Willie: an Autobiography by Willie Nelson, Bud Shrake (review)

184 Western American Literature Willie: an Autobiography. By Willie Nelson with Bud Shrake. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. 334 pages, $19.95.) Long-haired supershowmen have figured in the West since Buffalo Bill, and Willie Nelson now carries the banner. Born in Abbot, Texas in 1933, Willie gained more of a reputation as a songwriter than a performer in the Nashville country and western music establishment of the 1950s. But when he discovered the early 70s hippie scene around Austin, he moved back to Texas, adopted long hair and the earring, and found a huge new audience for his offbeat, reedy delivery. Since then, his Fourth of July picnics have become a Texas institu­ tion, while his movies and his duets with Julio Iglesias have attracted new fans. Recently his Farm Aid concerts have brought him into social service. It has been a long journey for the rebellious kid first known as Booger Red. His autobiography compares well with Loretta Lynn’s Coal Miner’s Daughter (1976) and Tammy Wynette’s Stand by Your Man (1979). The collaboration with his old friend Bud Shrake has allowed the presentation of a series of 35 edited interviews with persons ranging from ex-wives and good ol’ boys to Dennis Hopper and Sydney Pollack. Their anecdotes range from a godawful tale of Willie’s backroads shootout with the son-in-law who beat up his daughter to a vivid account by his stage manager, Poodie Locke, of their typical life on the road. Compared to the candor of some of these “Choruses,” Willie’sownwriting seems a little guarded, although he is quite forthcoming about his faults and mistakes, marital in particular. Much of his frequent philosophizing is colored by his browsing in Edgar Cayce, Khalil Gibran and the Aquarian Gospel, and he is more persuaded than many about the emergence of a new type of westerner, the cowboy hippie. Although his life these days includes about 150 concerts a year on the road, touring Europe, acting in movies, and cutting albums, he keeps coming back to Austin for golf and his studio. The book closes with Willie’s horoscope, cast in 8 pages by Diane Eichenbaum and suggesting that he might even go into politics. No bedtime for Booger yet! RICHARD DWYER Florida International University Crossing the River: Poets of the Western United States. Edited by Ray Gon­ zalez. (Sag Harbor, New York: The Permanent Press, 1987. 201 pages, $14.95.) In the preface to this volume Ray Gonzalez writes that the poems included “rise out of deserts, plains, mountains, and riVers to celebrate a sense of place that can be found in poets nationwide.” The statement proves true of the sixtynine poets represented in the collection. Images of the West abound: chickens, eagles, hawks, wasps, the chalky bones of horses, the moon hanging in alders, chunks of snow on pine trees, snow drifts, swirls of rain, swirls of dust, cattle guards, sagebrush flats, plodding of hoofbeats, a pile of broken dishes by an ...