Legend has it that Texas troubadour Steve Earle once declared his friend Townes Van Zandt to be “the best songwriter in the whole world.” By today’s standards, such hype sounds pretty tame, especially given its placement on a promotional sticker for one of Van Zandt’s forgettable studio albums. But Steve Earle being Steve Earle, he followed up his proclamation with that unforgettable qualifier — “and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that” — and the legend was born, one whose poetic marriage of bald-faced bravado with the tragic romance of the West feels, in substance and in style, inextricably Texan.
While we’re making bold declarations, here’s a couple more: John Graves is not a Texas author, and Goodbye to a River is not a Texas book.
For those of you who know neither writer nor work, such a statement must sound about as threatening as a squirt gun. For the Lone Star literati, however, many of whom grew up reading Graves from grade school onward, I might as well have just challenged them to a duel. So be it. They can’t help where they were born, and besides, I can’t blame them: if I was from Texas, I’d fight to claim Graves, too. But before the posse comes out to the corral a’jingle-janglin’ in their spurred Noconas, hear me out. For I mean not to insult Texas or Texans but to properly celebrate Graves and his book.
The problem is that those who write in admiration of Graves seem honor-bound to stand him up beside a trio of Texas literary lions — Dobie, Bedichek and Webb — and thereby define him not for who he is but for
