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Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong examines how one of the state’s most celebrated writers found a home in San Antonio.
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In this episode of Black Austin Matters, Lisa sits down with her co-host, Richard J. Reddick, to discuss his upbringing as an Air Force brat, his undergraduate experience at Harvard University, his journey as an educator, and the insights behind his book, Restorative Resistance in Higher Education: Leading in an Era of Racial Awakening and Reckoning.
Steinbeck’s comments about Texas and Texans go well beyond his “Texas is a state of mind” quote. Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong explores.
A tornado tore through the Panhandle town of Perryton on Thursday, leaving three dead, scores injured and many without homes – and forecasts say there’s more severe weather on the way.
Native American tribes are celebrating a big win before the Supreme Court in an adoption law case brought by a white foster couple from Texas.
What an expo in El Paso says about an aspect of border security that’s seldom talked about.
Remembering a giant of American novelists, Cormac McCarthy, and his ties to Texas.
And the week in politics with the Texas Tribune.
As cities grow, so do tensions between state and local officials over policy direction. A bipartisan coalition of 18 big city mayors team up to press state officials over top priorities. What they’re planning and more in our conversation with the mayor of Fort Worth. Also, how transgender youth and their families are gearing up to fight several new proposals in the GOP led Texas legislature. And an update over public access to a beloved east Texas body of water called The Cutoff. Plus rising grocery prices and the SNAP gap for those needing help to get food on the table. These stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
As temperatures plummet with a major cold front bearing down on the lone star state, down into the teens in many parts, we continue to monitor conditions across Texas. Eric Berge of Houston’s Space City Weather joins us with an overview, the dangers ahead, and when we can expect to thaw out from this last big chill of 2022. Also a rethink of ways to address the mental health crisis. And the week in politics with the Texas Tribune. These stories and much more today on the Texas Standard:
Had your fill yet? No need to loosen the belt…we’re serving up something different today. As many Texans dash about in search of gift-giving deals on this Friday, we’ve made out a list of some of our favorite books this past year. From tales of trailblazing women clearing the way for the final frontier of space to an examination of re-wilding as a way to get back to a balance with nature and make cities more livable. A memoir from a music superstar and the hidden histories of gay power in high places. Just a few of the reading selections we’ve been perusing today on the Texas Standard:
One of the world’s top vaccine experts takes on questions as a new COVID-19 booster arrives in Texas; we’ll be talking with Dr. Peter Hotez about the new Omicron focused vaccines. Other stories we’re tracking: with pandemic disruptions, gun violence and other concerns, how some Texas school districts are trying to address students’ mental health. Plus, a longtime liberal activist who worked alongside Anne Richards talks about a life in Texas politics and the future of the causes she fought for. These stories and much more today on the Texas Standard:
The Texas Supreme Court says Texas can enforce its 1925 abortion ban. We’ll have a closer look at the implications of the decision. Also, with many Texans traveling by car for the holiday, lots of folks feeling the pinch of gas prices firsthand. An update from our go to energy expert Matt Smith. And we revisit our conversation with singer songwriter and Spoon frontman Britt Daniel who shares how a Texas vibe got baked in to one of the most highly anticipated rock albums of the year. Plus reflections on this land and who it really belongs to. Those stories and much more today on the Texas Standard:
You now the saying so many books, so little time? Well if you’ve got an hour, we’ve got a page turner for you. We’ll take a trip to the library. From ideas about voting and civic duty, the untold story of a war often repeatedly revisited, an agent of change who might otherwise have been lost to history, the tale of a Texas music scene that breaks all the stereotypes and loving sports when they don’t love you back. Conversations with authors from across the Lone Star State and beyond as we hit the bookshelves for a very special edition of the Texas Standard:
Kathy Valentine, bass player in the seminal 80s all-girl rock group the Go-Go’s, recently wrote a memoir titled All I Ever Wanted. In the book, Valentine explores her unconventional childhood, her time with the Go-Go’s, and her journey to sobriety. In this episode of, Kathy explains what “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream taught her about herself when she was 9 years old, describes how she found her creative process as an author and details how music and storytelling intersected in her new book.
Kathy Valentine’s April Book Tour dates are currently being rescheduled, but you can buy a signed copy from one of the bookstores where she was scheduled to appear. Find out where to buy your copy of All I Ever Wanted
Kathy also wrote a soundtrack to accompany her book. Check out the soundtrack to All I Ever Wanted on Bandcamp.
