Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond

Rating:
Summary: Deconstructing the 'Mad Dog' Six
Review: Documenting and influencing the evolving Texas culture of the sixties, the six authors studied in Steven L. Davis's Texas Literary Outlaws were right at the center of the action. There for the Kennedy assassination, Lyndon Johnson's transformation from senator to president, the brawl over Jim Crow laws, the birth of Texas Monthly magazine, and Ann Richard's rise to prominence, these authors were practically inseparable from the issues they wrote about.

Davis deftly picks apart the knot of the Mad Dogs' relationships to their work and each other in what Patrick Beach of the Austin American-Statesman calls "a heroic work resting on a sturdy tripod of extensive scholarship, fluid writing and trenchant but bottomlessly humane criticism." This work is a great read for anyone interested in the rowdy days of Texas's recent history.

Rating:
Summary: You owe it to yourself . . .
Review: Jack Kerouac and his circle of pals used to occupy the literary "high" ground when it came to legendary escapades involving strange and rowdy behavior from writerly types who managed nevertheless to produce enduring books and other good reading matter through the fog of illegal smoking materials, non-prescription mood-elevators, and cheap whiskey. The Beats occupied that position in the minds of the cognoscenti in places like New York City, that is. Now, however, bookish folk who favor the Lone Star State over the Left or Right Coasts can rejoice-Steve Davis has done America (as well as our good neighbors to the south and north) a long-overdue service by providing those among us who actually read books a fascinating and detailed (and at times downright hilarious) look into the lives and careers of a posse of self-described "Mad Dog" Texas scribes who, in the 1960s and after, have made Kerouac and his boys look like nothing so much as well-mannered cub scouts. Larry L. King, Bud Shrake, and Gary Cartwright are the true stars of this book, and if you don't recognize those names, you are evidently not from Texas-but shame on you, nonetheless. Peter Gent, Dan Jenkins, and the late Billie Lee Brammer round out the list of outlaws, but appearances by such luminaries as former Texas governor Ann Richards, C&W stars Jerry Jeff Walker and Willie Nelson, football legends Don Meredith and Tom Landry, not to mention Jack Ruby's star stripper Jada with her Girl Scout cookie tins filled with marijuana, are themselves worth the price of the book. Texas Literary Outlaws ought to top the New York Times' Best Seller list. It won't-it's far too well written. Believe it.