Recommended Books

Of the seemingly infinite number of books concerning the Lone Star State, there are a few novels this book's authors especially like, primarily for the view they provide into the soul of Texas (both the real and the mythical). Fans of James Michener will appreciate his historical novel Texas. Although a bit too wordy and tedious for some of us, Michener is an excellent storyteller as well as historian, and he (exhaustively) brings the state and its people to life. (It's a big state, but couldn't he have done it in less than 1,344 pages?) The superb novels of Cormac McCarthy also bring Texas to life, especially its raw, violent ways. Especially recommended are All the Pretty Horses, a sort of coming-of-age story known for its magnificent prose (and part of The Border Trilogy), and his tense Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. His latest, which has again garnered rave reviews, is The Road. You might also pick up a copy of Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole, which is set in the Panhandle. For powerful, critically acclaimed short stories, try Women Hollering Creek by Texas author Sandra Cisneros. The Gates of the Alamo by Stephen Harrigan is a gripping, fictionalized version of Texas's most famous battle.

On the much lighter side, Baja Oklahoma, by Dan Jenkins, offers a funny, poignant, and somewhat raunchy look at what we might call classic modern Texans, at least the Fort Worth trailer-trash variety. The book was made into an equally good movie by the same name, starring Leslie Ann Warren and Peter Coyote, with a bit part played by a young Julia Roberts. William Sidney Porter, better known as O. Henry, published a satirical newspaper in Austin and also worked in San Antonio in the late 19th century. A number of his short stories are set in the state, and can be found in O. Henry's Texas Stories.

Among nonfiction titles, serious history buffs may want to dip into Robert A. Caro's excellent multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, the consummate Texas politician whose career led him to the White House. For a quick and easy look at what Texas is all about, try All Hat & No Cattle, a collection of somewhat irreverent observations on Texas fashions, cuisine, music, animals, and the like by humorist Anne Dingus. Friday Night Lights, by H. G. Bissinger, is a sports classic, a memorable dissection of small-town Texas and its obsession and quasi religion: high school football. Focusing on Odessa Permian High, my high school's (Plano) perennial rival, the book went on to become a motion picture starring Billy Bob Thornton in 2004 (the soundtrack featured the expansive sounds of the Austin-based alternative instrumental band Explosions in the Sky). The book and movie have now been adapted for a television series on NBC.

Even readers who don't cook will enjoy The Only Texas Cookbook by Linda West Eckhardt. Interspersed among its 300 recipes -- including classics such as Fuzzy's Fantastic South Texas Road Meat Chili and Bad Hombre Eggs -- are numerous humorous anecdotes on food-related subjects. Those who savor biting political humor -- and don't mind seeing every Texas Republican mercilessly skewered -- will thoroughly enjoy any book of essays by the late newspaper columnist Molly Ivins, who is credited with bestowing the nickname "Dubya" on George W. Bush.

As a larger-than-life state with a character and spirit that both attract and repel but always seem to fascinate, it's no surprise that Texas has been the setting for epic films. Foremost among them, of course, were Westerns starring John Wayne, many of which were placed in Texas, including The Alamo, Red River, and Three Texas Steers. John Ford's 1956 The Searchers -- also starring Wayne -- is generally considered one of the greatest Westerns ever filmed. Giant (also from 1956) is expansive like Texas itself, set on a massive ranch location under a huge sky with Rock Hudson as a ranch baron who wins over Elizabeth Taylor. In 1969's Easy Rider, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper take a motorcycle road trip through Texas and meet up with Jack Nicholson. The Last Picture Show, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, is a tribute both to classic Hollywood filmmaking and small-town Texas. Tender Mercies, which won Robert Duvall an Oscar, is a stunning portrait of a has-been Texas country singer named Mac Sledge. In the cheesy Urban Cowboy, John Travolta lit up a honky-tonk called Gilley's and did for country dancing what he'd earlier done for disco in Saturday Night Fever.

Texas has also given birth to eccentric independent movies, such as the B-movie classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Wim Wenders's idiosyncratic Paris, Texas; the Coen brothers' Raising Arizona and Blood Simple; and Richard Linklater's Slacker and Dazed and Confused, dead-on portraits of laid-back Austin.

Films are increasingly being filmed in Texas. Austin has emerged as the "Third Coast" alternative to Los Angeles and New York City as a filmmaker's haven. Texas filmmakers include legendary director Terence Malick (The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven, Badlands, The New World) and young moviemakers creating an Austin school of sorts: Linklater (Before Sunrise, School of Rock, Fast Food Nation) and Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Spy Kids). Several well-known actors make their homes in Austin, too, including Matthew McConnaughey and Sandra Bullock.

On the tube, there was Dallas, of course, the entertainingly over-the-top series about the Ewing oil clan, and the classic miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel Lonesome Dove, which starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as former Texas Rangers a little long in the tooth who organize an epic cattle drive. PBS's Austin City Limits is a legendary, long-running live-music program featuring diverse artists from all over the country and globe.

The role that Texas musicians have played in creating a particularly American idiom of popular music, from country to blues, jazz, and rock, is impossible to overestimate. It's a topic sufficiently vast to be treated in greater detail. For rock and alternative music lovers, two of the biggest music festivals in the country are held annually in Austin: South by Southwest (S*SW), in March, and the outdoors Austin City Limits Festival (cruelly held in Sept, at the tail end of the brutal Central Texas summer).