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When I hear the great musical theme of Lonesome Dove, I am immediately grateful to Bill Wittliff because I know we wouldn’t have the deeply treasured miniseries if not for him. We would have Larry McMurtry’s novel for sure, but we would not have Wittliff’s equally brilliant adaptation of that masterwork if not for his undeterred resolve to get it done.
Bill Wittliff died on Sunday. I was, like millions of his fans around the world, and especially those in Texas, sad to see his rare intellectual light and his beneficent genius leave us. He was a man who often worked his magic behind the scenes and so many people were touched by his artistic brilliance without knowing it. He wrote the screenplays for much loved movies like Lonesome Dove, Legends of the Fall, The Perfect Storm, Raggedy Man, and for highly Texcentric films like Barborosa and Red-Headed Stranger. Some say Wittliff launched the Austin film industry.
Though Renaissance man is often overgenerous in its use, it fit Wittliff to perfection. He was a novelist, and a screenwriter, a photographer, a publisher and movie producer, a collector, an archivist, a historian and a lifelong professor who generously shared his knowledge of all things all the time. In more than a few instances over the past few years I’d fire off an email to him to ask for his insights on some obscure subject and he’d invariably surprise me with an authoritative answer within five minutes, sometimes less.
Four years ago I interviewed Bill for his new novel The Devil’s Backbone. Naturally we talked a good deal about Lonesome Dove and I want to share some of that interview because it gives us insights into the making of that masterpiece and into the mind and methods of Wittliff as well.
I first asked Bill about how long it took to produce Lonesome Dove and if he knew it would be the huge hit it turned out to be?
“For me Lonesome Dove was a solid two years,” Wittliff said. “It was a year writing the script, and then it was another year from locations and casting and all of that, to actually shooting it and then editing and the scoring – all of it – and distribution. Here’s what I did know. I knew, because I saw the dailies every morning – and I knew, you know, that what was going through the cameras was incredible stuff, incredible performances. What I didn’t know was that the audience would take to it the way they did. That I didn’t know. I knew it was going to be great and I knew it was going to be well really phenomenal. It was just incredible to watch – to sit there every day and watch Duvall and Tommy Lee and all of them deliver those lines. You simply could not be there and not know. But what I didn’t know is that the audience would take to it the way the did.”
One reason for this surprise, Bill told me, is that in 1988 there was only one thing deader than Westerns and that was the miniseries. And, he said, “we were making both.”
I was curious about his method of adapting the novel for television. I asked him how, out of this tumultuous novel of nearly 1,000 pages, he could choose what to include and what to exclude.
“Here’s what I did,” Wittliff said. “At that time I was driving a pickup. Suzanne, my partner, had someone read it on tape. We have a place on South Padre Island. It’s six hours to drive down there. So I would strike out in my pickup, which is to say you were in a closed in space. And start playing that and listening to it. You could see it. In listening to it you would say oh I don’t need that or oh that’s too close to this. Because I was driving I could kind of see a version of the movie unfold as I drove along. In six hours, as it turned out, of listening to Larry’s novel was just about one episode. So I’d drive to South Padre and when I got there I then I would start adapting that six hours, boiled down to two hours. Anyway, that’s how I did it.”
Finally, since McMurtry had written a number of screenplays himself, I asked Bill why Larry hadn’t written it himself.
“When they asked me to do it, I called Larry and I said, ‘Don’t you want to do this,’ and he said, ‘no, I’m cooked,'” Wittliff said. “Larry’s always been smart about movies and his books. I don’t know what Larry had his thumb on when he wrote it, but boy it rang all the bells. And Larry got up from the typewriter and walked off from it at least three times maybe four times. He said ‘well, no, that’s enough,’ but then he always came back. And Lonesome Dove, both Larry’s book and now the miniseries, have absolutely become a part of the American fabric. It’s just astonishing. I’ve got calls from Ireland, Europe and England, caught up in the Lonesome Dove thing as much as Americans and Texans are. It’s just been astonishing.”
You notice there how he shuns credit for his success. He was a selfless man. That is why he created the Wittliff Collections with his wife Sally at Texas State University. There you can find the papers of great Southwestern writers like McCarthy, Dobie, Graves, Cisneros and some of McMurtry’s, which will be his greatest legacy, because it provides a place and resources for young writers, and artists, and filmmakers to come and dream about works they might animate and worlds they might create.
