Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond

Cover
Texas A&M University Press, 15.08.2017 - 512 Seiten
At the height of the sixties, a group of Texas writers stood apart from Texas’ conservative establishment. Calling themselves the Mad Dogs, these six writers—Bud Shrake, Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, and Peter Gent—closely observed the effects of the Vietnam War; the Kennedy assassination; the rapid population shift from rural to urban environments; Lyndon Johnson’s rise to national prominence; the Civil Rights Movement; Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys; Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, the new Outlaw music scene; the birth of a Texas film industry; Texas Monthly magazine; the flowering of “Texas Chic”; and Ann Richards’ election as governor.

In Texas Literary Outlaws, Steven L. Davis makes extensive use of untapped literary archives to weave a fascinating portrait of writers who came of age during a period of rapid social change. With Davis’s eye for vibrant detail and a broad historical perspective, Texas Literary Outlaws moves easily between H. L. Hunt’s Dallas mansion and the West Texas oil patch, from the New York literary salon of Elaine’s to the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, from Dennis Hopper on a film set in Mexico to Jerry Jeff Walker crashing a party at Princeton University. The Mad Dogs were less interested in Texas’ mythic past than in the world they knew firsthand—a place of fast-growing cities and hard-edged political battles.

The Mad Dogs crashed headfirst into the sixties, and their legendary excesses have often overshadowed their literary production. Davis never shies away from criticism in this no-holds-barred account, yet he also shows how the Mad Dogs’ rambunctious personae have deflected a true understanding of their deeper aims. Despite their popular image, the Mad Dogs were deadly serious as they turned their gaze on their home state, and they chronicled Texas culture with daring, wit, and sophistication.

Im Buch

Inhalt

Preface
Texas Literary Outlaws
PART ONEComing of Age in Texas
A Rebel in West Texas
A Texas Oasis
The Gay Place
Fort Worths New Journalism 5 The Texas Beats
Big D Meets the Flying Punzars
PART THREETexas Chic?
A New View of Texas
The Cowboy Professor
Live Music Capital
North Dallas Forty
The Regenerator Erection Laboratory
Challenging Texas
Changes at Sports Illustrated

A Gathering Force
A Long Way from Beaumont
Dallas 1963
PART TWOToo Much Aint Enough
A New Beginning
The Doors of Perception
Literary Comanches
These Happy Occasions
The OneEyed
Cowboys and Indians
Harpers on the Rise
Obscure Famous Arthurs
Absurdism in the Southwest
Busted in the Oasis
Harvards White Racist
Land of the Permanent Wave
Mad Dog Texas
Kings Road
Outlaws
Hack Observations and Literary Feuds
Redneck Hippies
Strange Peaches
SemiTough
Texas Gonzo Journalist
Texas Brain
LBJ Speed and Paranoia
Hollywood vs Sports Illustrated
Whorehouse
A Fraction of His Talent
Measures of Success
Hitting the Wall
A Recovery
Ever a Bridegroom
Third Coast
Faces in the Fire
PART FOURHow Time Slips Away
Jenkins
King
Cartwright
Shrake
Doing Indefinable Services to Mankind
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Urheberrecht

Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen

Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen

Autoren-Profil (2017)

Steven L. Davis received his master’s degree in Southwestern studies from Texas State University–San Marcos in 1995. He has appeared often in Southwestern American Literature and Texas Books in Review. He currently serves as the assistant curator of the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University–San Marcos, which houses the literary papers of Shrake, King, Brammer, and Cartwright.

Bibliografische Informationen