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Books
LITERARY FORT
WORTH
Edited by Judy
Alter and James Ward Lee
(Fort Worth, TCU Press, 2012.)
442 pages
Paperback
ISBN: 978-0875652535.
$24.95.
Review by Dr.
Kirk Bane,
Central Texas Historical Association
September 5, 2023 |
"Unrelenting snobs and unrelieved sophisticates from Dallas
or San Antonio or Houston
or up-to-date Austin or
some other foreign part might scoff at the idea of a book entitled
LITERARY FORT WORTH, arguing that Fort
Worth is a backwater with no literature to speak of. Wrong! For
over a century, Fort Worth
writers have written and written well about this city so often dismissed
as a semi-rural cowtown. No question about it; it is a cowtown, but
it is a great deal more. Its writers have celebrated its world of
cattle and oil, but many have seen the other sides of Fort Worth—the
country club set, the literati, the artists and artisans, the musicians,
the intellectuals, and the whole minority subculture that has given
a cosmopolitan tone to this Queen City of the Prairies."
So observes co-editor and UNT professor James Ward Lee in his lively
introduction—"Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?"—to
this impressive literary anthology. Containing fiction and nonfiction,
poetry and prose, LITERARY FORT WORTH offers excerpts from more than
fifty authors. Writers represented include Ann Arnold, Gary Cartwright,
Jerry Flemmons, Jeff Guinn, Dan Jenkins, Bud Kennedy, Larry McMurtry,
Jay Milner, J'Nell Pate, Joyce Gibson Roach, Bob Ray Sanders, and
Bud Shrake. Students of the Lone Star heritage, especially those interested
in Fort Worth culture
and history, will relish this volume, ably assembled by Alter and
Lee.
LITERARY FORT WORTH belongs to the superb "Literary Cities" Series
published by TCU Press. Other volumes in this collection include Marcia
Hatfield Daudistel's LITERARY EL PASO, Bryce Milligan's LITERARY SAN
ANTONIO, David Theis's LITERARY HOUSTON, and Frances Brannen Vick's
LITERARY DALLAS. |
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