Steve Davis the curator there, said, “Bill embodied the best of Texas — he was incredibly creative and was very generous to others — as seen in this wonderful collection that he founded, which will continue to inspire others for generations to come.”
Finally, it is only fitting that we hear from McMurtry himself. Larry sent this touching note to me just yesterday.
He wrote: “I met Bill years ago when he and his wife asked permission to publish IN A NARROW GRAVE, my first volume of essays under their singular and distinctive Encino Press. It is the most impressive of my more than fifty published volumes. He was an absolute genius photographer, as you can see from his Wittliff Collection photos. Bill skillfully adapted LONESOME DOVE into a beloved miniseries, and I know he will be deeply missed by Texans everywhere.”
Bill lived a beautiful, fun and inspirational life. I believe firmly that in thinking about his life he would agree with Gus McCrae, who said, “It’s been quite a party, ain’t it?”
Larry McMurtry is, by many standards, Texas’ best writer.
He wrote “Horseman, Pass By” to wide acclaim when he was just 25, which became the movie “HUD,” starring Paul Newman. When he was thirty, he published “The Last Picture Show,” which won him even greater critical praise and the movie that followed launched Cybil Shepard’s career.
“Terms of Endearment” is another of his great novels. The film that followed pumped sales of the book when Jack Nicholson and Shirley McClain took the lead roles. McMurtry’s best book is his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lonesome Dove.” That became, to most Texans anyway, the best television miniseries of all time.
McMurtry grew up on a ranch in Archer County, Texas, where there’s about five people per square mile. It is interesting that another famous American writer owned land in Archer County. That was Mark Twain. He didn’t live there, but he did own land there, as an investment. This 320 acre plot is still known locally as “the Twain property.”
So these two great writers, Twain as perhaps America’s best and McMurtry as perhaps Texas’ best, both owned land in Archer County, Texas. Small world. Both were Southerners. Both grew up in small, rural, agrarian towns. Both wrote classic books about the American West and about the cowboys and pioneers that inhabited those vast, rugged, haunting landscapes.
Now let me stop here to tell you an interesting story about Twain and the land he owned in Archer County. One day he received a letter from the County Clerk of Archer County saying that his land was in danger of being repossessed due to unpaid taxes. Twain had a man in Texas who was supposed to pay those taxes but he had failed to do so. So, Twain immediately paid the back taxes and saved the land. He was quite angry about the whole affair. He explained in a now somewhat famous letter to his friend William Dean Howells that he had had a man in Texas who was supposed to take care of those taxes, but that man had taken the money and run, so to speak. He wrote that if he ever caught up with him he would suffer on a Biblical scale. Twain said that “he shall beg for brimstone, he will beg in vain.” Now there’s beautifully worded threat even the mafia could be proud of.
Many years ago I sent a copy of the Twain letter to McMurtry. I had stumbled across it in the Twain papers at Vassar University. I told him that he might be pleased to know that he wasn’t the only famous author to have owned land in Archer County. He wrote back in his straightforward, modest style. He said
that he didn’t know about that, but he was glad to know and that he would check into it to see if maybe they had owned some of the same land. I guess they didn’t. I never heard any more about it. But the day I received that letter from the great man himself – that was a mighty fine day.
As a teenager, I used to lie awake at night reading McMurtry. I felt a special connection with him because we lived on the same road, U.S. 281. Six hundred miles apart, it is true, but on the same road. He lived a mile off of U.S. 281 in north Texas and I lived a mile off of U.S. 281 in south Texas. He could hear the trains where he was and I could hear them where I was.
He and I were both lovers of books and of Texas. We both grew up in ranch country. He played the trombone. I played the trombone. And as the years passed, the similarities continued. He went to North Texas State and so did I. He wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and I… I read it. He now lives in Tucson, where I went to doctoral school, and wrote my thesis – on Mark Twain.
McMurtry is now in his 80s. Given the parallel nature of our lives,
I’m praying he has many beautiful years ahead of him.
Host John L. Hanson speaks with Dr. Aldon D. Morris, professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University, and author of “The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Dubois and the Birth of Modern Sociology.”
In Black America presents a 2004 conversation with the late John Hope Franklin, distinguished scholar historian, professor, Presidential Medal of Honor recipient, and author of “From Slavery to Freedom.”
