Word: texan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This week the Texas Board of Health tentatively approved a plan that would add AIDS to the list of illnesses for which a Texan can be quarantined. The state commissioner can give approval for the isolation of someone with AIDS who refused to stop sexual activity or drug use that could spread the virus...
...these features hide the equally Texan and equally historically important characteristics which lie below the bluster and Hollywood romance that make this novel entertaining. Texans were the violent Comanche and Mexican killers that Michener made his out to be. But most of the time (in between the occassional Indian raids, Mexican Wars, American Wars, and lynchings) Texans were tackling the element that formed them--the vast, wealthy space called Texas. The land theme, however, lacks entertainment value--aneedotes about rugged Texans replacing fence posts does not make good novel material. So Michener sacrifices real education on his subject for stereotyped...
MICHENER'S CHARACTERS make Texas out to be a Hollywood production. It is the most exotic place with the most exotic people in North America, but making every Texan as a most honest, least scrupulous, or add-your-own-superlative adjective variation on John Wayne just isn't real. Otto McNab, the Mexican-killingest, honestest, independentest, good-community-manest Texas Ranger is almost so absurd that the book becomes humor rather than drama. There were some pretty tough Rangers, but none so epic in every quality...
...last part of the novel would be a good text for anyone trying to understand Texas today. It is purely fictional, but it highlights the two vital Texan issues of today and tomorrow: oil generated economic expansion and the integration of Mexican Americans into Texas society. What do and will those two factors mean to Texas? Michener gives an account not only of the issues but also of the people and emotions behind them with an elegance that would put a sociologist to shame...
...accurate local color, Texas leaves a lot to be desired. But as a novel it is above average. Read as pure novel, Texas is not bad entertainment, even if it is long. The reading goes quickly, and even if the outlook it produces is skewed, it does give non-Texans a thorough exposure to a remarkable, offbeat place and its equally remarkable and offbeat people. Anyone who can remember one tenth of the details will be a walking encyclopedia of things Texan from the number of types of cactus in Big Ben National Park to the unlikely origin...