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.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove - Bill Wittliff



A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove.

By Bill Wittliff, foreword by Larry McMurtry, and introduction by Stephen Harrigan.


Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. 188 pages, large, hardback book, 112 large, sumptuous brown-tone photographs. ISBN 978-0-292-71311-6 $45.00 http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/

How does one photograph a cultural benchmark? Get an artist who understands it. Larry McMurtry’s 1985 best-selling novel took a Pulitzer Prize, etc., and Wittliff’s screenplay, miniseries version took 7 Emmy’s, 2 Golden Globes, etc. Here Wittliff’s long sharpened photographic sensibilities cover the movie’s making – from Robert Duval and Tommy Lee Jones onto the land itself. An intelligent and graceful spaciousness has been Wittliff’s hallmark of artistry from his early days of design at the SMU Press, into his Encino Press, and onto the screen.
La Vida Brinca and Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy are earlier photographic works of Wittliff. You might as well put them on the coffee table with this Dove. You’ll want to keep them viewed but unsoiled.