Texas Books in Review

Readers Respond...

The editors would like to hear from our readers: we welcome responses to reviews published in Texas Books in Review. In our ongoing efforts to encourage dialogue about Texas books, we also welcome responses to those messages posted here. Responses can be emailed to assistant editor Twister Marquiss at twister@txstate.edu (be sure to include name, original review information, and affiliation if applicable).

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[Editors' Note: Susan Petty's email triggered our efforts to include responses on this website and is therefore the first to be featured here.]

July 30, 2009
Susan R. Petty, Editor, TCU Press
Responding to "Writing Big D" by Steven L. Davis, Spring 2009 (29.1): 12
A review of Literary Dallas edited by Frances Brannen Vick

Thank you so much for sending this review. We appreciate it.

I do have a question, however. Is there a forum for someone to respond to a review that appears in TBR? Everyone bemoans omissions in these literary cities books, but apparently most reviewers don't realize that we don't pay fees for including material. If a publisher/author/agent is adamant about charging a fee, we just can't include the piece. There are also some cases where the publisher/author/agent just doesn't grant permission for pieces to be anthologized, fee or no. We've always been hesitant about saying that, as it makes the declining entity sound greedy or snobby, and we realize that to decline to grant permission is a decision made between an author and her agent/publisher, which isn't ours to question or decry.

As an example: We tried to get a piece by two major writers in Literary Austin, but both those authors declined to be included. What can we do?

Thanks. I appreciate the small platform.

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October 22, 2009
Sterling Rogers, San Marcos, Texas
Responding to "The Passing Southwest" by Mark Busby and Dick Heaberlin, Summer 2009 (29.2): 1

On Elmer Kelton and My Own Prejudice

Elmer Kelton is dead and I feel as if I have lost a friend. Not that he would have recognized me if we had met in recent years, but we did meet when we were both considerably younger. As a student at the University of Texas he was living at the Pecan Grove Trailer Park in Austin when I, as a career military man, was stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base. We were neighbors. We shared bathroom facilities in the communal bathhouse. Our wives socialized during the day when we men were away.

My wife remembers him quite clearly. I don’t. Probably that is because my own prejudices got in the way of any real friendship ever developing. You see, I was not many months out of a German prisoner of war camp and not inclined to look favorably on anything German. Just the hint of an accent was enough to end most conversations, as far as I was concerned. Kelton was married to an Austrian woman. That fact had a decidedly chilling effect on any possibility of more than a speaking acquaintance. I may, in fact, have been brusque to the point of rudeness in some of our contacts.

That we both came from the same area of west Texas never seems to have been a factor. That we were near the same age—he was a few months younger—and had fairly similar family backgrounds should have made us a natural social fit. But I don’t remember him from those months. That my wife spent much more time around the trailer park than I did also weighs into our ability to remember. She remained there when I was sent back to Europe in support of the Berlin airlift and she continued on friendly terms with Kelton’s wife.

Over the years, however, I was kept abreast of his career advancements by occasional news items quoting his stories in the San Angelo Standard Times. Then, as he began to be recognized as a story teller, I saw reviews and commentary on his books. I read some of his work and admired his style. But I made no attempt to renew that brief and totally unsatisfactory acquaintance of years ago.

Now that he is dead I feel the loss. I regret that those early prejudices kept me from knowing him better.

Sterling Rogers, retired Air Force officer and sometimes-reviewer of books.

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