Bücher von Patrick Bennett

Times were tough in the thirties, and tough guys chronicled the era in newspapers, short stories, and novels in prose that was terse, hard-boiled, bleak. One such writer was a Texan named Edward Anderson. Rough and Rowdy Ways is the story of Edward Anderson, primarily in what were, ironically, his golden years--the Great Depression. The laconic loner hopped freights, wrote two proletarian novels of the social underclass, looked for inspiration in a shot glass, and mixed with Hollywood celebrities while employed as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers. When the thirties ended, the hard-times storytelling that was Anderson's genius went out of style, and his family suffered the effects of his rejection slips, unemployment, and alcoholism. Attracted to theoretical aspects of fascism, anti-Semitism, and Swedenborgianism, Anderson became an eccentric unpopular among intellectuals as well as the poor folk whose plight he had sketched too well in prose. He died in Brownsville, Texas, in 1969, leaving a legacy of shattered relationships and two whole, well-crafted novels of a distinctive literary genre and historical era

Texas has a whole remuda of writers, some native-born and Texas-raised and some immigrants to the state. They range from poets and playwrights to newspapermen and novelists. Pat Bennett has rounded up twelve of the most respected of them to discuss their work and their opinions about Texas writing and literature in general. A. C. Greene is fascinated by characters who have a flaw they just can't overcome. Though Elmer Kelton reads widely when he can, he concentrates on specific research when working on a project. Frances Mossiker says that she struggles hard to give each person in her books a distinct voice. Leon Hale claims he doesn't mind being criticized occasionally, Just so long as they don't get too close to the truth. These are just a few of the insights into the minds of Texas writers that these conversations provide. Others who contribute their views are Larry McMurtry, John Graves, Max Apple, Shelby Hearon, Preston Jones, Tom Lea, William Goyen, and Larry King, but since they all talk about the work of many colleagues, the scope of the book is not limited to this particular dozen. Readers of Texas writing as well as anyone interested in literature will value the light these interviews shed on the work of those authors they have read and will be stimulated to sample the works of those authors they have not.