Word: sironia
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Died. Madison Alexander Cooper Jr., 63, Waco (Texas) bachelor who managed his family's real-estate fortune, courted "a string of widows," in his spare time turned out (1952) the lusty, lengthy (two volumes, 1,731 pp., 840,000 words) novel, Sironia, Texas, which told in raw, unselective detail everything that happened in 20 years to some 30 major characters; of a heart attack in his auto after completing his thrice-weekly, mile-long jog around the Municipal Stadium track; in Waco, Texas...
...Middle Ranks. One way or another, it was a great year for Texas. After an ill-tempered clouting of its manners & morals by Edna Ferber in her bestselling Giant, the state produced three of the most widely talked-about books of the year: Madison Cooper's Sironia, Texas, a 1,731-page Texas-town saga which seemed to prove that Ferber's view had been right in the first place; Tom Lea's The Wonderful Country, singing Lea's love of his Rio Grande country, north & south of the border; and The Devil Rides Outside...
...fact, to judge from Sironia, Texas in those days must have been a dang sight wilder than even now. In the lives of Cooper's 30-odd major characters, there occur a flood, several murders and suicides, and a castration party. One whorehouse burns down, one Negro is burned alive, one changeling is introduced into a childbed...
Girls are seduced and others are beaten; at times it seems as though the streets of Sironia must be paved with female teeth. Crowbars are swung in labor strife, horsewhips in political campaigns. Sex-crazed old women corner fresh-faced youths in locked bedrooms. Blackmail is a commonplace, miscegenation comes almost as natural as breathing, and the highest ambition of mankind, it would seem, is to own a real, live, spangly N'awlins "hoah...
...short, Sironia, Texas is just the same old small-town story, as it has been told in 50 sensationalized bestsellers-only this time it's in Texas, and so there's much, much more of it. Also, there may be still more to come. Says Author Cooper: "Well, I figure I've still got about three more novels...