BOOKPATHS

The Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center, 508 Center Street, Kyle, Texas

The white, wood, late 19th century home where celebrated author Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) lived from 1892-1901 now serves as the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center.  Managed by Texas State University–San Marcos, the Center, a National Literary Landmark, is used for a writer-in-residence program, The Katherine Anne Porter Young Writers Program, literary and other special events, and is open to the public and school groups by appointment. Visit the Katherine Ann Porter Literary Center website for additional information.

Related Website

Katherine Anne Porter Library, University of Maryland

Houston, Texas, U.S.

Poet Mark Doty explains why Houston is “[his] kind of town” in the October issue of Smithsonian.

“It doesn't take long in Houston to realize that the beauty of the place is in the sky. The swamplands and fields that became the fourth-largest city in the country are almost entirely flat, and the availability of cheap land and an exuberant appetite for sprawl have kept most of the town low-slung and horizontal. So the sky seems vast, and from any parking lot you can watch big white towers of cloud sail up from the Gulf of Mexico 50 miles to the south as if they were navigating the ship channel beneath them. The expanse of sky is so wide, there's often more than one thing going on. Rain may darken the western rim while a fierce sun illuminates cloud towers in the center and a brilliant blue fills the east. How can you forecast the weather when it's doing three things at once?” – from “Southern Comfort,” by Mark Doty, Smithsonian

O. Henry Museum, Austin, Texas, U.S.

The O. Henry Museum celebrates the life and work of William Sidney Porter aka O. Henry.  Famous for his short stories, including the frequently anthologized Gift of the Magi, O. Henry spent two of the thirteen years he lived in Austin residing in the home at 409 East Fifth Street that now houses the museum.  Visitors will find the Queen Anne-style cottage much as it was during O. Henry’s stay, including his writing desk and other furniture belonging to the family.  Those who want to see more of O. Henry’s Austin can pick up a brochure describing four other sites with ties to the author.  The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5:00 p.m.  For additional information, visit the O. Henry Museum website.

Related Website

O. Henry in Austin

San Marcos, Texas, USA

Molly Ivins’ personal library, a collection of more than 3,560 books, “has been opened to the public at Texas State University in San Marcos.”

“The library showcases a portion of books Ivins read that influenced her throughout her journalism career. Also showcased were some of Ivins’ personal notations and commentary, including inscriptions by authors and friends who admired the outspoken, tough-on-politicians-yet-satirical writer.” – “Molly Invins’ Library Finds a Home on Texas State’s Shelves,” by Megan Celli

Wharton, Texas, U.S.

Wharton is located on the Colorado River, 30 miles southwest of Sugar Land and 55 miles from downtown Houston. Located 45 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, the elevation is 101 feet. – Wharton Chamber of Commerce

Farewell: a Memoir of a Texas Childhood, by Horton Foote (New York: Scribner, 1999 - out of print, but available)

Born on March 14, 1916, playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote remembers his childhood in tiny Wharton, Texas, the inspiration for much of his work. “Having kept no diary or journal,” Foote relies on memory to bring to life family, neighbors, friends, town, region, and the time in which he grew up.

The Kincheloe plantation had been divided and subdivided many times before my grandfather bought his acreage in 1896, which included a Victorian cottage of six rooms. Later, in the early twenties, the house was remodeled and enlarged by my grandparents into the handsome one that I remember.

The house was set well back from Richmond Road, which was graveled then; four live oak trees lined the road, on one side of the yard were three more live oaks and directly in front of the house to the right of the porch steps was the cypress tree. On the opposite side of the yard was a huge sycamore tree and, beyond that, close to the side of the house were three fig trees. In the backyard were a pecan, a persimmon and a pomegranite tree.

The house was built high off the ground, so high, in fact, that I could and did play underneath it as a child, walking about very comfortably until I was ten or so. The porch or gallery was twelve feet wide, and here was a swing and comfortable wicker rocker chairs (five as I remember). A great deal of time, especially at night or early morning, was spent on the porch by the family. – from Farewell: a Memoir of a Texas Childhood, by Horton Foote

Related Website

The Horton Foote Society

Brazos River, Texas, USA

Named Brazos de Dios, Arms of God, by the Spanish, the Brazos River is the longest river in Texas. It rises in eastern New Mexico and western Texas and empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Freeport, having traveled 1,280 miles.

Goodbye to a River: a Narrative, by John Graves (New York: Vintage, 2002; first published in 1960)

Goodbye to a River is John Graves account of his 1957 farewell canoe trip on “the upper-middle part” of the Brazos River in Texas. As he paddles the river he’s known since childhood, Graves describes past and present, people and place, before proposed dams will change lives and environment forever.

The Brazos belonged to me that afternoon, all of it. It really did. The autumn-blue sky (fair skies in Texas at other times of the year tend to be white, bleached), the yellow-white air, the cedars and oaks green and gold and red, the rocks the size of buildings, the sun on my back, the steady, comfortable stroke of the paddling, mohair goats kowf!-ing at me from the shore when they caught my scent… Belonged to me and the whistling birds and the unseen animals (deer and coon tracks overlaid each other in the shore’s silt) and to the big suckers that leaped and splashed… People’s sounds and a consciousness of them touched me from time to time – an ax’s chock up in the cedar, a cow call, a tractor sputtering in the flatland of a bend, a jet’s scar across the high blue and its blowtorch blare and the crack of its sudden liberation from its own sound – but it was fall, and they weren’t on the river. It was mine.” – from Goodbye to a River: a Narrative, by John Graves

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Friends of the Brazos River

Brazos River Authority

Wharton, Texas; etc.

Alex Witchel spends time with the “still commercially viable” 91-year old playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote.

“’ I realized that the New Hampshire world, because I was near a small town, was as complex as Wharton in its own way,’ Foote said. ‘But I never could write about it. I don’t know why, and I used to be ashamed of that, but I’m just not in control of it. My home’s in Wharton. I just have to say that because it won’t let me go. I will never write about Pacific Palisades. Well, I shouldn’t say that, because I didn’t think I would ever write about a warehouse in Durham.’” -- from "His Kind of Town", by Alex Witchel, The New York Times

Houston, Texas

The American Booksellers Association visits Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas.

“Brazos Bookstore has long been considered a hub of Houston's literary community. This past spring, when the store's future was in doubt, 25 members of that community joined together to keep it alive.” – from ABA Website

Brazos Bookstore Website

Austin, Texas

Lawrence Biemiller visits “Technologies of Writing,” a new exhibition “document[ing] the evolution of writing” at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"’Writing is memory, reproducible and revisable,’ Mr. Heinzelman had said while he was showing me around. ‘It's a very large part of what makes us human.’" – from “Memory, Reproducible and Revisable,” by Lawrence Biemiller, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Archer, Texas

Larry McMurty has announced that his bookstore, Booked Up, will remain open after all. They will be open from 10-5 Monday-Saturday “and welcome all readers, dealers, browers.” See the “important announcement” on the Booked Up website.