We Come to Praise
The two people featured in “Postscripts” this week are meant to be celebrated, not mourned, as the gravestone motif above might lead you to believe. On Saturday, May 9, 7pm at the Four Seasons, many people, in fact, will be celebrating the good cause of raising money for the mounting medical bills of Austin writer and longtime Texas Monthly contributing editor Jan Reid. Reid, the author of The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, is presently confined to a wheelchair after being shot in Mexico City while riding a cab with several other TM editors. Doctors are optimistic that within several months Reid will be walking again, but getting Reid to that point requires no small amount of money. So, Larry L. King and John Graves are coming to town to help raise funds by reading from their own works. Darrel Royal and Kinky Friedman will read from pieces Reid wrote about them, Ann Richards will read from Redneck Rock, and Molly Ivins will read from her own works. A silent auction will be held; items to be auctioned include original prints from photographers Keith Carter and James Evans, dinner for two at Jeffrey’s, Southwest Airlines tickets, a weekend at the Guadalupe River Resort, and the three bottles of tequila Dick Reavis recently brought back from Mexico City. The price is hefty; the cause is good: It’s $100 per person and tickets can be bought at the door, but reservations need to be made beforehand at 472-2149. Dress is casual…
While visiting book designer Barbara Whitehead‘s office in downtown Austin, I watched her pull out a piece of artwork and say, “I designed this for Bud,” and then hesitate and recall it was actually for some other author’s book. Many of Whitehead’s utterances are like that, not because she’s forgetful but because over an almost 30-year period, she’s come to know quite a few authors. “I tend to know the writers,” she says about the ones whose books feature her artwork (she’s the creator of the cover and motif above, the motif from the Book Club of Texas’ edition of her friend Carolyn Osborn’s short story “The Grands.”) For Whitehead, reading the book before designing it is not as crucial a process as bouncing ideas off of others. She used to do that with her husband Fred, who also was a book designer until his death in 1992. Now his brother, artist Glenn Whitehead, is the sounding board. Barnes & Noble Guadalupe will hold a Book Design Panel on Thursday, May 7, 7pm, with Whitehead, TM art director D.J. Stout, David Timmons, a book designer and recent recipient of the Fred Whitehead award for best design for a trade book from the Texas Institute of Letters, and graphic artist/book designer Dwain Kelley. If you miss that event, selected artworks from Whitehead’s career will hang on the second floor of the Guadalupe store until May 25.
This article appears in May 8 • 1998 and May 8 • 1998 (Cover).