for several Texas dailies and has written for the Christian Science Monitor, New York Times Magazine, and like national periodicals. He was a staffer for Senator Ralph Yarborough in Washington ; he, too, has been an Observer associate editor; presently he is public relations director for the Texas State AFL-CIO. When he writes for the Observer, he writes, of course, strictly in his individual capacity, as does everyone else in these columns. In California Willie Morris, a Rhodes Scholar, our former editor, and a free-lancer for Harper’s, Nation, and other magazines, will read, write, study, and continue to free lance; he intends articles for the Observer as soon as he gets settled. Charles Ramsdell, the historical writer \(his latest was the University of Texas’ book on San Antonio, necesto abide in San Antonio and Austin, but he has abandoned these parts for Chihuahua, Mexico, whence he intends to -send us some more essays. Bob Sherrill has worked on various daily newspapers, was an Observer associate editor, and occasionally has published poetry in the local daily; but he is best known as a former member of the English faculty of M. Tossing in a nickname between parentheses reminds me to’ mention that he is also Time-Life’s stringer for this area. This year he worked for a legislative committee investi gating the migrant labor problem. Dan Strawn, the Kenedy squire, is well known to our readers, many of whom remember him for his news report on the inactivities of the Runge fire department the day the Runge fire station burned down. Strawn owns a farm and has a stock broker, establishing him as the one authentic entrepreneur among us. In Kenedy he can usually be found at Nuevo Laredo or Reynosa ; those who wish to communicate with him in Austin should write to him care of Couch, Living Room, 1017 West 31st St., Austin ; the Flea Circus, General Delivery, Austin ; or Scholtz Beer Garten, Austin. All that failing, take a walk up the University Drag, keeping a sharp look-out for corners from which a rube might be ogling the passing sorority pledges. Strawn is serious about writing, also. He is in the office now and just said, “I believe I’ll start writing like Shakespeare.” Tom Sutherland is the next teacher on our masthead: of English, at Arlington State College. Apart from articles in the Saturday Evening Post and such, his noteworthy work as executive officer of the Texas Good Neighbor Commission, and his capacity for civilized discourse, his principal accomplishment is a collaboration with Lois Sutherland, seven daughters. These girls now dominate the Registrar’s Register at the University of Texas, the Texas State Teachers’ Assn., the Peace Corps, and the University of Khartoum. Charles Alan Wright is best known for the fact that his wife, Custis, won, along with her partner, myself, the First and Only Annual Eggheads’ Invitational Tennis Tournament of Austin. In his own right. however, he is the only liberal Republican in Texas. “If we can find one more, we’ll have increased our strength 100%,” he says. Wright has written definitive law textbooks in federal he has appeared in many magazines, including Progressive; and his articles in the Observer have provoked little dissent because it is r so difficult to challenge his facts or dispuV his reasoning. This is well known to Atudents in the University of Texas school of law, where he is a professor. Charles Erickson, our art editor, is from Perryton, Texas, which he says exists. Hereafter we shall identify writers, other than the contributing editors, in notes with their articles. R.D.