Contributing Editor

TEXAS COOKING

Paula Forbes, with photography by Robert Strickland

The Austin Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from Deep in the Heart of Texas

Harry N. Abrams

Hardcover, 978-1419728938, 240 pages, $29.99

March 20, 2018

Reviewed by Angelina LaRue

Good food and Austin are synonymous. We often think of little restaurants around Austin with brightly colored oil cloths covering the tables. Fajitas sizzling on a hot cast iron plate, or long lines outside popular barbecue joints and food trucks, are all part of the Austin experience, as well.

No matter what your Austin looks like, author Paula Forbes says she hopes it is found in the pages of The Austin Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from Deep in the Heart of Texas. Forbes lets us in on the recipes for some of the city’s most sought after cuisine.

When Forbes was just 22 she took off from Iowa to Austin in her Honda Civic. She had plans to stay in Austin for a year and take a waitressing job before heading off to grad school, but she never left.

Forbes tells a passionate tale reflecting the people, the various cultures, and the food that goes along with it that kept her there.  >>READ MORE

AUTOBIOGRAPHY / MUSIC

Gary P. Nunn

At Home with the Armadillo

Greenleaf Book Group Press

Hardcover, 978-1-62634-487-7 (also available in e-book format), 336, pages, $24.95

January 2018

Reviewed by Si Dunn

Early in 1972, singer-songwriter-musician Gary P. Nunn was ready to quit performing, leave Texas, and move back to his home state, Oklahoma.

At age 26, he admits in At Home with the Armadillo, “I had had a butt-full of the music business as it had led me to nothing but heartache and misery.” His new plan was to help his uncles with their farming and ranching until he could figure out what next to do with his life.

Nunn, or Gary P., as he sometimes is called in his new autobiography, had been playing bass guitar in rock bands since junior high school in Brownfield, Texas, in the late 1950s. Now he had his pickup packed and was ready to go. But he decided, spur of the moment, to stay in Austin a couple of days longer so he could see a live performance by a rising star he greatly admired: Texas singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey.  >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

5.13.2018  Author relates inside story of the 1956 movie Giant

Veteran Austin author Don Graham tells the story behind one of Texas’s iconic movies in Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber and the Making of a Legendary American Film (St. Martin’s Press, $27.99 hardcover).

The book title is a mouthful in itself, but it actually leaves out the one person who had the most significant impact on the movie — director George Stevens. It was his movie in nearly every aspect, as Graham makes clear throughout the book.

Graham delves into the stories behind the scene, including the actors and actresses who were considered, even preferred, for some of the leading parts but either turned them down or were rejected by Stevens.

Hudson, in particular, was something of a surprise choice to play rancher Bick Benedict. Author Edna Ferber preferred Burt Lancaster, and other big name leading men like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, William Holden and Robert Mitchum sought the role, but Stevens picked Hudson (or Roy Fitzgerald), who was 29.

For the female lead, Stevens preferred Audrey Hepburn, who turned him down, or Grace Kelly, who was locked in by a competing studio. Ferber lobbied for Patricia Neal.

Elizabeth Taylor really wanted the part, Graham says, and she sold Stevens on the idea. The role, Graham writes, “would prove to be a major turning point in Elizabeth Taylor’s life.” She was 23.

To play the part of Jett Rink, Stevens offered it to Alan Ladd, who turned it down. Graham called it “the worst decision of his career.” Ferber pitched Mitchum for the Rink character.

Of course, Stevens cast James (or Jimmy) Dean, and Graham examines in great detail how Dean would become the movie’s dominant force on screen and off.

Dean died in an automobile accident on Sept. 30, 1955, after finishing the filming of Giant. The movie was released the next fall.

Graham notes that throughout the project, Stevens was determined to produce a movie that Texans would embrace, unlike the Ferber novel on which the movie was based. One Texas critic of the novel had called (supposedly in jest) for a public hanging of Ferber.

Stevens succeeded in his quest. The movie became “the national film of Texas,” Graham writes. It won Stevens an Oscar for best director but lost out to Around the World in 80 Days for best picture. Within the first year of its release, Giant grossed $15 million, which would be $128 million in today’s dollars, Graham calculates.

Graham is the J. Frank Dobie Professor of English at the University of Texas and has written extensively on southwestern literature, film, and history. His books include Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas, State Fare: An Irreverent Guide to Texas Movies, Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire, and the anthology Lone Star Literature.

Glenn Dromgoole writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life

2018 TEXAS BOOKISH DESTINATIONS

Can you name this literary place in the Lone Star State?

Okay, one last chance at the prize, before National Poetry Month comes to an end April 30!

Admit it: bookfans love traveling almost as much as they love reading itself. Beginning March 4, 2018, Lone Star Literary Life will roll out #10 through #6 in our annual list of Top Texas Bookish Destinations, for readers who want to visit the settings of their favorite books, the birthplaces and haunts of favorite authors, and hot spots for book buying, readings, and other literary activity.

     But throughout Texas’s 268,597 square miles, there are also lots of out-of-the-way points of interest that we don’t always have space to cover in our Top Ten pages.

     Watch this space each week for a new bookish place that you’ll want to add to your own travel list. Be the first to email us with the correct identification, and win a prize!

     This week, we continue with a bookish place that’s located in 2017’s #2 Top Bookish Destination. There’s plenty of poetry in this literary-rich city, but there’s a Poet Tree, too. Can you name the city? And extra credit for telling our readers the neighborhood or street where they can find it, too.

Email us at info@LoneStarLiterary.com with the specific right answer, and we’ll send you a free copy of Literary Texas.

LAST MONTH’S PHOTO (below) was correctly identified as the Capitol Gift Shop, inside the state capitol building in Austin. Congratulations — your prize is on the way!