Reading American cities: books about Austin

For the past 24 years, Austin has called itself the Live Music Capital of the World, a title supported by festivals like SXSW and Austin City Limits (ACL), musicians like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, and Spoon, and nightly shows on Sixth, Red River, and Rainey streets. Outside of music, Austin means The University of Texas (UT), tech and start-ups, hipsters, filmmaking and movies like Boyhood, Slacker, and Office Space, bats flying from the Congress Avenue Bridge, Formula One racing, Whole Foods, barbecue, Barton Springs, and where Jim and Pam decide to move at the conclusion of The Office.

But what of literary life? Don’t bearded bartenders read? Apparently they do, and Austin’s literary footprint has expanded as the city itself has grown. First settled in the 1830s – when it was named Waterloo – Austin is currently experiencing another boom, marking a sharp rise in traffic, gentrification, downtown construction, and literature.

Running themes in the city’s literary life include over-the-top politics filled with sex scandals and betrayal, falls from economic grace, romantic bohemians, and thrilling crime sagas. So much for the realism of heat, coffee snobbery, and untimed traffic lights.

One of the works cited most often as representing Austin and its political heritage is Billy Lee Brammer’s The Gay Place – a title drawn from F Scott Fitzgerald’s poem Thousand-and-First Ship. First published in 1961, this interlocking trio of short novels brings the brash politics of 1950s Texas to life. Most agree that the main character, Arthur Fenstemaker, is based on Lyndon B Johnson, whose presidential library sits on the campus of UT, and the plot indisputably covers staples of Texas politics: marital alienation, sex, drinking (at a fictionalized Scholz Garden, which still is an Austin favorite for the political crowd), gossip, and legislative manoeuvring. According to Jan Reid, “More than any other book or film, The Gay Place captures the spirit and verve of Austin.”

Karen Olsson’s novel Waterloo opens with a quote from The Gay Place, but brings Austin and its politics up to date. In her version of Austin, citizens strive “not to have to work too hard, to be locally renowned, and to drink beer paid for by somebody else”. This era of Austin centers around alternative publications (think the Texas Observer or Austin Chronicle), urban renewal, suburban politics, and conservative values masking the vices of musicians and politicians: more drinking, power struggles, and scandals. With frequent flashbacks to the 1950s and 60s readers can see how far Austin has come and what remains hidden under its surface.

In Monday, Monday, Austin resident and author Elizabeth Crook provides more perspective about Austin in the 1960s, and decades later. Crook’s novel is set in motion by a real-life tragedy that permanently scarred Austin and that continues to be discussed to this day: the 1966 mass shooting from the clock tower of UT.

If we next skip to the tech boom, which still defines aspects of the city, we come to Austin novelist Sarah Bird’s How Perfect Is That where we witness the aftermath of the dotcom bubble. Set around 2003, Bird describes the economic downfall of main character Blythe Young. While the “Dellionaire” crowd feeds Young’s catering company for a while, it eventually falls back to earth, along with everyone else, during the era of George W Bush.

Austin author Mary Helen Specht gives another view of our tech recession in her debut novel Migratory Animals. Set after the 2008 economic crash in both Austin and Nigeria (where Specht spent time as a Fulbright Scholar), main character Flannery is pulled between her scientific work in Nigeria and family obligations in the Texan city. Of her descriptions of Austin, The New York Times noted, “Specht perfectly captures the minute details of contemporary life in a certain social niche of culture-rich, cash-poor pseudo-bohemians – the ‘Portlandia’ class – as well as their narcissism, immaturity and sense of entitlement. These are people who consider themselves the center of the universe, eternal college freshmen in love with their own self-declared brilliance and singularity.”

Austin’s bohemian side features in Bird’s first novel, Alamo House. Published in 1986, it recreates life at UT’s west campus, home of fraternities and housing cooperatives. The novel depicts the independent, often vegetarian, and often hippie women of a fictional co-op that is based on the actual Seneca House that remains on the outskirts of campus today.

David Heymann explores gentrification with a collection of seven stories, My Beautiful City Austin, revolving around an architect who, to his dismay, designs the type of houses often blamed for ruining the city’s charm. Of course we now have this problem under control – all Austin happy meals now include a McMansion law.

Crime stories based in Austin could probably fill a section of a bookstore, with just a few notable examples being The Devil Went Down to Austin, the Dan Reles Mysteries (four novels), and The Seventh Victim. The novel A Twist at the End: A Novel of O. Henry and the Texas Servant Girl Murders of 1885 perhaps stands apart for its fictional portrayal of America’s supposed first recorded serial murders.

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It wouldn’t feel right to talk about our portrayal in novels without highlighting Austin’s overall role in literature. Our literary story starts with academic programs nurturing innovative writers, and Austin is home to one of the most prestigious writing programs in the country: the Michener Center for Writers. Only accepting 12 students per year, and granting each a generous fellowship, this school has generated more than its fair share of famous writers. Kevin Powers, Domenica Ruta, Philipp Meyer, Kelly Luce, Sarah Cornwell, Carrie Fountain, and Mary Miller are a few Michener luminaries, and at any given time, its students are poised to join the ranks of their famous counterparts. A few blocks away on campus is the New Writers Project, and a short drive from the city is the renown MFA program of Texas State University.

The next link in Austin’s literary chain is reserved for its publishers. Like many other cities with a large student population, Austin produces its fair share of indie books, literary journals, comics, and zines every year. To name a few, Austin hosts A Strange Object, American Short Fiction, Austin Zine Fest, Bat City Review, Host Publications, fields, The Austin Review, and Write Bloody Publishing. At the intersection of the comic/zine and literary magazine realms is a new arts and literature festival, the New South Festival of Literary Arts & Cartooning, which started in 2015 at the French Legation Museum on the city’s booming east side with plans to grow its curated list of vendors each year (while of course remaining a dog-friendly literary conference).

Completing the chain spanning from author to reader are reviewers, booksellers, and libraries. Austin is home to Kirkus Reviews, a storied institution that has always been devoted to “integrity, honesty and accessible reviews written with an insider’s eye,” and smaller review organizations like Lone Star Literary Life continue to crop up. Since 1970, BookPeople has been Austin’s largest independent bookstore and remains one of the nation’s most famous indie booksellers, located downtown near the Whole Foods world headquarters. Nothing hones conversation skills like preparing a three-second greeting to the likes of Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Stephen King, and Neal Patrick Harris while they sign your book.

Austin already has an extensive network of libraries, and soon it will include a $120 million flagship location downtown overlooking the Colorado River (called Lady Bird Lake) that will have reading porches, a rain harvesting system, car charging stations, and a landscaped roof. If they install nap pods, the entire city may move in. Austin’s enthusiasm for literature has never been greater. On almost any given day, one of our literary organizations will be hosting a reading with beer, music, and art. And then, once a year, we celebrate books like the finale of a fireworks show with the Texas Book Festival, started in 1995 by Laura Bush and Mary Margaret Farabee, which takes over the Texas Capitol and Congress Avenue with days of talks and readings with more than 250 authors, local food trucks, and the Lit Crawl.

Not too bad for a hippie music town.

• Michael Barrett is a writer and the Editor of The Austin Review. He tweets at @michaelcbarrett.