Texas Book Festival

Photos by John Anderson

Photo By John Anderson

From a fairly improbable beginning, this year's Texas Book Festival ended on decidedly resolute footing. The opening session honored the work of John Graves, an author whose piercing clarity in Goodbye to a River, his account of traveling down the Brazos River, doesn't always accompany him when he gets behind a podium -- and that's not necessarily because he just turned 80. While he was being interviewed by Rick Bass (Where the Sea Used to Be) in the House Chamber, Graves repeatedly relied on terse, nearly cryptic answers. An audience member asked him what he thought about extending the writing process into environmental activism, and what he had to say was, "I say go ahead and try." The interview -- explaining himself -- is just not a format that Graves, who is the epitome of plainspoken, is well-suited for. It was a poignant, wonderful spectacle, watching an author who still seems puzzled by the idea that he would have more to say than what he's already said in his books. By Sunday afternoon, during the "The Last Word" panel, essayist and novelist Stanley Crouch sat in the same epic place and declared that, because of the election debacle, "the air is going to be thick with clouds of bitchery very soon." What follows are our accounts of what happened in between Graves' pleasing reticence and Crouch's confidence. Chronicles at the CapitolJohn GravesStanley CrouchNicholas LemannJohn Phillip SantosCarol DawsonLiz CarpenterLiz SmithLinda EllerbeeKaren StolzTexas Book FestivalFifth Annual Texas Book FestivalWhat happened -- and didn't happen -- at the Fifth Annual Texas Book Festival.

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