Sunday, November 26, 2000

Enduring message
Graves’ river trip transcends the ages
By Bill Whitaker
Reporter-News Staff Writer

If you ever needed evidence of the quiet but enduring popularity of John Graves, you could see it at this month’s Texas Book Festival in the line of book-lovers waiting patiently amidst cold and wind for the 80-year-old author to arrive for a rare autograph session.

At the head of the line, numbering about 75 and growing, was 52-year-old engineer Chuck Smith of Los Angeles, who came to Austin just to meet Graves and have him scribble his John Hancock in several books, including first-edition copies of his 1960 Texas classic, Goodbye to a River.

“I have five books and I have five kids,” Smith said while waiting for Graves to leave the Texas Capitol and walk to the nearby signing tent. “His book Goodbye to a River is kind of a Texas legacy. I won’t be able to leave my kids much money … so I’ll leave them these.

“You know, after 40 years,” he added, referring to Goodbye to a River, “it’s still as good a statement on our environment as any today.”

A bittersweet, parting reminder of the state’s natural beauty and provocative history, Goodbye to a River continues to rank as the best book ever written about Texas, regardless of the many merits allowed the works of Larry McMurtry, including Horseman, Pass By and Lonesome Dove.

One is always surprised at the acclaim Goodbye to a River has gotten from unexpected quarters, if only because the author has long been so lackadaisical about promoting himself or his work.

“He told me some friends in Fort Worth put up this great big sign on Highway 80, right across from the Texas & Pacific Railway station in Fort Worth, advertising the book,” recalled literary authority A.C. Greene, who reviewed Goodbye to a River for the Dallas Times-Herald in 1960.

“When I wrote that review, I felt it was one of the best books ever written by a Texan and possibly the very best book written since World War II,” added Greene, a native Abilenian now living in Salado. “I still feel that way.”

Among the contentious, nit-picky literati assembled during the Texas Book Festival chaired by Texas first lady Laura Bush, not one whispered that Graves deserved anything less than the prestigious 2000 Texas Book Festival Bookend Award duly given him.

Even though the humble, quietly literate author disdains the spotlight, and is nothing less than horrible when pressed into such duties as public readings, Graves’ way with the written word shows a rare command of the language, including an infectious rhythm and unerring sensitivity.

The fact Graves put his talent for observation and love of the English language to work in Goodbye to a River — and that Alfred A. Knopf published it, even though it defied the usual, beloved stereotyping then allotted all things Texan — is one of the luckiest chances in Texas literature.

“If he ever wrote anything less than an elegant sentence,” remarked geologist and acclaimed author Rick Bass, “he certainly never published it.”

Like an armadillo

Graves is not as prolific as some Texas writers, though he’s written more than you might suspect, including two collections of essays, Hard Scrabble: Observations on a Patch of Land (1974) and From a Limestone Ledge: Some Essays and Other Ruminations About Country Life in Texas (1980).

Yet he obviously insists on taking his time at his chosen craft, now more than ever. When, during the festival, someone asked Graves if he could cite a writing weakness, the author alluded to puttering around on his Hard Scrabble Ranch just outside Glen Rose.

“I think the most salient one is tending to engage in secondary activities … wasting time,” Graves confessed. “Of course, some of them become subject matter. But there were some of the others that didn’t become subject matter.”

Former Texas Monthly founding editor William Broyles Jr. says that when, in 1973, he talked Graves into joining other noted writers as contributing editors for the budding magazine, Graves said it made him “feel like an armadillo that had wandered onto the interstate highway.”

A Fort Worth native wounded in Saipan during World War II, Graves later taught college English off and on but increasingly gave his time over to writing, both fiction and nonfiction. But in public he plays down any idea of his being particularly talented or driven.

“I think it just sort of ganged up on me,” he says of how he got into writing.

Graves’ enduring work, Goodbye to a River, has never been out of print. It chronicles a wistful autumn canoe trip Graves and his pup dog took in 1957 down a stretch of the Brazos soon to be dammed. The windy, rainy, three-week trip took him through lonely parts of Palo Pinto County and beyond.

In the book, Graves quietly reflects on the river, its threatened wildlife, its foggy history, his own youthful past on the water and his role in the world. He writes of atrocities committed by both whites and Comanches in the area, his mixed feelings about hunting, and coming to grips with Henry David Thoreau’s writings — “Saint Henry.”

Required reading

Graves concedes he didn’t write the book as a defiant, in-your-face treatise on environmentalism, contending such approaches date all too quickly. Rather, his feelings about the progress symbolized by dams and his views on struggles along the Brazos in times past remain thoughtful but mixed, permeating the entire work and rendering it a quiet classic.

“I think the reason Goodbye to a River has lasted so well is that it is such a solid and honest book — powerfully emotional but never excitable, deeply persuasive but never strident,” Texas first lady Bush said on occasion of the festival’s honoring Graves.

Greene continues to feel strongly about the work, citing it as one of those rare books that transcends the ages, speaking to new generations and prompting them to also reflect on what remains of Texas’ past.

“It ties individuals into history and has enough nostalgia for those of us who care about such things,” the author, newspaperman and literary critic said. “We don’t mind turning loose of the past, but we don’t want to simply eliminate it.”

Greene suspects the book not only helped discourage efforts to erect more dams on the Brazos but also helped ensure parts of the rugged river country remain much as they were in 1957.

During his years teaching at the University of North Texas, Greene required writing students to read Goodbye to a River. One student — a decided feminist, he says — complained that, as gentle as Graves’ rolling ruminations were, his world was anti-feminist and that only the river was treated like a she.

When the student wrote a paper on the topic, Greene amusedly sent a copy to Graves: “Of course, he wrote back in his typically Gravesian way and said, ‘I don’t know that I don’t agree with her.’”

But far more readers of the book become fans.

“I like his comments on the history and the Brazos River Valley, the reflections he does on the land,” said Smith, waiting at the front of the long autograph line. “He’s just a master as far as I’m concerned.”

Contact associate editor Bill Whitaker at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com.