Wars and identity
The hundreds of petroglyphs that still adorn the site of Hueco Tanks, near El Paso, are a reminder that the first inhabitants were Amerindians. They had occupied the territory for thousands of years, long before Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1488-1559) took part in the expedition led by Pániflo de Narváez in 1519, which he recounted in Relation de voyage: 1527-1537, translated by Actes Sud in 2008 but now out of print. The beginnings of Texan literature were therefore, unsurprisingly, the work of foreign visitors, from Portugal such as the missionary Alonso de Benavides, who improvised as an ethnologist(Memorial, 1630), and from America such as Mary Austin Holley (1784-1846), who became a novelist and published Texas in 1833, the first historical novel set in the region she had visited many times. In the 19th century, however, events were in turmoil, and Mexican writer José Enrique de la Peña (1807-1840) was inspired to write a book about the siege of Fort Alamo, which was criticized for scratching the image of Davy Crockett, who, he said, surrendered instead of rushing to the heroic death generally attributed to him. The clashes fueled the literary fire, and journalist Georges Wilkins Kendall (1809-1867) scored a hit withNarrative of an Expedition Across the Great Southwestern Prairies, from Texas to Santa Fé (1844), John Crittenden Duval (1816-1897) was proclaimed the "father of Texas literature" with Early Times in Texas (published as a serial in Burke's Weekly in 1867, then as a volume in 1892), in which he recounts how he survived the 1836 Battle of Goliade between the Mexican army and that of the short-lived Republic of Texas. The Republic of Texas was not to be a landmark: in 1845, Texas became a state of the United States. But the century did not end there: the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) was followed by the American Civil War (1861-1865), in which Texas actively supported the Confederates. In 1888, Amelia Huddleston Barr published Remember the Alamo, a subject that also inspired Augusta Evans Wilson's Inez, a Tale of the Alamo, before she confirmed her traditionalist stance with Macaria (1863), a book about the Civil War that was adulated in the South and burned in the North.
Was the poet Sidney Lanier's (1842-1881) visit to Texas decisive? In any case, it was a sign that the wind was changing as the century drew to a close: nationalist values were giving way to a search for identity, and the lyricism he evoked in evoking landscapes was a sign that this would be done in full communion with nature. John Armoy Knox also moved to the region, where he co-founded the Texas Siftings newspaper with Alexander E. Sweet. Together, they wrote On A Mexican Mustang Though Texas, from the Gulf to the Rio Grande, initiating another mythical figure in Texan literature, that of the cowboy. Charlie Siringo, born in Matagorda County in 1855, not only dreamed of this life of freedom and wide-open spaces, he also made it his profession, hence the enormous success of his autobiography A Texas Cow Boy or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (1885). He persevered in his writing career, notably with his no less resounding A History of Billy the Kid, based directly on his conversion to private detective, not to say bounty hunter. Andy Adams (1859-1935) put the brakes on the Wild West fantasy with his realistic 1903 novel The Log of a Cowboy, still very popular today. As for Herman Lehmann, he imposed his truth about native peoples in Neuf ans chez les Indiens, published in 1899 and translated by Séguier in 2021. In the same vein of reality, J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964) explored the folklore and rural life of his native state in numerous newspaper articles and more substantial works.
From reality to fiction
The twentieth century was no less tormented, but the dramas were being played out on an international scale, and Texan literature opened up to this new awareness and transcended borders, turning to fiction as well. Katherine Anne Porter's work stands at the crossroads of these two trends, and although it perpetuates the literary tradition of the American South, its universality has earned her the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and three Nobel Prize nominations. Born in Indian Creek in 1890, the young woman entered the world of writing through journalism, and from a very early age was in contact with the real world. Motherless, a victim of violence at the hands of her first husband, she soon became an activist for the Mexican revolution and then for two Italian anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, and also came close to death, finally witnessing the rise of Nazism in Berlin in the '30s (cf. La Tour penchée, published by Ombres), at the very time when she began writing fiction with her first collection of short stories(Flowering Judas and Other Stories), which was already a great success. It was from personal experience - a cruise from Vera Cruz to Germany in 1931 - that she drew the inspiration for her only novel, La Nef des fous (Points), which was adapted for the screen by Stanley Kramer in 1965, just three years after its publication. A free and independent woman, she dedicated the end of her career to teaching, and died at the honorable age of 90 in Maryland.
