Downtown Fort Worth, taken from a country road about twenty-two miles away.
Photo by Mason Scott
Texas has been getting a bad
rap lately, thanks to Ken Paxton and his barbaric handling of the case of Kate
Cox, the young Dallas mother of two who was pregnant with a fetus that would
not live and would endanger her future fertility and possibly her life. Paxton
ruled that she had not shown sufficient evidence of danger to her life to
warrant an abortion and threatened any hospitals and physicians who performed
the procedure. His horrific judgment, which he was in no way qualified to make,
was backed up by the Texas Supreme Court. All this is known not only to most
Texans but across the country, where Texas is being scorned as the armpit of
the world, a place most would never move, etc.
As someone whose whole career
has revolved around the history and literature of Texas, I feel compelled to
jump to my state’s defense. Yes, I’m a transplant, but I’ve lived here over
fifty-five years and feel pretty much at home, have no desire to go elsewhere.
The picture above shows just one fascinating aspect of the Texas landscape—the
flat open space. But I thought it spoke of Texas as a special place. Texas
people are friendly and good, the history is rich, the landscape varied and
sometimes spectacular, and the food terrific, whether you want beans and
barbecue or a Michelin-rated upscale experience
We have several new high-end
restaurants in Fort Worth, from French to Italian to seafood, and yet we treasure
our hole-in-the-wall places where you can get the best chicken-fried steak or chili
in the world. Our Stockyards National Historic District attracts tourists from
all over the world, and it’s not unusual to hear the babble of foreign voices
on the brick-paved streets.
What’s not to love about
Texas? The politicians, and we’re working on that.
Kate Cox’s tragic
circumstances have held much of my attention in the last days, but today a new
bookish threat grabbed my mind. It’s called review-bombing. A debut author,
first book, a sci-fi novel, scheduled for release next spring, began leaving
one-star reviews of competitors on Goodreads, Amazon’s book review web site.
Not only did this author trash other debut others, particularly people of
color, but in each review, she praised her own forthcoming book. Dumb, dumber,
and dumbest. What a giveaway. The guilty author was found out, of course, and
her contract with Penguin/Random House cancelled. So her book will not be
coming out in the spring. She did apologize, blaming it all on addiction and
now declaring she is sober. I’m not sure that’s enough.
Do you check reviews when
considering a book? If you do, I’d advise ignoring one-star reviews. They are
most often revenge-motivated or written by someone who has not read the book. Some
people delight in being negative and destructive. My philosophy is that if I
can’t leave at least three stars, I simply don’t review. Why ruin an author’s
hopes? On Goodreads daily emails, I’ve noticed one author who gets on a run of
reading a particular author’s works—recently, it was Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe
mysteries—but she almost never gives more than three stars. And I want to
scream, “If you don’t like the books any better than that, quit reading them.
Choose a new author. Quit damaging this author, though Rex Stout probably won’t
suffer much from his posthumous reviews.
Still I wish readers would be
a bit more sensitive to the author’s feelings and reputations. If you like a
book, say so on Amazon.com or Goodreads.com. A review doesn’t have to be long
and deep. Two or three sentences that say, “I liked this book” will thrill most
authors. And it doesn’t take that many positive reviews to boost an author’s
ratings. If you can’t find much good to say about it, leave it alone. Readers
will assess their own and reach their own ratings.
And my new word for the day:
elitch, which means ghostly or weird. I read it in a review of a WWI novel
titled, The Warm Hands of Ghosts—a very favorable review, by the bye.
But I thought it an odd word. It doesn’t even sound like an adjective.
Okay. Lesson over for the day!
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