“God Save Texas”
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If you grew up in Texas, chances are you’ve heard the old joke about the man teaching his son about good manners. “Never ask a man if he’s from Texas,” the father said. “If he is, he’ll tell you. And if he’s not, there’s no use in embarrassing him.”
As dad jokes go, it’s not exactly the worst, mainly because it gets at two common stereotypes about the Lone Star State: people here do not lack pride in their homeland, and they usually waste no time telling others where they’re from. (As a native Texan, I can tell you this is an exaggeration. Texans like me and all of my Texan friends are generally reluctant to discuss our home state, which is Texas.)
On the first page of his new book, God Save Texas, Austin writer Lawrence Wright acknowledges these stereotypes, admitting with an understatement that’s rare in these parts, “Subtlety is a quality rarely invoked for anything to do with Texas.” He’s right, of course — Texas has its virtues, but collective modesty is not among them. It can be hard to explain the appeal of our state to outsiders — the weather’s not great; the politics are worse — but Wright does an excellent job illustrating what makes Texas the place it is.
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