quote:
Good list. Some of those would cost you street cred on the Politics board, though.
I wanted to hit this topic a bit. I think that Potcake's comment was in reference to The Gay Place, a novel about Texas politics in the 1950s.
In the same way that Les Miserable is a bloatedly self-indulgent love affair with Paris that thinly borrows from the life of Vidoq, the Gay Place is a self-indulgent love affair with Austin that borrows heavily from the life of Beauford Jester, including the cause of Gov. Fenstemaker's death.
So, the same advice applies to both books. If you really like the town portrayed, you'll tolerate the self-indulgence of an exquisite old portrait.
Besides, Fenstemaker is a hoot, even though the young liberals around him are all ignoble moral defectives. I am unaware of any better novel on the subject.
As an experiment one time, I sat and read my copy of The Gay Place during a GOP convention. I got the strangest looks from the Christians at the convention. Most of 'em didn't know a damned thing about Texas politics before 1980, and they all assumed I was a log cabinite.
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