by STEVE PFARRER
GOD SAVE TEXAS: A JOURNEY INTO
THE SOUL OF THE LONE STAR STATE
By Lawrence Wright
Knopf
lawrencewright.com
Conservative stalwart, liberal bane, land of majestic open skies, state with almost 25 percent of its children living in poverty: Texas is a place full of contradictions and complications, all of them magnified by the Lone Star State’s huge size and its influence on the rest of the country.
Texas is also the longtime home of veteran journalist Lawrence Wright, who writes about his love-hate relationship with Texas in his newest book, “God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State.”
I found this engaging mix of reportage, memoir and history in the new book section of Forbes Library a few weeks ago and zipped right through it. Though this column typically is reserved for books by local writers and publishers, “God Save Texas” is such a good read that I wanted to note it here. The book should also be of interest to the area’s many liberals: Wright is a liberal himself who still finds much to like about his state, red as it may be.
“I’ve considered moving to New York, where most of my colleagues live, or Washington, which is Lotus Land for political journalists,” he writes. But, Wright adds, “I’ve never felt at home in either spot.”
Wright is the author of nine previous books, including the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning “The Looming Tower,” a study of Al Qaeda and the run-up to 9/11; he’s also written a number of plays and film scripts. In addition, he’s a longtime writer for The New Yorker, where some parts of “God Save Texas” have appeared in a somewhat different form, and his writing sparkles with the kind of polished but lean, accessible prose the magazine is noted for.
In fact, the book begins on an informal note, with Wright (born in 1947) taking a bicycle trip with his novelist friend Stephen Harrigan to old Spanish missions along the San Antonio River; as they watch a bride and groom come out of one, the chapter segues into a discussion about Spanish conquistadors and explorers, who first came to the region in the 1500s.
“God Save Texas” is full of these kind of excursions, with Wright as a knowledgeable, amiable raconteur, switching easily between topics that he addresses with broad strokes: Sam Houston and Texas’ violent beginning as a republic; the introduction of slavery into the state; the oil boom of the early 1900s; John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963 and Lyndon Johnson’s presidency; Texas music legends like Roy Orbison; and the state’s shift from blue to red over the past 40-odd years.
Texas, Wright says, has been built partly on myths and iconic images — the siege of the Alamo, cowboys, daring entrepreneurs — that have forged some of his own identity, even as he’s recoiled from the state’s worst impulses and history, including racism and relentless economic boosterism: “Neither Steve nor I could have lasted in Texas if it were the same place we grew up in, but we’re so powerfully imprinted by the culture it’s impossible to shake off.”
Wright was born in Oklahoma but grew up primarily in Texas, including in Abilene and Dallas, and since 1980 he’s made his home in Austin, the state’s capital, which he says is regularly attacked by the conservative Republicans who dominate Texas. In their view, Austin is a sick bastion of liberalism, “a spore of the California fungus that is destroying America.”
But he says much of urban Texas, particularly Houston, is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, which conceivably could move the state back to the blue column if not for heavily gerrymandered voting districts designed to ensure Republican control. And given Texas’ dramatic population growth in the past several decades, he notes, “The wave of conservatism that has rolled through so many statehouses and the three branches of the federal government makes the entire country look a lot like Texas.”
Despite his liberal leanings, Wright admits to harboring “a fondness” for George W. Bush and other members of the Bush family “that has nothing to do with their politics” (he knows them personally). He recalls George W. as a centrist Republican governor who made efforts to work with Democrats, or at least observe a “cordial detente” with them. By contrast, he notes, the current Texas governor, Greg Abbott, once described his stint as the state’s attorney general like this: “I go into the office in the morning, I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home.”
In one of the book’s most lively chapters, Wright follows members of the state Legislature as they debate several contentious issues, including a “bathroom bill” (like the one initially enacted in North Carolina in 2016) that would force transgender people to use restrooms corresponding with the sex on their birth certificates. When that bill and other social measures like outlawing abortion are defeated in the House, a conservative Texas “kingmaker” writes on his group’s website of his wish that political opponents “receive just retribution from God for their evil actions … May they be consumed, collapse, rot and be blown away as dust.”
Countering that kind of strife are portraits of Texas writers, artists and others who have evoked the Lone Star State in their work; Wright also fills in some details of his life, and his writing here can be lyrical. During a camping trip at Big Bend National Park with his wife, he comes out of their tent during the night to answer the call of nature and looks up at a blaze of stars.
“In every generation until mine,” he writes, “most of humanity lived with the night sky. As people began moving into cities and using more illumination, the sky gradually disappeared. There must be a corresponding loss of wonder without the stars to remind us where we stand in creation.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.