Story Craft: Reflections on Faith, Culture and Writing From the Author of Hank the Cowdog
By: John Erickson
Maverick Books (October 1, 2009)
168 pages

Story Craft is the literary memoir of John Erickson. When I came across this book initially, I could not put my finger on where I had heard of Erickson. Of course, then the extended title hit me like a rock, for I immediately remembered reading Hank the Cowdog as a child. (Years later, my sister-in-law knew Erickson from church.) In an odd way, I almost see Erickson as a cowboy version of C.S. Lewis. While Hank the Cowdog and The Chronicles of Narnia never explicitly declare theism and Christianity, they are always silently pointing by way of narrative and theme. I loved Erickson’s advice “Don’t write anything that would shame your mother.”

Two of my favorite quotes:

That is a common error made by people who have never spent any time in rural America and who often describe us as “provincial.” We’re not provincial. They are. We read their magazines, attend their movies, and listen to their news broadcasts. We know a lot about them. They know nothing about us.

When I’m asked how long I’ve been writing, I say that I began in 1967, the year Kris and I joined our lives together in marriage. Before Kris, I wrote when I had an idea or felt inspired. After Kris, I wrote every day—same time, same place, a pattern I still follow forty-two years later. This morning, I rose at five o’clock, joined my dog Tango at the front door, and walked 400 yards to my little writing office. It was black dark, so I had to use a flashlight. On reaching the office, I turned on the lights, started coffee brewing, and turned on my laptop computer. When the coffee was ready, I poured myself a cup, and started working on this project, while Tango chased moths out on the screened porch.

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Literary Life: A Second Memoir
By: Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster (May 10, 2011)
192 pages

Literary Life is a gem of a book. It is, of course, the second book in Larry McMurtry’s beautiful memoir trilogy. McMurtry eulogizes his life as a writer and novelist, graciously, allowing us to look into the literary and publishing world of yesterday. This was apparently back when attending graduate school in Creative Writing was half the battle in becoming a professional writer. And when publishers frequently took a chance on new writers. How great would that be? McMurtry seems to relish looking back on the life that writing gave him. I would too.

Two of my favorite quotes:

How I came to acquire literary taste at all remains a mystery to me. My parents were indifferent to books, and, indeed, to taste itself, although my father might admire a fine saddle. But taste of a broader sort would have fallen very low in their catalogue of values.

If we exempt boy’s books, hunting books, and the occasional Mickey Spillane paperback, my real reading life may be said to have begun when I entered the Rice Institute (as it was then called) in the fall of 1954. I strolled in wonder through the stacks of Fondren Library, which then held about 600,000 books. I took freshman English under Professor Will Dowden, who had us read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which, at a stroke, blotted out all the poetry I had read in high school, except maybe Keats. I learned about Eliot, and the other modern poets soon followed.

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