Now that fiction had taken over, literature ventured into "genres", from detective stories for Edward Anderson(Tous des voleurs, Il ne pleuvra pas toujours, Des voleurs comme nous.. to fantasy with Robert Ervin Howard ( Conan cycle, to be discovered at Livre de Poche), while William Goyen (Trinity, 1915-Los Angeles, 1983) sets out to explode them with his unclassifiable books that delve into subjects as complex as family, time, sexuality and solitude. Often compared to Faulkner, even though he feared being pigeonholed, Goyen was more successful on our side of the Atlantic than on his. He is still read with great interest by Grasset(Savannah), Gallimard(La Maison d'Haleine), Joëlle Losfeld(À moitié Caïn) and Actes Sud(Six femmes). Patricia Highsmith, her youngest by a few years, remained faithful to her favorite genre, which brought her international success. In the course of her life, which ended in Switzerland in 1995, she wrote some thirty thrillers, all translated into French by Editions Calmann-Lévy. Her first novel, L'Inconnu du Nord-Express, has been adapted several times for the cinema, as has her series featuring Tom Ripley as the central character(Sur les pas de Ripley, Ripley et les ombres, Le Talentueux monsieur Ripley...), a hustler and occasional killer, not without the dark humor dear to her creator.
The realist novel
In 1965, John Edward Williams was 43 when he published his first novel, Stoner (J'ai lu), the story of a young man who leaves his native farm in the 19th century to study. His family never forgave him for his success, nor for his impossible return after the world of ideas had opened up to him. A new family conflict in Augustus (Piranha editions), this time set in ancient Rome. The struggles of Julius Caesar's heirs earned the writer the National Book Award in 1973. At the same time, William Humphrey also began publishing psychological novels (Gallimard: Les Liens du sang, Plus loin du ciel, Otages du destin...). It was no longer the time to oppose fantasy and veracity, but to explore the realist vein. For example, John Rechy, born in El Paso in 1931, offered Americans an unprecedented vision of youth at the turn of the 1960s with his novel, City of the Night (Gallimard). He will continue to explore and tell the story behind the scenes in Numbers, translated in 2018 by editor Laurence Viallet. Cormac McCarthy, who was not born in Texas but settled there, has taken a new step into ultra-realism, adopting the "Southern Gothic" trend, where the disquieting gloom of landscapes is matched only by the darkness of souls. After four titles - Le Gardier du verger, L'Obscurité du dehors, Un enfant de dieu, Suttree - he turned to Westerns(Méridien de Sang, De si jolis chevaux...), retaining his distinctive style, eminently literary yet perfectly fluid. Nevertheless, it was his post-apocalyptic novel The Road that won him the Pulitzer Prize. All of his work is published in French by L'Olivier, with the year 2023 heralding a long-awaited reunion with two opuses: Le Passager and Stella Maris. Just as dark, James Lee Burke's novels tend to fall into the detective genre, with some featuring Sheriff Dave Robicheaux as a recurring hero, as in The Neon Rain, New Iberia blues, Black cherry blues, Prisoners of the Sky.. Although Burke was born in Houston in 1936, he was partly raised in Louisiana, where most of his books are set, but it's also possible to discover his vision of his native state in Déposer glaive et bouclier or Dieux de la pluie, for example.
Texan literature is undoubtedly fertile, proof if any were needed of a generation whose works have been reprinted in our language by Gallmeister. We could mention Larry McMurtry (1936-2021), well known for his series inaugurated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove, pure westerns in which the delighted reader will meet Woodrow Call, captain of the Texas Rangers, Buffalo Hump, Comanche chief or Joey Garza, Mexican mobster. James Crumley (1939-2008), who enjoyed portraying private detectives confronted with their own demons as well as the excesses of American society(The Final Countryside, The Bear Dance, False Tracks...), was equally enthusiastic. Rick Bass is also a key figure, oscillating between "nature writing" essays such as Le Livre de Yaak and Les Derniers grizzlys, available from Gallmeister, and a more fictional body of work, still devoted to the wilderness, published by Bourgois(Colter, La Rivière en hiver, Dans les monts Loyauté...). Finally, Bruce Machart is definitely an author to watch, which was to be expected given the success of his first book, Le Sillage de l'oubli (The Wake of Oblivion), in which a late 19th-century Texan turns to rage and competition to survive the death of his wife, who died in childbirth while giving birth to their fourth child. In 2022, his collection Des hommes en devenir (Men in the Making) was translated, a collection of short stories once again focusing on grief and despair.
