State of Mind: Texas Literature and Culture by Tom Pilkington

Abstract

B o o k R e v ie w s 481 merely theme and setting; it is actually a “loaded psychosexual sym­ bol” (126). And when Lena Lingard says of the prairie “It ain’t mine,” she is exploiting and critiquing those “American expressive traditions that forge symbolic links between women’s bodies and frontier land­ scapes” (126). Lindemann herself admits that such an analysis may appear to be “a paranoid feminist allegory on the evils of male author­ ity” (127). Of course, that’s just what it is. Some readers may enthusiastically endorse the ideas expressed in this volume. Others will wonder whatever happened to a great work of art that gracefully eulogized an indomitable pioneer woman. State of M ind: Texas Literature and Culture. By Tom Pilkington. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998. 192 pages, $24-95. Reviewed by Cindy W allace LeTourneau University, Dallas Asserting that Texas has “generated its own literary tradition” dis­ tinct from the regional literatures surrounding it, Tom Pilkington ties his argument largely to the strength and popularity of Texas as a mytho­ logical entity: “Texas is a widely recognized brand name, thanks to the universal currency of the Texas myth” (8, 26). Thus Texas literature becomes one more offering in the limitless array of marketable “Texana”: “[T]he idea of a ‘Texas literature’ is as justifiable . . . as the idea of Texas music or Texas cooking or Texas apparel or, most grandiose of all, a Texas lifestyle” (26). Drawing a series of parallels between the Texan and the American experience— as past empires, as open frontiers, as immigrant populations— Pilkington paints the Texan as the quintessential American: “And, as usual, the Texan is seen as the super-American— possessing typically American traits in exaggerated form” (97). He extends the comparison to label Texas writing “a devel­ oping literature,” reminding us how long it took American literature to earn respect and acceptance on the world scene (35). Pilkington’s opening essay traces the roots of Texas literature from the journals of Cabeza de Vaca through the writings of J. Frank Dobie to Texas’s most famous author, Larry McMurtry. Other sections examine the uniquely Texan themes of the link between the land and its people, war, violence, and, of course, Texas football; then Pilkington considers how these themes are reflected in the state’s literature. Two essays exam­ ine the diversity in the Texas literary heritage: the East Texas Gothic coming out of the Old South, and even more significant, the Old West’s Texas frontier with its inherent sense of loss. His essay “A Prairie Homestead: Texas Writers and the Family Romance” documents the 482 WAL 34.4 W inter 2000 rivalries and feuds among Texas writers, past and present, and “Doing Without” offers Pilkington’s take on Larry McMurtry’s rise to become “the undisputed king of literary Texas” (105). In his final essay, “Future Shock,” Pilkington concludes that Texas literature is too young to be judged as good or bad, and he expresses his fear for its future. The Texas mythology that has enabled a Texas literature in the first place could be in jeopardy: [L]iterature inevitably reflects the society and culture from which it issues— and the society and culture inevitably shape the literature. One outgrowth of the changes the state is cur­ rently undergoing is that we are inexorably losing— perhaps have already lost— our regional distinctiveness. Do people residing in, say, the suburbs of Dallas have anything resem­ bling a genuine sense of place? (150) One problem with reading a series of essays, especially one writ­ ten “for different occasions and purposes,” is that each essay is neces­ sarily designed to stand alone, so in a sense each starts over to develop the author's overlying theme (xi). Yet, despite some repetition of his central points, I mostly enjoyed Pilkington’s collection and found it enlightening. With large sections of most of his essay-chapters devoted to textual analysis from representative literary works, an interest in Texas literature is necessary to hold the reader’s attention. However, the personal flavor of the collection gives it larger appeal than most “academic” works; the right reader will enjoy this...