The Bookshelf, The Parlor, The Young Texas Reader, and the Monthly

The Texas Bookshelf is different from the The Texas Parlor, http://texasparlor.blogspot.com/ . The Texas Parlor carries "general" bookish information and non-book information and even different Texana news and notes of use to the bibliographically challenged and other nosey folks intersted in historical, literary, and cultural observations. Will's Texana Monthly may carry material from either blog, but extends itself beyond those, especially for longer compilations or treatments. The Monthly, the Bookshelf and the Parlor are all companions. So, is the Young Texas Reader http://youngtexasreader.blogspot.com/ which specialized on books and such things for the youngest to the teenagers.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Pitching Tents - Gail Mount


Pitching Tents.


By Gail Mount. Huntsville: Texas Review Press, 2005. ISBN 1-881515-76-1, paper $16.95 5 ½ x 8 ½ . 176 pp. http://www.shsu.edu/~www_trp/, dist by TAMU http://www.tamu.edu/upress/
Winner of the 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize: Novel

Where is Aaron Spelling when you need him? This rollicking novel needs a sitcom venue. Gail Mount, a Fort Worth native, Rice graduate, UT teaching fellow, and experienced short story writer and playwright, tosses sedate novel-writing aside, and gives us Ezekiel and Vida, two seniors with a love of life and devil-may-care schemes. To the small town of Burro, Texas, Vida returns and immediately Ezekiel falls in love with her a second time. Mount’s fast-paced plot and the characters fast-paced plotting make the story fast reading, delightful reading. Ezekiel is a painterly artist who even derives an income there from; Vida is a burning individualist, now 80-years-old.


The town’s citizens have long categorized both as trouble makers. They start off caring for Mad Betty’s dead, naked body, he prepares an art show, she organizes a school for rebels, he deals with his mother, she deals with philosophy, and they touch each other gently. It is one rollicking scene after another. They wander apart and re-unite. Finally, after a year or so, they decide to really get wild. They marry and drive off into the sunset. If the concept of two creative oldsters making love and being in love with raucous language and civilly unacceptable behavior offends you, die young or sad. This couple does neither.