Contributing Editor

MEMOIR

Alex Lemon

Feverland: A Memoir in Shards

Milkweed Editions

Paperback,  978-1-57131-336-2, 312 pages, $16.00; September 2017

Reviewed by Si Dunn

Imagine that your entire life can be viewed, frozen in place, in one big mirror. Now, drop the mirror. Let it shatter and scatter into countless pieces. As you pick up some of the fragments, one at a time, write down what you see in each piece and try to make it connect somehow with the next piece you lift.

Associative. That’s the easiest adjective to describe the structure of Fort Worth writer Alex Lemon’s latest memoir. (His previous works include Happy: A Memoir and several poetry collections.)

Feverland: A Memoir in Shards jumps quickly from one time, place and memory to another memory that is somehow connected. And each biographical “shard” may consume one short paragraph or a page or several pages.

Initially, the book can be challenging reading. But it soon becomes rewarding. Lemon understands the power of using short, clear sentences to build toward deeper meanings. At the same time, he does not shy away from using longer sentences (sometimes very long) to alter the rhythms and flow of thoughts.  >>READ MORE

TRUE CRIME

Kermit Schweidel

Folly Cove: A Smuggler’s Tale of the Pot Rebellion

Cinco Puntos Press

Hardcover, 978-1-941026-82-3 (also available as ebook), 266 pages, $16.95

February 2018

Reviewed by Si Dunn

It’s tempting to describe Folly Cove as “Reefer Madness” toked up on steroids.

This well-written book offers much more information and entertainment than that 1936 anti-marijuana film.

Folly Cove takes the reader inside the methods and cash-only economics of marijuana smuggling during the early 1970s. It describes how border patrols and federal drug agents were evaded and how a smuggler, if arrested, could slow or even stop the wheels of justice with some well-placed money and a high-dollar attorney. But in those days, conviction for possessing even small amounts could bring a long prison sentence. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Ever’ Texan oughta read this book of Texas stories

When you open W. F. Strong’s book Stories from Texas: Some of Them Are True, right there on the title page is my succinct review: “Ever’ Texan oughta read this book.”

The publisher (Beverley Place Books) sent me an advance copy and asked for a blurb. It didn’t take me long to realize that Strong has put together a remarkable collection that will inform and entertain readers about Texas history, culture, folklore and literature. I figured every Texan — or “ever’ Texan” as we tend to pronounce it — would enjoy the seventy-five stories in the 144-page paperback ($11.99).

For seven years the author, professor of communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, has been telling Texas stories on public radio stations statewide, and the book evolved from that series of four-minute tales and observations.

Despite the subtitle — “some of them are true” — most of the stories are true, but Strong doesn’t hesitate to mix in a few legends and tall tales from time to time.

One of my favorites concerned “The Texas Rancher and the New York Banker.” The rancher from a little ranch near Abilene walks into a New York bank and asks for a $5,000 loan for one month, some “walkin’-around money.” He leaves his loaded $70,000 Ford F-250 as collateral. A month later he comes in to pay off the $5,000 loan and $28.22 in interest and reveals the real reason he applied for the loan. (Of course, I’m not going to tell you how the story ends.)

The book is divided into a dozen or so sections, beginning with several pieces on the Texas dialect, such as letters we don’t need (the g on words ending in -ing, for example) and Texas contractions (especially the word y’all).

Another section deals with larger-than-life Texans, including Judge Roy Bean, coach Tom Landry, oilman Eddie Chiles, rancher/philanthropist Henrietta King, cattleman Charles Goodnight, pianist Van Cliburn, and the “bass boat heroes” from Hurricane Harvey.

Strong offers his suggestions for a year’s worth of Texas reading — one book a month beginning with The Tacos of Texas and ending with The Big Rich. Yes, Lonesome Dove, Empire of the Summer Moon, and Elmer Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained make the list.

The section on Texas icons includes pieces about rattlesnakes, pickups, Blue Bell ice cream, Dr Pepper, and Southwest Airlines. The author is especially passionate about Whataburger.

A chapter on immigrants takes a little different tack than you might expect, noting that the new immigrants in Texas (who didn’t speak the native language and practiced a different religion) were becoming quite a problem — in the 1820s and 1830s. Anglo Americans were streaming over the border from Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and other southern states, and the government (Mexico) passed new laws to deal with the influx. Strong also includes a couple of pieces on “Spanish for Gringos” and “Lingo for Gringos: Ten Words All Texans Should Know.”

Well, there’s much more. As I said at the beginning, “ever’ Texan oughta read this book.”

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?

Admit it: bookfans love traveling almost as much as they love reading itself. All year long we promote 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 2018’s #1 Top Bookish Destination. Where in this city celebrating its tricentennial this year would you find a colorful reading corner inside one of its hometown retailers?

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) went wanting for a winner. We’ll reveal the place now — it’s the Poet Tree, in Houston (yeah, that would’ve been easy, for anyone who zoomed in).