Thursday, March 24, 2005 6:00 pm Reception Admission is FREE. Moderated by Robert Draper, the panel features Splendor in the Short Grass co-editors, Jan Reid and W. K. "Kip" Stratton, and Sherry Kafka Wagner, a longtime friend of Lewis. Grover's widow, Rae Lewis, will be honored as a special guest of the Collection. GROVER LEWIS Born November 8, 1934, Grover Virgil Lewis, Jr. survived a scarred San Antonio childhood and an abysmal adolescence in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff to become one of the New Journalism's defining voices. His wry, acutely observed, fluently written essays for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice set a standard for other writers of the late sixties and seventies, including Hunter S. Thompson, Joe Eszterhas, Timothy Ferris, Chet Flippo, and Tim Cahill, who said of Lewis, "He was the best of us." Pioneering the "on location" reportage that has become a fixture of features about moviemaking and live music, Lewis cut through the celebrity hype and captured the real spirit of the counterculture, including its artificiality and surprising banality. Even today, his articles on Woody Guthrie, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, directors Sam Peckinpah and John Huston, and the filming of The Last Picture Show and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest remain some of the finest writing ever done on popular culture. SPLENDOR IN THE SHORT GRASS: THE GROVER LEWIS READER To introduce Grover Lewis to a new generation of readers and collect his best work under one cover, Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover Lewis Reader anthologizes articles Lewis wrote for Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Playboy, Texas Monthly, and New West, as well as excerpts from his unfinished novel, The Code of the West, poems from the volume I'll Be There in the Morning If I Live, and the memoir he had just begun when diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 1995, Goodbye If You Call That Gone. Co-editors Jan Reid and W. K. Stratton have selected and arranged the material around themes that preoccupied Lewis throughout his life-movies, music, and loss. The editors' biographical introduction, the foreword by Dave Hickey, and a remembrance by Robert Draper discuss how Lewis' early struggles to escape his working-class, anti-intellectual Texas roots for the world of ideas in books and movies made him a natural proponent of the counterculture that he chronicled so brilliantly. They also pay tribute to Lewis's groundbreaking talent as a stylist, whose unique voice deserves to be better known by today's readers. View the table of contents and read Stratton and Reid's biographical sketch at the UT Press website: http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exlewspl.html Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover Lewis Reader
will be for sale the night of the panel. THE PANEL DISCUSSION The discussion will begin at 7:00 pm, after an hors d'oeuvre reception with the panelists and Rae Lewis, donor of the Grover Lewis Archives. A book signing of The Grover Lewis Reader will follow the panel. ROBERT DRAPER, panel moderator, is currently a correspondent with GQ, a former writer at Texas Monthly and author of the novel Hadrian's Walls. Draper met Lewis while researching the 370-page chronicle, Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History. JAN REID, like Grover Lewis, is a magazine writer and has contributed to Texas Monthly, GQ, Esquire, New York Times magazine, Men's Journal, and Slate. Reid is also an author and editor; among his many books are The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, The Bullet Meant for Me, and, most recently, Rio Grande, which will also be celebrated with a Southwestern Writers Collection panel discussion, on April 7. A writer-at-large for Texas Monthly, Reid lives in Austin and is a major donor to Texas State's Southwestern Writers Collection. W. K. "KIP" STRATTON has written for Sports Illustrated, GQ, Outside, Southern magazine, Americana, and D: The Magazine of Dallas. His previous book is Backyard Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud between Texas and Texas A&M. Harcourt will publish his next book, Chasing the Rodeo, in 2005. He lives near Austin, Texas. SHERRY KAFKA WAGNER, an urban design, historic preservation, and creative exhibition consultant with offices in San Antonio and Austin, is also a writer and a longtime friend of Lewis. Special guest, RAE LEWIS, Grover's wife of 22 years, lives and makes art in Santa Monica, California. Rae began donating her late husband's archives to the Writers Collection in August 2002; her most recent gift was in January 2005. THE GROVER LEWIS ARCHIVES The Grover Lewis Archives housed in the Southwestern Writers Collection provide background and context for the writings and life of this cutting-edge journalist. Research notes, manuscripts, clippings, photographs, and correspondence piece together a fuller picture of the events and people that Lewis wrote about-a veritable "behind the scenes" look at one of the most influential journalists of his time. Among other things, the Lewis papers include research material, character bios, and early drafts of his unpublished novel, The Code of the West, his typed screen adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and correspondence with the likes of Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Joan Didion Dunne, Allen Ginsberg, Anthony Perkins, Tom Robbins, Oliver Stone, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. The Lewis Papers are currently unprocessed, but access to them can be secured on a case-by-case basis. Please contact Katie Salzmann, the Southwestern Writers Collection archivist at 512-245-2313 or salzmann@txstate.edu. A display from Rae Lewis' gift of the Grover Lewis Archives will be on view at the Southwestern Writers Collection the evening of the panel. INSTRUCTING · ILLUMINATING · INSPIRING THE SOUTHWESTERN WRITERS COLLECTION, part of the Alkek Library Department of Special Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos, was founded in 1986 and has since become a distinguished and steadily growing archive charged with preserving, exhibiting, and providing access to the papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, songwriters and musicians of the Southwest. Its resources attest to the tremendous diversity of creative expression among southwestern artists and contribute to an inspiring research environment within which students and others may discover how the unique conditions and character of the region have shaped its people and their cultural arts. Connie Todd, Curator. Steve Davis, Assistant Curator. 512-245-2313 www.swwc.txstate.edu TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY-SAN MARCOS, established 1899, is a member of the Texas State University System. |
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