Defending Texas

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I recently read with considerable dismay Joe Dalton's review of Peter Gent's book, Texas Celebrity Turkey Trot, in the March 23 Crimson. Although I have not read Gent's book and thus have no comment about Dalton's treatment of it, there are enough gratuitous salvos against my home state of Texas in the course of the review to merit this response.

The opening third of the review is devoted to a rather self-indulgent and inexplicable diatribe against Texas. I do not know the source of the author's resentment, nor the extent of his knowledge about the state, its people or its culture. But his comments inflict on readers a well-worn stereotype that bears little resemblance to the complex reality of Texas. If Gent's book really is "more a novel of Texas society" than something else, there is, of course, more to Texas than Texas society, or "po' boys at play in the fields (and beds) of the energy lords." And there is more to Texas than "seamy politicians," "oil and gas," "Dallas Cowboys," of "Thermopylae-like heroism." The problem is that little else flows out of Texas to the rest of the country through TV, novels, magazines, or newspapers like the Crimson.

I won't take the time to make the case for Texas, first, because the author surely knows there is more to Texas than the highlights of his review, and second, because to do so would dignify the review beyond reason. Dalton is surely correct when he implies his dissatisfaction with the increasing division of our country into self-interested fragments. That is just as surely the reason that this review's regional bigotry damns itself. I can only hope that he is not also provided access to a nuclear weapon at any time in the near future. Austin is simply too nice a place to be "nuked back to the Stone Age" by an off-balance Crimed. Parker C. Folse, III '76-7