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picks up the story
New, fresh voices that speak of place
By Scott Dickensheets
The editor of a magazine covering Texas (261,914 square miles) has a rather different set of challenges than does the editor of a magazine devoted to, say, Rhode Island (1,045 square miles).
That’s not to say Texas Monthly’s task is 250.6 times harder than Rhode Island’s, nor to suggest that Rhode Island--the state--is so tiny as to be insignificant; rather, let’s say it’s too small to serve this column as anything but an ironic counterpoint to Texas and Texas Monthly, our true subject.
Texas, after all, is big, and not just in square miles, hats and hair, but in popular mythology and in impact on the national culture. (Had George W. Bush governed Rhode Island, would his impersonator on “Saturday Night Live” still have a job?)
Texas is all kinds of places, from the horse pies of the Panhandle to the gritty violence of inner-city Houston, and every McMurtry-chronicled mile in between.
The challenge for Texas Monthly, then, is to represent to Texans a vast state--and state of mind--that’s changing rapidly and unpredictably.
With its April issue, Texas Monthly inaugurates a redesign under newish editor Evan Smith; it seems as good a time as any to take stock--and to wonder why anyone beyond cow country might care.
Smith is the third editor in the magazine’s (literally) storied history. For years the magazine had a well-earned reputation for topnotch, stylish journalism (its stellar talent pool has included Lawrence Wright, Mimi Swartz, James Wolcott and Robert Draper, who went on to The New Yorker, Talk, Vanity Fair and GQ, among others) that told the story heedless of length.
That was why, although I’ve spent exactly five hours of my life in Texas, I subscribed to the magazine for years. The state seemed to breed wild and compelling stories, and TM told them with verve and style.
But a few years ago I realized I wasn’t reading it much anymore. The journalism had gone flat, except on those occasions when Gary Cartwright, the grizzled dean of Texas letters, ventured a piece.
Each issue seemed to lose a little more ground to the dulling trends of modern magazine publishing: an emphasis on celebrities, shorter stories. My subscription lapsed; I didn’t renew.
Now comes Smith, a 10-year TM vet, vowing a return to long-form nonfiction and a damn to the prevailing wisdom. The April issue presumably unveils his full vision.
The new look is clean, attractive and functional. Smith has signed up an odd squad of columnists, including self-described Texas jewboy Kinky Friedman (his first effort is a so-so batch of one-liners knotted to a flimsy premise about local politics). The feature well is, indeed, well-stocked with good, long journalism.
Now, why should we--the urban, the hip, the not-from-Texas--care?
Shit-howdy, son, that’s easy. Texas stories are American stories, just as Rhode Island stories are American stories, only smaller.
Good regional magazines--Philadelphia, Boston, TM--are an antidote for the homogenized, celebrity-idolizing, People-magazine media we live with today (although Smith, in bashing Esquire and GQ by way of touting his magazine’s strengths, overstates this case). In them you’ll often find good stories that haven’t made the national radar.
Of course, it helps if the new president happened to run your state a few months ago. The April Texas Monthly puts Laura Bush on the cover--the words “LAURA BUSH” are bigger than “Texas Monthly”--offering readers a hometown perspective on the new first lady. The story is a little soft, and its take on LAURA BUSH--that she’s both a reluctant public figure and an iron-willed political wife, has been made elsewhere.
But John Spong’s explanation of the paralyzing debate over hate-crime legislation is a clear primer on a subject other governments are going to wrangle with, while Brian D. Sweany marshals baseball stats to make a convincing case that Astro ballplayer Jeff Bagwell is worth more than Alex Rodriguez.
Then there’s Pamela Colloff’s long, deeply reported and heartfelt dispatch from a troubled front in the border wars, the arid outback of Maverick County. Hundreds or sometimes thousands of illegal border-jumpers and brazen narco thugs cross the Rio Grande here daily.
Colloff chronicles the effect this has on one leathery old rancher who’s seen his property and life overrun. From there, the piece segues into a narrative of an illegal Mexican teenager gunned down by a crazed DEA agent.
Despite a dose of easy pathos here and there, it’s vivid, human stuff that easily transcends lines on a map.
In a society where the proper reaction to Rosie’s magazine (“Jeez, how soon until the Olsen twins have their own magazine?”) is cut short by the fact that the Olsen twins already have their own magazine, that’s the value of strong regional publications.
They tell us stories we might not hear otherwise, maybe even a few from Rhode Island.
April 5, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Scott Dickensheets is the magazine critic for Media Life.
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