ReSource, Volume 2, Number 1, [1985] Page: 15
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centennial, the state's 150th birthday,
in March 1986.
To understand Texas literature is to
understand its "little traditions" and
regional differences. These perspectives
are discussed in "The Texas Literary
Tradition," which Lee, along with Dr.
Don Graham of The University of Texas
at Austin and Dr. Tom Pilkington of
Tarleton State University, co-edited and
published in 1984, through The Univer-
sity of Texas, to excellent critical reviews.
The book divides Texas literature into
four eras: the southern tradition, the
literature of West Texas, Texas-Mexican
literature and urban Texas.
More recently Lee, Graham and
Pilkington have joined with Melissa
Hield of People's History in Texas, Inc.,
in Austin, to make a half-hour film
on "Texas Myths and Texas Writers: The
Regionalist Perspective" that they hope
will help Texans and others understand
just what Texas literature is, from where
it came and where it's going.
The film is being made with the
help of a grant from the Texas Committee
on the Humanities. The group has devel-
oped plans for additional films on the old
west, the Texas-Mexican tradition and
Texas urban literature. They presently are
seeking funding for these three films.
The film currently in production will
concentrate on the southern era and the
works of George Sessions Perry. Lee
cites Perry's "Hold Autumn in Your
Hand" as the best novel depicting farm
life of the poor whites of Texas. In
another work, "Texas: A World in It-
self," Perry describes one of the myths
about Texas.
"To us Texans there is a quality of
go and glamor about cowmen that
farmers never attain. I don't know what
makes it. Is it the fact that they ride
horses? That probably has something to
do with it. But I am led for some
reason to believe that it is the cowman's
mixture of pride and arrogance-plus
his knowledge that he has casually put
something over on the rest of us. For
while the cowman goes through the vio-
lent motions of labor, he is actually
having a wonderful time earning a
living.... "
In addition to visiting and filming
the area around Rockdale where Perry
lived and wrote, Lee and his colleagues
have also filmed in Dallas and Denton
counties and will shoot footage in East
Texas later in the summer. They willinterview people on camera sharing
some of their reminiscences of Perry.
Studying regional traditions in
Texas fiction can pose problems. Writers
look upon the label of "regional" as
a black mark. "I never met but one
writer who admitted to being a regional
writer. And he was a Californian,"
quips Lee with the tongue-in-cheek humor
he often exhibits. But Lee believes
these regional traditions are present in
Texas fiction, existing alongside the
"great traditions" created in print by "the
Old Guard," the phrase given to three
Texas writers who are considered to have
begun the literary tradition in Texas:
J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb
and Roy Bedichek.
The Western tradition is without
doubt the best-known of the literary
traditions in Texas. Cattle drives, life on
the range, the hardships of existing on
such unrewarding soil-all have been
depicted in Texas literature from the
beginning.
What many people do not realize,
says Lee in "The Texas Literary Tradi-
tion," is that throughout most of this
century, the mainstream of Texas literature
was southern rather than western. Lee
explains, "It seems evident to me that
until well after World War II many
Americans and most Texans saw the state
as southern, not western. It is a fact
that between World War I and the end
of the Korean War there were scores
of books, written by Texans and pub-
lished by major publishers, that had noth-
ing to do with cattle, six-guns, barbed
wire, rustling or traildriving. The non-
western books that appeared during these
decades were apparently widely read.
Some became best-sellers, some won
national awards and a surprising number
were made into motion pictures."
A Texas fiction writer is defined by
Lee as belonging to the southern tradition
whenever that person as a writer is
"not discernible from fiction writers in
any other part of the Deep South." In
his essay on the subject Lee mentions
several themes that frequently appear--
racial problems and social distinctions,
for starters. There also is an emphasis
on the extent to which time, place and
family help to identify self. Techniques
that often appear in southern fiction are
"a reliance upon oral narrative techniques,
the King James Bible and the speech of
common people," as well as "the
spirit of fundamentalist Protestantism."Land, family, history-these words
are banners that wave in the conscious-
ness of southern writers when developing
their novels. The interest in family
frequently leads to a keen interest in
genealogy. The family may be defined
in terms of place. Allegiance is directed
to the valley in which people live,
rather than to their state or their country.
This southern tradition has just
about run its course in Texas fiction. Its
literary influence has diminished since
Texas began to have more cufferences
than similarities with southern states
like Louisiana and Alabama.
In place of the southern tradition
have come new perspectives-influences
derived from urban America or the
culture of Mexico.
Lee sees the Texas-Mexican per-
spective as emerging rapidly as an in-
fluence on Texas fiction. Arnoldo De
Leon's books "The Tejano Community"
and "They Called Them Greasers" are
histories that describe the little traditions
of Texas Mexicans and Anglo attitudes
toward them during the period 1820-1900.
"It is important to understand some-
thing about Mexican culture," Lee ob-
serves, "because in the last 10 to 15
years much of this state has become
a Mexican state." In fact, Lee concurs
with a theory expressed by Joel
Garreau's "The Nine Nations of North
America" that "the Southwest is now
what all of Anglo North America will
soon be-a place where the largest
minority will be Spanish-speaking. ... It
is becoming MexAmerica."
One of the leading writers of this
emerging Texas-Mexican tradition, in
Lee's opinion, is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith.
In novels and stories like "Klail City
y sus alrededores" we have a picture of
life during the 1940s and 1950s in
"the Valley," the southern part of Texas
that borders the Rio Grande. At present
Hinojosa-Smith is reworking some of
his novels in English, not as translations
from the original Spanish but in the
sense of recasting his ideas, choosing
words that he would use in a different
cultural setting.
The southern tradition fades. The
Texas-Mexican perspective grows strong-
er. The western tradition continues in
Texas fiction, but alongside this tradition
there is a place for other traditions and
perspectives. It is these lesser-known
traditions that will continue to fascinate
Jim Lee.15
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North Texas State University. ReSource, Volume 2, Number 1, [1985], periodical, 1985; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc29778/m1/17/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting University Relations, Communications & Marketing department for UNT.