His customary and legendary range: Larry McMurtry, 1936-2021

The Lonesome Dove miniseries rolled into town in 1989, when I was fourteen years old.* Back in the before-times of the late Eighties, computers were clunky green-screened things known to your serious nerd variety, and the television was the center of the household. We built cabinets around our televisions, we kept drawers underneath it,  in […]

Can’t Take the Texas Out of the Girl

In my fourth decade in this state, I finally became a real Texan: You Haven’t Driven in Texas Until You’ve Driven a Pickup Truck “When I first heard about this “car culture” issue, I knew what I wanted to write: an ode to my Honda Accord, which I’d driven across the country a half-dozen times. […]

Adventure awaits, and awaits, and awaits

Last October, I went rock climbing in Hueco Tanks, an hour north of El Paso in West Texas. I’d never been rock climbing, but it looked fun. This is the kind of questionable analysis that has lead to worlds of trouble, and oceans of fun. My guide was a guy named Jacob. We spent the […]

Someone to Love

I was driving the long solitary highway to Alaska when the guy in the passenger seat asked if I knew Fountains of Wayne. Was that a statue? Was that a waterfall? It was a band, he explained, named after a store in New Jersey. That guy was not my boyfriend, but I hadn’t given up […]

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom

I drove to Palo Duro Canyon, because I had to go somewhere, but I couldn’t go far. I was on deadline for my book, due in September, and the more extravagant trip I had envisioned — out to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, the quieter and more profound side of the great gash […]

The Big Texan

I’m seated in a wooden booth with a vinyl tablecloth in a cow-hide pattern, and as my eyes trace the perimeter of the enormous banquet hall, I count twenty-six animal heads.    “What can I get ya?” My waitress wears a straw cowboy hat and a plaid Western snap shirt. “I’ll have the chicken-fried steak,” […]

Uncertain, Texas

A few years ago, I threw my clothes in the bright green suitcase with the broken zipper, slung my guitar in the back seat, and drove to Uncertain, Texas. I had searched for cabin get-aways within a few hours’ drive from my home in Dallas, places like Broken Bow and Beavers Bend and Turner Falls, […]

Saturday in New York City

Last Saturday morning, I woke before dawn in the cozy loft bedroom of my friends’ Tribeca apartment. For mysterious reasons, I’ve been waking up early for the past two months, sometimes as early as 3:30am. I badly wish I could sleep longer, but I’ve also grown fond of these dim and hushed hours before the […]

London.

I am standing at the desk of an immigration officer at London’s Heathrow airport. The man flips through my passport. “And what is your business here?” he asks, not looking up. “I’m a writer,” I say. It took a while to put that down on official forms. I usually put editor, and then sometimes I […]