Bøger af Mark Busby

FVM Magazine Dynamic Issue Special Edition With Gail PorterDAndra SimmonsKevin WillsDr. Matt HarringtonPablo Adame Luz LuzbSabina MarthinsenSandi BogleDonna Williams SalibIrina JacobsonKirk Richards Liz McConaghyLilly PalmerAndrea Jane Bunker

Katherine Anne Porter's uneasy relationship with her home state has become increasingly important to discussions of her life and work. Born in the now-gone community of Indian Creek and raised in Kyle, Porter is tied to Texas by three major events that occurred during her career. In 1939 she expected to receive the Texas Institute of Letters Award for "Best Texas Book" only to be insulted when the award went to folklorist J. Frank Dobie. In the 1950s she accepted an invitation to lecture at the University of Texas at Austin. During her visit to present that lecture, Porter began to believe that UT would build a library and name it after her, Texas' most famous literary daughter. But somehow she and UT President Harry Ransom miscommunicated, and Porter left her materials to the McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland. Finally, in 1976 she returned to Texas to receive recognition from Howard Payne University in Brownwood. On that trip she visited her mother's grave in the little cemetery at Indian Creek and decided that her remains on her death belonged beside her mother. So Porter finally returned to the state she had fled early in her life. The essays in this collection are based primarily upon a symposium held in May 1998 at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. The collection includes essays by both scholars of Porter's work and of Texas literature. Some concern specific aspects of her life, such as her love for her birthday or her marital record. Others focus on the main elements of her relationship with Texas, while still others deal with specific works, often relating them to her Texas heritage. This important addition to Porter studies provides new insight into the ways in which Porter's Texas heritage shaped her life and her fiction.

If you've never even been to Southeast Asia, can you be a Vietnam veteran? In a novel that captures the life and times of a generation, Mark Busby takes us on a journey through an era of hippies, the shootings at Kent State University, integration, and Woodstock. Fort Benning Blues tells the story of Vietnam from this side of the ocean. Drafted in 1969, Jeff Adams faces a war he doesn't understand. While trying to delay the inevitable tour of duty in Vietnam, Adams attends Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia, desperately hoping Nixon will achieve "peace with honor" before he graduates. The Army's job is to weed out the "duds," "turkeys," and "dummies" in an effort to keep not only the officers but also the men under their command alive in the rice paddies of Vietnam. It doesn't take long for the stress to create casualties. Lieutenant Rancek, Adams' training officer at OCS, is ready to cut candidates from the program for any perceived weakness. He does this, not for the Army, but because he wants only the best ". . . leading the platoon on my right" when he goes to Vietnam. Hugh Budwell, one of Adams' roommates, brings the laid-back spirit of California with him to Fort Benning. Tired of practicing estate law, he joins the Army to relieve the boredom he feels pervades his life. About Officer Candidate School, Budwell states, "If I wanted to go through it without any trouble, I'd be wondering about myself." Candidate Patrick "Sheriff" Garrett, a black southerner, spends a night with Adams in the low-crawl pit after they both raise Rancek's ire. Expecting racism when he joined the Army, Garrett copes better than most with the rigors of Officer Candidate School. Busby uses song lyrics, newspaper headlines, and the jargon of the era to bring the sixties and seventies alive again. Henry Kissinger is described as "Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove" and Lieutenant William "Rusty" Calley as "Howdy Doody in uniform." Of My Lai, Busby says, "At Fort Benning everybody took those actions as a matter of course." As America continues to try to comprehend the effects of one of the most transforming eras in our history, Fort Benning Blues adds another perspective to the meaning of being a Vietnam veteran.

The Trans-Cedar lynching is an infamous tale buried deep in the subconscious of rural Texas history. This horrifying event is at the centre of a compelling novel by author Mark Busby. He has not only researched original documents but has used family oral histories to probe the mysteries that still shroud a lynching that is as horrifying and baffling now as it must have been over a hundred years ago.

The Southwest has attained a mythical status, yet images of picturesque desert geography sometimes overshadow the remarkable variety of cultural contributions that originated in the region, which includes Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas. Architectural styles range from adobe constructions to the Santa Fe style to Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark Taliesin to Las Vegas casino kitsch. Regional dialects show the influence of Spanish-English hybrid speech as well as a multitude of Native American languages. Border music thrives in the region, while legendary musicians Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Stevie Ray Vaughan all contributed to the Texas blues genre. Writers such as Zane Grey and Cormac McCarthy have invented and reinvented the Southwestern tale, while such films as the seminal The Last Picture Show have painted indelible images of Southwestern life. Meanwhile, the American wildlife preservation movement has roots in 19th century Southwest lands and to this day maintains an especially imporant role in Southwestern sports and recreation. Mark Busby, director of the Southwest Regional Humanities Center, presents an authoritative reference on the unquestionably diverse and vibrant aspects of regional cultures in the American Southwest.The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures is the first rigorous reference collection on the many ways in which American identity has been defined by its regions and its people. Each of its eight regional volumes presents thoroughly researched narrative chapters on Architecture; Art; Ecology & Environment; Ethnicity; Fashion; Film & Theater; Folklore; Food; Language; Literature; Music; Religion; and Sports & Recreation. Each book also includes a volume-specific introduction, as well as a series foreword by noted regional scholar and former National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman William Ferris, who served as Consulting Editor for this encyclopedia.