edited by Max Apple
Any anthology that includes Louis L'Amour and Donald Barthelme in the same volume has to be special—and this one certainly is. The editor, a professor at Rice University in Houston, has selected 26 Southwest-oriented stories or excerpts from novels by Larry McMurtry, Ralph Ellison, William Goyen, N. Scott Momaday and John Graves, among others. One of the most entertaining pieces in the book is by Apple himself. It is called "My Real Estate," and it manages to convey old-time Texas and the new Houston in ways that are hilarious and absolutely on target. The other writers' approaches certainly are various, but the quality of the prose, as much as the locale, holds it all together. (Bantam, $2.95)
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