Read an Excerpt

From the Book: "Most of my adventures were without design—at least at the start. As time passed, I became absorbed in the study of Texas literature, and some of the essays here are attempts to make sense of what I read and talked with others about. The original plan of this book was to dust off some old essays and put them in one volume, a common desire of college professors and newspaper columnists. Such compilations seldom work and should not be encouraged. But most of us who have written a number of essays on this and that hope someone will suggest that we gather them up for book publication. That is what happened here. TCU Press suggested that I dig around in my files and find gems of beauty and wisdom. It didn't work out. I dug around and found very little of either beauty or wisdom. What I found was "a rhapsody," a 'literary work consisting of miscellaneous or disconnected pieces'—I just learned this definition of "rhapsody" from my new [Oxford English Dictionary] too.

My rhapsody, my miscellany, was not really ready for prime time. I knew that if I wanted to produce a book, I needed to make more sense out of my adventures. That realization wrecked the original plan of dusting off the old essays. I set about writing two new chapters to help me organize my thoughts and prejudices. The first two chapters, 'The Age of Dobie' and 'The Age of McMurtry,' are the fruits of my frustration. I decided that in order to understand all I wanted to understand about Texas life and literature, I needed to make some order—in my own mind at least—of the changes and trends that have taken place in this state over almost a century. . . .'