Billy
Lee Brammer
Papers,
1946 -1993
Collection 007
1.5 linear feet
3 boxes
Note: In addition to this collection, the Trudi and Joe Watson Collection of Billy Lee Brammer material is available.
Also, additional Billy Lee Brammer archives may have been received since this on-line inventory was compiled. Contact the archivist for the latest information on our holdings.
Click here for complete inventory
Acquisition:
Donations by William Broyles, Nadine Eckhardt, Sidney Brammer, Bill Wittliff,
Bud Shrake, and Paul Cullum. Some
items were purchased. [Accession # 89-013, 89-115, 90-054, 92-127, 93-052] Note:
Contact the archivist for information about additional materials from this
writer that have not yet been fully processed.
Access: Open for Research.
Processed by: Gwynedd Cannan, May 1993 [Inventory
Revised December, 2004]
Biographical Note
Billy
Lee Brammer was born April 21, 1929, in Dallas, Texas. He graduated from North Texas
State College in 1952 with a degree in journalism. Brammer was a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller
Times and the Austin
Statesman, where he won
a press award for excellence in writing in 1952. In 1954, he won the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors
Contest for a feature sports story written for the same paper (newly titled the
Austin American-Statesman). As the Statesman reported in its January 10, 1954 issue,
the prize-winning story was written in Brammer's "usual unusual
style."
In
1955, Brammer became an associate editor of the Texas Observer, a magazine of liberal dissent at a time
when in Texas "the impulse for dissent scarcely existed" (Texas
Observer, August 25,
1961). There he attracted the
attention of Texas Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, who invited him to join his
staff. While employed by Johnson
in Washington, D.C., Brammer began working on his first and only published
novel, The Gay Place. The book was published by Houghton
Mifflin in 1961 to wide critical acclaim.
The
Gay Place (reissued by Texas Monthly Press in
1978 and by Vintage Press in 1984) is where Brammer's literary reputation
rests. The book
consists of three novellas, all revolving around politics, all dominated by the
larger than life, omniscient, manipulative Governor Arthur Fenstemaker. Brammer told friends Fenstemaker was a
composite, but the character is largely reminiscent of Lyndon Baines
Johnson. Willie Morris calls The
Gay Place a
"symphony of politics and sex and ambition and the immense Texas landscape
[that] remains the great authentic modern novel we have yet of the
state" (Texas Observer, Mar 3, 1978).
In
1959, after the still-unfinished The Gay Place had been bought by Houghton Mifflin,
Brammer left Johnson's staff to work for the economist Eliot Janeway. Time hired him in 1960 to cover civil rights issues
from the magazine's Atlanta office.
Brammer quit the Time
job in 1961 and thereafter never held sustained employment. He began a sequel to The Gay Place titled Fustian Days, but it was never completed. Though he did write several articles,
Brammer never followed up the promise of his first book. Several reasons have been put forth for
his writing block: disappointment at being barred from access to Johnson, who
was displeased with The Gay Place;
the overwhelming success of his first novel; and drug abuse. Brammer at one point gave his own
explanation in a letter dated August 23, 1968 to Larry L. King - the problem
was "getting hanged-up with attempts at over-perfection, compounded by
uptight-making realization that [one] is really on [one's] own and has to
be-god-effing mother produce as fulltime free-lance typewriter
fella." (King Papers, SWWC)
Various
friends tried to help Brammer produce again. Fellow Texan and writer Larry L. King lobbied magazine
editors into giving Brammer assignments.
Texas columnist Jay Milner hired him as a journalism professor at
Southern Methodist University in 1969 and then got him a position as a
writer-in-residence at Bowling Green.
William Broyles signed him on as a contributing editor for Texas
Monthly. In 1976, Brammer's former wife, Nadine
Eckhardt, asked him to help her write a memoir. Brammer took these offers in earnest, but after an initial
spurt of activity he always drifted off.
He held numerous other jobs for short periods of time, among them rock
and roll promoter, dishwasher, and cook.
Those
who knew Brammer remember him fondly and with admiration. Filmmaker Robert Benton testified,
"Bill was one of the most charming, charismatic people I've ever met in my
life. And he could talk about
anything É "(Austin Chronicle,
March 26, 1993). Jay Milner, in
his syndicated newspaper column, portrayed Brammer as having been a
"soft-spoken, gently lecherous, incredibly widely read, avid rock
aficionado, ultimately rather seedy bon vivant, neurotic little man ("Remembering Billy Lee Brammer, a
man of the Sixties" 1993).
Willie Morris reminisced that he was "kind, unselfish, and giving
of the things he knew - a sweet, gentle man, a teller of stories who never knew
how to attitudinize" (Texas Observer, Mar 3, 1978). Brammer, tongue-in-cheek, did his own summing up in
1976: "Bestowed from birth
with a lucy-in-the sky twinkle and irreverence for everything, [I] bounced
around the sub-culture after leaving LBJ, writing unfinished masterpieces by
the score, ingesting hogsheads of drugs and acquiring a local image as the best
approximation of guru and human wonder around" (Brammer Papers, SWWC).
