Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond

by Steven L. Davis

Overview

At the height of the sixties, a group of Texas writers stood apart from Texas’s 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 and the new Outlaw music scene; the birth of a Texas film industry; Texas Monthly magazine; the flowering of “Texas Chic”; and Ann Richards’s 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. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875656755
Publisher:	TCU Press
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	1,074,377
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

STEVEN L. DAVIS has won a PEN USA award for research nonfiction and is the current president of the Texas Institute of Letters. He is a longtime curator of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, which houses the literary papers of many leading writers—including several of the “Literary Outlaws.”

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Texas Literary Outlaws 1

Part 1 Coming of Age in Texas

1 A Rebel in West Texas 9

2 A Texas Oasis 25

3 The Gay Place 39

4 Fort Worth's New Journalism 55

5 The Texas Beats 72

6 Big D Meets the Flying Punzars 84

7 A Gathering Force 96

8 A Long Way from Beaumont 109

9 Dallas 1963 118

Part 2 Two Much Ain't Enough

10 A New Beginning 129

11 The Doors of Perception 140

12 Literary Comanches 152

13 These Happy Occasions 157

14 The One-Eyed Man 166

15 Cowboys and Indians 172

16 Harper's on the Rise 183

17 Obscure Famous Arthurs 188

18 Absurdism in the Southwest 198

19 Busted in the Oasis 207

20 Harvard's "White Racist" 215

21 Land of the Permanent Wave 220

22 Mad Dog, Texas 228

23 King's Road 239

24 Outlaws 250

25 Hack Observations and Literary Feuds 259

26 Redneck Hippies 268

27 Strange Peaches 275

28 Semi-Tough 281

Part 3 Texas … Chic?

29 A New View of Texas 289

30 The Cowboy Professor 294

31 Live Music Capital 298

32 North Dallas Forty 302

33 The Regenerator Erection Laboratory 309

34 Challenging Texas 315

35 Changes at Sports Illustrated 320

36 Texas' Gonzo Journalist 325

37 Texas Brain Fry 334

38 LBJ, Speed, and Paranoia 341

39 Hollywood vs. Sports Illustrated 349

40 Whorehouse 355

41 A Fraction of His Talent 362

42 Measures of Success 367

43 Hitting the Wall 374

44 A Recovery 381

45 "Ever a Bridegroom" 385

46 Third Coast 394

47 Faces in the Fire 397

Part 4 How Time Slips Away

48 Jenkins 403

49 King 417

50 Cartwright 433

51 Shrake 441

52 "Doing Indefinable Services to Mankind" 451

Notes 460

Bibliography 492

Index 502

Editorial Reviews

Their personalities and the lives they lived were so fascinating that it was easy to get distracted. But the superb writing will be there long after these incredibly talented men are gone. . . . This book captures it all.” — Ann Richards


“Davis captures the group and their times so well that one could almost believe he was standing somewhere in the shadows observing these men as they played out the events of their lives.”  — Southwestern Historical Quarterly
 


“Fascinating . . . a vivid account of their extraordinary lives as well as a no-holds-barred examination of their work.” — Houston Chronicle
 

From the Publisher