This Stubborn Self: Texas Autobiographies by Bert Almon (review)

3 0 6 WAL 3 8 . 3 F a l l 2 0 0 3 T his Stubborn Self: Texas Autobiographies. By Bert Almon. Fort W orth: Texas C h ristian U n iversity Press, 2002. 357 pages, $39.95. Reviewed by Lou Rodenberger Professor Em erita, M cM urry U niversity, A bilene, Texas The scholar may analyze autobiographical writing to support a personal theory of the genre’s purpose, but Bert Almon has no such aim. He has broad knowledge of the theories of memoir as genre, but in these discussions of eigh­ teen Texas writers’ personal accounts of their unique lives, Almon seeks knowl­ edge of social, religious, and economic attitudes and values as reflected in their individual memories. Although each of the writers under consideration nar­ rates stories of growing up in Texas, Almon’s discoveries illuminate not only how values changed in the twentieth century but how the transition from rural to urban life has effected that change in the West. Familiarity with many of the works under consideration may lead the reader at first to puzzle why any discussion other than of prevalent theories and literary merit is required for insight into the autobiographer’s style and intent. Surprisingly, Almon’s intensive research into their background and works adds much to the understanding of both the personalities and relationships of nov­ elists such as William Humphrey and Larry McMurtry, as well as of women like Hallie Crawford Stillwell, who looks back at her difficult, century-long life as a rancher, and Jewell Babb, who shares with folklorist Pat Ellis Taylor how she became known as a border healer. Perhaps most relevant to the study of western American literature are Almon’s discussions of Mexican American cross-cultural lives so lyrically revealed in the memoirs of Pat Mora, Ray Gonzalez, Gloria Lopez-Stafford, and John Phillip Santos. Of particular interest, too, are the autobiographies of Charley C. White and Annie Mae Hunt, African Americans, both of whom candidly told their stories to interviewers who recorded and transcribed their narratives. Almon includes the personal stories of J. Frank Dobie, whose adulation of southwest Texas ranch life perpetrated the myth that cowmen and cowboys best represent Texas cultural heritage; William A. Owens, whose early life in East Texas cotton fields counters Dobie’s notions of the origins of the state’s culture; and John Houghton Allen, whose Southwest (1952) Almon classifies as “a memoir of a person and a region, with interpolated tales, a little like a Brush Country Decameron” (195). Although Almon’s thorough research into the untold stories and hazy backgrounds of many of these autobiographers provides further enlightenment on their connections with time and place, his most informative essay exam­ ines the peripatetic lifestyle of the mysterious Gertrude Beasley, whose then shocking memoir appeared in 1925. When Larry McMurtry wrote the after­ word to Beasley’s My First Thirty Years for the 1989 Book Club of Texas edi­ tion, his research provided only a scanty discussion of Beasley’s later life. B o o k R e v i e w s 3 0 7 Almon, however, essentially writes Beasley’s biography, uncovering details of her travels to Russia, her friendship with Bertrand Russell, her other publica­ tions, and her disappearance in 1928. It is not difficult to discern which of his subjects Almon believes most authentic and literary in their reflections on the time and place where they grew up, but taken as a whole, these essays provide insight into both twentieth -century western culture and the art of writing memoir. Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an Am erican Ranching Em pire. By Don Graham. H oboken, N ew Jersey: Jo h n W iley & Son s, 2003. 304 pages, $24-95. Reviewed by Clay Reynolds U niversity of Texas at Dallas To set out to chronicle a tale as long and sprawling as the story of the leg­ endary King Ranch of Texas is to embark on a serpentine journey fraught with unknown perils. This singularly massive estate occupying more than 1,300 square miles of Texas, itself the largest political division in the contiguous forty-eight, is so incredibly gargantuan...