Meandering Through Austin
San Antonio, TX — I spent the better part of today in the capital city revisiting some old haunts are exploring some new ones. Driving through the sluggish city streets and congested highways is becoming unbearable. I blame the small-city-living of Rochester, NY where even on the worst days traffic seldom slows to a trickle. However, I still love this city and share the sentiment from Olmstead’s A Journey Through Texas:
AUSTIN.
Austin has a fine situation upon the left bank of the Colorado. Had it not been the capital of the state, and a sort of bourne to which we had looked forward for a temporary rest, it would still have struck us as the pleasantest place we had seen in Texas. It reminds one somewhat of Washington; Washington, en petit, seen through a reversed glass.
Olmstead makes the note that “[t]here is a very remarkable number of drinking and gambling shops, but not one book-store.” which is out of date… or is it? I think of Austin’s infamous nightly college-drunkfest on 6th Street, of which I have the unfortunate honor of once being a patron to, and I conclude there are a remarkable number of drinking shops. But the proliferation of bookstores is definitely different since those days, probably largely due to the University of Texas (my alma mater) being built directly behind the capitol building. A balance, perhaps?
I took plenty advantage of the bookstores. Scored me an Evergreen Black Cat book from Grove Press (circa 1965) of two novels by Alain Robbe-Grillet (perhaps better known as the scriptwriter of Last Year at Marienbad, to which you might exclaim, “Scriptwriter! That film had a scriptwriter!?” and I reply, “Oh yeah!” while busting through the wall a la Kool-Aid man with a handful of matchsticks).
I quote from Olmstead, again and at length:
LITERATURE.
In the whole journey through Eastern Texas, we did not see one of the inhabitants look into a newspaper or a book, although we spent days in houses where men were lounging about the fire without occupation. One evening I took up a paper which had been lying unopened upon the table of the inn where we were staying, and smiled to see how painfully news items dribbled into the Texas country papers, the loss of the tug-boat “Ajax,” which occurred before we left New York, being here just given as the loss of the “splended steamer Ocax.”
A man who sat near said—
“Reckon you’ve read a good deal, hain’t you!”
“Oh, yes; why?”
“Reckoned you had.”
“Why?”
“You look as though you liked to read. Well, it’s a good thing. S’pose you take a pleasure in reading, don’t you?”
“That depends, of course, on what I have to read. I suppose everybody likes to read when they find anything interesting to them, don’t they?”
“No; it’s damn tiresome to some folks, I reckon, any how, ‘less you’ve got the habit of it. Well, it’s a good thing; you can pass away your time so.”
I remember Jennifer once told me that she didn’t like to read. I remember thinking “how could you not like to read?” And she’s intelligent! How many people out there just don’t ever read for pleasure? Weird…
Comment by Julie — Tue 22 Dec 09 @ 8:48 PM
In America, the number is probably astounding. It simply isn’t a part of mainstream culture.
Comment by RUDY! — Wed 23 Dec 09 @ 8:15 PM