State and church. State and city. State and literature — of all entities either conjoined or opposed to the “state,” literature rarely merits mention. Our cultural image bank readily stores events like totalitarian burning of books and suppression of dissident voices, but few images of the state’s involvement with literature seem nurturing; fewer seem as benign as our own Texas Book Festival. Now in its second year, the Texas Book Festival will again firmly plant itself on Capitol soil November 1-2, this year to the south of the Capitol. Festival organizers Cyndi Hughes (program director), Mary Margaret Farabee (festival chairman), and Laura Bush (honorary chairman), seem keenly aware of the unique union of state and muse the festival presents.
To make the point of holding the festival on the Capitol grounds is really a boldly strident and apt one, signifying at the least that much-vaunted Texan pride in anything that evokes the state character, like the capitol. It’s as if the festival organizers are announcing that Texans are, in fact, interested in books to a world that tends to think of Texans as being interested primarily in boots, cattle, money, or some other bull. One of Bush’s promotional statements about the festival underscores the organizers’ desire to overturn this myopic perception: “Texans understand and appreciate the value of books to our lives, and we know how important it is to preserve and protect those institutions that make books available to everyone — our public libraries.” Their message has worked thus far: Last year’s festival garnered an estimated 10,000 people with crowd expectations set this year at 15,000 to 20,000.
Although the two-day festival is free for all visitors, it is a nonprofit entity that last year raised $127,000 for 40 Texas public libraries, Austin Public Library and Westbank Public Library among them. The money comes from several sources. After some 105 authors this year read or participate in panel discussions of their works, they proceed to the signing tent, where all proceeds from book sales will benefit the festival’s fund to donate to libraries. After signing their works in this main tent, authors are free to amble among the other tents at the festival, which will contain 80 booths for organizations from Barnes & Noble to the Orton Dyslexia Society (though booksellers are not allowed to set up specific times for authors to sign books or meet with fans in their booths.) The festival also makes money from the various booths’ profits, 10 percent of which go toward the festival’s donation fund. Lastly, the First Edition Literary Gala featuring readings from Jim Lehrer, Larry L. King, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Carlos Fuentes raises money through ticket sales to the event. Countless volunteer hours save the organization money.
In addition to fundraising, festival organizers must decide which of the many eligible authors will actually be invited to attend. Several considerations come into play: An author must have published between January 1996 and November 1997 in either hardback, paperback, or reprint; must either once have lived in Texas or live in Texas presently; or an author’s “most recent book must have a Texas connection.” Whereas defining a “Texas connection” for the festival’s Writers’ Selection Committee was essentially a transparent task, the job of whittling the approximately 300 authors wanting to appear at the festival down to around 100 was not. The festival currently finds itself in the both desirable and unenviable position of becoming increasingly well-known to literary publicists and publishers nationwide.
On one hand, the festival wants to make its presence highly visible in the national book festival scene; more than two years ago when Austin writer Carolyn Osborn sparked the idea for a literary festival centered around the Texan character, she and others who shared her enthusiasm, like Laura Bush, were thinking of literary festivals held annually in New York, Los Angeles, and St. Petersburg, as well as the Kentucky Book Fair and Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books. Cyndi Hughes attends the American Booksellers Association convention every year to gain insight into new books whose authors would fit well into the festival’s lineup and to promote the festival’s presence — an attentive, vibrant, and spry presence in the Texas Book Festival organization, Hughes is doing her job well.
But what actually happens when she and others perform well in promoting a book festival? Authors and publicists come knocking, and they knock persistently. And it’s not even that authors expect invitations when they or their publicists push for festival participation — they’re fully aware of the relatively strict eligibility requirements — but festival promoters are out soliciting publishers and authors and may be in a situation in which they find themselves having to turn down those very same authors.
The situation is not a mistake, it doesn’t arise from any excess of promotional gusto on the part of the festival organizers but from the inherent intricacies of — the dreaded word — “publicity.” Promotion of the festival allows it to ferret out those good, hidden authors whose books aren’t featured regularly in reviews, don’t come from presses with big money, and don’t grab the window-shopping reader but are nonetheless worthy. Books like James Hoggard’s Riding the Wind and Other Tales, from Texas A&M Press, one of the festival’s best finds this year. Hoggard, two-term president of the Texas Institute of Letters, is no stranger to the state’s literary community, but his collection of stories is the sort that, like many others, has the inexorable curse of being easily overlooked by both reviewers and readers. Yet his is also the sort of book that possesses down-home (but not pithy) flash points of Texas culture, like this observation from one of the book’s essays, “Sincerity: That Over-Rated Virtue”: “To put this more directly, I have known many people who I sincerely wish had been hypocrites because their natural, ever-so-honest-oh-lord-sincere personalities were limburgerily awful.” The festival is also a perfect forum for books that seem honed in to a specific audience but deserve a wider one, like UT Press’ Voices From the Wild Horse Desert: The Vaquero Families of the King and Kenedy Ranches, a gratefully straightforward and vital account of Hispanic ranch life by Jane Clements Monday of Huntsville and Betty Bailey Colley of Texarkana that, much to its credit, somehow makes absolutely fascinating the small details of the vaquero’s procedures, like taming and grooming show cattle. Ever wonder what happened to Ceil Cleveland, the basis for Larry McMurtry’s bewitching Texan doyenne from The Last Picture Show, Jacy Farrow? Meet her, another of the festival’s good finds, this weekend reading her new book from University of North Texas Press, Whatever Happened to Jacy Farrow?
The publicity and promotion behind any festival is months in the making and plays an integral part in attracting attendees, and in the case of the Texas Book Festival, raising money for the state’s public libraries. But promotion and publicity seem particularly important in a relatively new festival like this one, where the organizers seem intent on establishing the fact that Texas is fertile soil for literary creations when the perception seems to be that Texans just like getting words out of their mouths. Much more than promotional work, however, went into planning this year’s festival, and with authors like Larry McMurtry (Comanche Moon), Jennifer K. Harbury (Searching for Everardo), Austin Writers’ League Violet Crown award winner Lisa Sandlin (Message to the Nurse of Dreams), former Texas Observer editor Willie Morris (My Dog Skip), and novelist Louise Redd (Playing the Bones), the festival’s intention of creating dialogue about Texas identity is evident.
This article appears in October 31 • 1997 and October 31 • 1997 (Cover).