Texas Bound: 19 Texas Stories

Book Overview

This lavish spread of literary entertainment features nineteen stories selected from the first two seasons of "Texas Bound," part of the "Arts and Letters Live" literary series presented at the Dallas... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870743678
• ISBN13: 9780870743672
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Southern Methodist University Press
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Spell-binding short stories of Texas

From the preface: "Since 1992, Texas actors have a theater audience as part of the literary series "Arts and Letters Live" at the Dallas Museum of Art. Out of the great success of these readings has come the impulse to publish this book, which collects nearly all the short fiction featured to date in the project, "Texas Bound." Each story is a delicious treat that illustrates a different aspect of Texas and its peoples. I say 'peoples' because Texas is quite diverse ethnically and many of its residents are from out of state. Here you'll find license plates that scream "Native Born Texan" and others that answer back with "Not From Texas... But I got here as fast as I could." There are so many unique and interesting stories to be told about Texas and this book collects 19 great ones. The short story format makes the reading easy to break up into tasty portions. Each short story is so different that the book becomes more refreshing as you finish each one. Many of the stories talk about quirky people doing humorous things. The first story, "Antlers" by Rick Bass, throws a dozen or so deer-hunting men and an obsessed bow-hunter against an attractive female who was dead set against hunting in any form. I laughed my way through this story. Here's a selection: "Suzie has sandy-red hair, high cold cheeks, and fury-blue eyes; she is short, no taller than anyone's shoulders. But because most of us had known her for so long - and this is what the other men had told me after she'd left them - it was fun, and even stirring, but it wasn't really that great. There wasn't a lot of heat in it for most of them - not the dizzying, lost feeling kind you get sometimes when you meet someone for the first time, or even glimpse them in passing, never to meet... That kind of heat was missing, said most of the men, and it was just comfortable, they said - comfortable." The ninth story, "Good Rocking Tonite", by William Hauptman, is a quirky story told by a gynecologist about his brother, an Elvis impersonator. Here's the lead to the story: "The year Elvis died was a strange year, and I remember it not only because of what happened to my brother, Bubba, but because that was the year we had our first transexual here in Nortex." The story goes on to tell the wild tales of the ner-do-well Elvis impersonator: his travels in small town shows across Texas, his loves with Elvis-groupies, and his disasters that sometimes spilled upon his gynecologist brother. Most of the short stories are light-hearted. Not all are acceptable for middle and high school students. That's a shame because each story is such a delight. Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove fame has contributed one of the stories, "There Will Be Peace in Korea." If you are interested in Texas, you'll love the stories. John Dunbar Sugar Land, TX