Brammer
married Nadine Ellen Cannon (Nadine Eckhardt) on April 22, 1950 while both were
students at North Texas State College.
They had three children, Sidney Gail, Shelby Ellen, and William
Raoul. The two were divorced in
1961. In 1963, Brammer married
Dorothy Brown; they were divorced in 1969. Brammer died of a drug overdose on February 11, 1978.
Scope and Contents Note
The
archive contains book manuscripts, newspaper clippings, tear sheets,
correspondence, photographs, and Brammer's high school baseball uniform
pants. Included in the collection
are the typed manuscripts of The Gay Place, and the unfinished sequel to that work, Fustian
Days; newspaper and magazine articles written by
Brammer; reviews for The Gay Place;
and letters which describe Brammer's tenure as a Johnson staff member, his
marriage to Nadine, and his writing.
The material is divided into three series: 1) Writings, 2) Critical/Biographical Papers, and 3) the
Nadine Eckhardt Papers. Within
each series, the material is arranged chronologically, except for Eckhardt's
file on The Gay Place, which
retains the original filing system (each item is marked sequentially).
Series Description
Series I:
Writings, 1959 - 1963
Box 1
This
series contains Brammer's typed manuscripts of The Gay Place and the unfinished novel, Fustian
Days. Both manuscripts are a gift from
William Broyles, the first editor of Texas Monthly, who admired Brammer, hired him to write
for the magazine, and encouraged him to write consistently again. The Gay Place manuscript is followed by the play
adaptation, Come and Join the Dance,
by Brammer's daughters, Sidney and Shelby. Included are Brammer's two Texas Observer articles:
a tear sheet about the Observer editor,
Ronnie Dugger, from the August 25, 1961, issue; and the January 10, 1963
edition, which contains Brammer's Glooey, a satire of the Kennedy White House based on J. D.
Salinger's Frannie and Zooey. There is also a file of Brammer's
jottings - a 1965 interview with a writer called Norman Maelstrom set in El End
Zone; a memo of advice on running El End Zone; notes on the media, possibly
written for the SMU journalism class; and a page titled "The Angst
Book." (Ronnie Dugger in a
reminiscence on Brammer states, "he made a bundle of journal type notes he
called 'the Angst Books" [Washington
Post, June 18, 1978].) These pieces were purchased from Larry
McMurtry's bookstore, Booked Up, in 1988.
Series II: Critical / Biographical Papers, 1950 - 1993.
Box 2
This
series contains clippings and articles about Brammer, reviews of his work, and
the eulogy presented at his funeral.
Also included are letters to Brammer - many from his publisher
Houghton-Mifflin about The Gay Place, some from his agent, a few personal letters, and a dust
jacket of The Gay Place. There are photos of Brammer with his
family and friends, which were enlarged and duplicated by Bill Wittliff. The material is filed in chronological
order.
Series III:
Nadine Eckhardt Papers, 1951 - 1985
Boxes 2 - 3
Nadine
Eckhardt (nee Nadine Ellen Cannon) was the first wife of Billy Lee Brammer and
the mother of his three children.
The two met as students at North Texas State College and married on
April 22, 1950. Nadine Brammer
worked for a time on the Lyndon Baines Johnson staff along with her husband,
but later returned with her children to live in Austin while Brammer remained
in Washington. In 1961, the
Brammers were divorced and in 1962, Nadine married Texas Congressman Bob
Eckhardt. Her papers contain Brammer's
school records, his Air Force application, correspondence, and a file on The
Gay Place. The bulk of the correspondence comes
from those times during the Brammers' marriage when they lived separately -
while Nadine lived in her parents' home in McAllen during her first pregnancy,
and while she lived with the children in Austin when Brammer worked as a
Johnson staff member in Washington.
Their letters discuss their marriage, their children, work, and
Brammer's writing. Brammer writes
about his Washington staff job, Johnson, and other staff aides. There are also letters to and from
Brammer's McAllen in-laws, the Cannons.
Photographs and clippings are interspersed throughout the
correspondence. The final folders
contain The Gay Place file,
which contains a wide range of information related to the book and the
author. In the divorce settlement,
Nadine received one-half interest in The Gay Place; and the collection of these materials is
related to that interest. It
consists of reviews, sales records, examples of Brammer's newspaper writing,
clippings about Brammer, Brammer memos to Johnson, etc. In 1976, Nadine Eckhardt considered
writing an autobiography and she asked Brammer to collaborate with her, hoping
to spark Brammer back into writing.
This project produced a chronology and a few notes from Brammer. There is also a chronology of Johnson's
activities from 1955 to 1956, which Nadine Eckhardt was given by government
oral historian Michael L. Gillette to help her remember events for an
interview. The material is in
chronological order except for The
Gay Place file, which
is in the original filing order.
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