Spoiler alert! In case you’ve been under a rock in Ogallala for the last three decades, this story contains spoilers for “Lonesome Dove.”
Since I am, like many Texans, an amateur expert on “Lonesome Dove,” people often ask me what I figure are the most loved quotes from the miniseries.
If I were wise, I would just say any of a hundred quotes could be someone’s number one, and leave it at that. But I have never let lack of wisdom stop me. I cannot resist the challenge of making a list. I know it is a delicate business; it is holy ground.
But the list I’m about to share is not just my opinion. I do have data on my side, based on feedback from a popular Facebook page devoted to “Lonesome Dove.” From that page I have been able to tabulate the most popular quotes or excerpts from the miniseries:
No 12. Woodrow has just buried Gus and puts up the grave marker made of the famous Hat Creek Cattle Company sign. Woodrow says: “I guess this’ll teach me to be careful about what I promise in the future.”
No 11. When the boys seem a little shocked by Gus’, shall we say, manly appetites, he says: “What’s good for me may not be good for the weak minded.”
No 10. Right after Gus has cut the cards with Lorie and she accuses him of cheating. He says, “I won’t say I did and I won’t say I didn’t, but I will say that a man who wouldn’t cheat for a poke don’t want one bad enough.”
No 9. Not long before Gus goes guns blazing into Blue Duck’s camp to save Lorie, he says, “They don’t know it, but the wrath of the Lord is about to descend on ‘em.”
No 8. Gus finds July Johnson burying his son, and Jenny and Rosco. July is naturally distraught, blaming himself, saying he should have stayed with them. Gus says: “Yesterday’s gone, we can’t get it back.” But he does assure him that if he ever runs into Blue Duck again, he will kill him for him.
No 7. Gus gets exasperated with Woodrow because Woodrow, to Gus’s way of thinking, is being dense. Gus says: “Woodrow, you just don’t ever get the point – ‘It’s not dyin’ I’m talkin’ about, it’s livin’.”
No 6. This quote punctuates the scene when Jake Spoon must be hanged along with the murdering horse thieves he has thrown in with. Jake pleads his case but Gus has little sympathy. He says, “You know how it works, Jake. You ride with the outlaw, you die with the outlaw. Sorry, you crossed the line.”
No 5. The San Antonio bar scene has several great lines together, so I decided to count them as one quote.
The bartender, upon insulting Gus and Call, gets his nose broken when Gus slams his face into the oak bar. Gus explains: “Besides a whiskey, I think we will require a little respect. . . . If you care to turn around, you will see what we looked like when we was younger and the people around her wanted to make us senators. What we didn’t put up with back then was doddlin’ service, and as you can see, we still don’t put up with it.”
As they rode away, Woodrow tells Gus he’s lucky he didn’t get thrown in jail and Gus says, “Ain’t much of a crime, whackin’ a surly bartender.”
No 4. A touching line, uttered by Gus as he lay dying. He says to Woodrow: “It’s been quite a party ain’t it?”
No 3. This one is a tie – so close I couldn’t separate them.
The first comes at the first of the movie, back at Lonesome Dove when Bol infers that Gus may be too old for romance anymore and Gus sets him straight. He says, “The older the violin, the sweeter the music.”
Following soon after that scene comes Call’s advice to Newt. Call hands him his first pistol and says, “Better to have that and not need it than need it and not have it.”
No 2. Gus lays out a prescription for Lorie’s future happiness. She is obsessed with going to San Francisco, and he wants her to understand that that dream is likely a misguided one.
“You see, life in San Francisco is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it’s likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things – like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself.”
No 1. I began with Call and we end with him. Though Gus gets a great number of the best lines, Woodrow gets, without question, the most powerful, most quoted line of all.
After Call beat an army scout to a pulp, the horrified townspeople – who have never witnessed such violence before – are standing around in shock and seem to require an explanation. Call obliges them. He says, “I hate rude behavior in a man. I won’t tolerate it.”
There you go. That’s the top twelve according to the data. Now when you write to me to tell that the list is wrong or that I left out this or that, I ask only that you remember Captain Call’s admonition: No rude behavior.
Award-winning journalist and author and University of Texas graduate Reshonda Tate Billingsley talks about her writing career and her boutique publishing company, Brown Girls Publishing.
A discussion of the history and the economic and cultural legacy of slavery in America with Dr. Edward E. Baptist, Associate Professor of History at Cornell University and author of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism.