The Dave Hickey excerpts, cont'd

The magazine writer Grover Lewis plans to write a memoir partly because his fellow Texas geek, Larry McMurtry, had been "Lonesome Doved" -- rewarded for abandoning his contemporary fiction for "a mythic novel based on an old screenplay about archetypcal cowboys."

"So Grover had a little litany that he had clearly worked up ... 'They will admire you for writing about the pesent, oh yeah. But they will love you for writing about the past. They will praise you for writing about housewives and showgirls, bookworms and businessmen. But they will pay you for cowboys and rednecks. They will admire you for writing about the world before your eyes. But they will adore you for spilling your guts. And somehow,' he said, 'I'll subvert that crap and still write this book.' Bam! He hit the table with his hand. It was the only violent gesture I ever saw him make."
-- from "Magazine Writer" in Air Guitar by Dave Hickey