Texas Authors Book Club
All meetings 6:30 p.m. third Thursday at the Fielder Museum, 1616 W. Abram St. 
Club coordinators: O.K. Carter and Mark Dellenbaugh 

In an exciting collaboration between the library and the Arlington Historical Society, the new Texas Author Book Club will alternate between the best of nonfiction and fiction writers, from J. Frank Dobie and Larry McMurtry to John Graves and Cormac McCarthy. 

To borrow from Larry McMurtry’s In a Narrow Grave, the books under review by the club “…are native in the most obvious sense: set here, centered here, and, for the most part, written here.”  

• September 21: The Longhorns by J. Frank Dobie (nonfiction)
  
• October 19: Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry (fiction)
• November 16: Goodbye to a River by John Graves (nonfiction)
• December: No session
• January 18: Empire of the Southern Moon by S.C. Gwynne (nonfiction)
• February 15: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (fiction)
• March 21: The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook (fiction)
• April 18: In a Narrow Grave by Larry McMurtry (nonfiction)
• May 16: The Gay Place by Billy Lee Brammer (political fiction, satirizing LBJ)
• June 20 and beyond —The titles for subsequent months have not been announced, but the book club is definitely continuing!

J. Frank Dobie’s The Longhorns — Dobie is considered the dean of Texas nonfiction literature. He was born on a ranch in Live Oak County in 1888, the ranching heritage being a major influence on his character and writing. He joined the University of Texas faculty in 1914 and quickly became a prolific writer of things Texan. His first book, Vaquero of the Brush Country (the book’s real-life protagonist sees his world changed by barbed wire), published in 1929, was the first of more than 30 books and established him as a spokesman of Texas and southwestern culture. The Longhorns is typical of Dobie’s work. The Texas Longhorn made more history than any other breed of cattle the world has known. These wiry, intractable beasts were themselves pioneers in a harsh land, moving elementally with drouth, grass, Arctic blizzards, and burning winds. Their story is the bedrock on which the history of the cow country of America is founded.

Larry McMurtry’s Horseman Pass By — Larry Jeff McMurtry (born 1936 in Archer City) is a novelist, essayist, bookseller, and screenwriter whose work is predominantly set in either the Old West or in contemporary Texas. His novels include Horseman, Pass By, The Last Picture Show, and Terms of Endearment, which were adapted into films earning 26 Oscar nominations. He’s won a Pulitzer for fiction (Lonesome Dove), and an Academy Award for screen writing (Brokeback Mountain). He’s written 33 fictional novels and 14 nonfiction books. Our selection, Horseman, Pass By, was one of his first successful novels. Its movie version, Hud, won an Academy Award.  Horseman, Pass By tells the story of Homer Bannon, an old-time cattleman who epitomizes the frontier values of honesty and decency, and Hud, his unscrupulous stepson. Caught in the middle is the narrator, Homer's young grandson Lonnie, who is as much drawn to his grandfather’s strength of character as he is to Hud's hedonism and materialism.

John Graves’ Goodbye to a River (nonfiction) – Born in 1920 in Fort Worth, Graves attended Rice and Columbia University. When he read that five additional dams would be constructed on the Brazos River between Possum Kingdom and Whitney reservoirs, Graves knew this would irrevocably change the nature of the river, which runs through what was once wild Comanche country. He took a canoe trip down that stretch of river with his small dog, Goodbye to a River resulting – the book weaving in and out of the tumultuous, violent and colorful history along the Brazos banks with the narrative ease of a born storyteller. Years later (Graves died in 2012) the book is still selling, though there’s this: Only one of the five dams – that for Lake Granbury – ended up being built, so much of that stretch of the river is today as it was for Graves in 1957. 

S.C. Gwynne's Empire of the Southern Moon (nonfiction) – The full name of the book gives you a contents clue: Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (it was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize). Author S.C. Gwynne is a Princeton and Hopkins graduate, a former Times Magazine writer and the current senior editor at Texas Monthly. Gwynne uses the tragic story of Cynthia Ann Parker – captured by Comanches as a young girl -- and her mixed blood son Quanah as a framework for the greater tale of the epic and violent clash of cultures that occurred when the inexorable westward tide of white settlers crashed on the shores of the Comanche domain. When the whites arrived, the Comanches had subdued twenty other tribes to hold sway as the unquestioned rulers of the vast plains of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The battle between Comanches and oncoming settlement would wage for 40 years. 

Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. Cormac McCarthy (born 1933) is one of the most famed Texas writers (All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian). In No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss, a poor man who lives with his wife in a house trailer, while hunting comes across a drug deal gone wrong in the desert.  Almost everyone there is dead. Llewelyn takes $2 million he finds and tries to make it his own but will be pursued by a relentless killer named Chigurh and an old Texas sheriff.  Sound like it would make a good movie? It did. 

In Elizabeth Crook’s The Which Way Tree, in the remote hill country of Texas, a panther savagely attacks, mauling a young girl named Samantha and killing her mother, whose final act is to save her daughter’s life. Samantha and her half-brother, Benjamin, survive, but she is left traumatized, her face horribly scarred. The story is of Samantha’s unshakeable resolve to stalk and kill the infamous panther, rumored across the Rio Grande to be a demon, and avenge her mother’s death.  Author Crook (born 1939) was born and now lives in Texas, but has also lived in Australia. She specializes in historical fiction and is a frequent writer for Texas Monthly and Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 

Larry McMurtry’s In a Narrow Grave. Before embarking on what would become one of the most prominent writing careers in American literature, spanning decades and indelibly shaping the nation’s perception of the West, Larry McMurtry knew what it meant to come from Texas. Originally published in 1968, In a Narrow Grave is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s homage to the past and present of the Lone Star State, where he grew up a precociously observant hand on his father’s ranch. From literature to rodeos, small-town folk to big city intellectuals, McMurtry explores all the singular elements that define his land and community, revealing the surprising and particular challenges in the “dying . . . rural, pastoral way of life.” “The gold standard for understanding Houston’s brash rootlessness and civic insecurities” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), In a Narrow Grave offers a timeless portrait of the vividly human, complex, full-blooded Texan. 

Billy Lee Brammer’s The Gay Place is a Texas cult classic. Though it’s fiction (sort of) it won’t take readers long to figure out that the book’s main protagonist, Arthur “Goddam” Fenstemaker is so much like Lyndon Johnson that it can hardly be described as coincidental. Nor can it be ignored that Brammer was once a member of LBJ’s staff. Set in Texas, The Gay Place is really three interlocking novels with the Fenstemaker character remaining central. Saturday Review said the book combines “the excitement of a political carnival: the sideshows, the freaks and the ghoulish comedy atmosphere.”