Splendor in the Short Grass

Grover Lewis was one of the defining voices of the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s. His wry, acutely observed, fluently written essays forRolling Stoneand theVillage Voiceset a standard for other writers of the time, including Hunter S. Thompson, Joe Eszterhas, Timothy Ferris, Chet Flippo, and Tim Cahill, who said of Lewis, "He was the best of us." Pioneering the "on location" reportage that has become a fixture of features about moviemaking and live music, Lewis cut through the celebrity hype and captured the real spirit of the counterculture, including its artificiality and surprising banality. Even today, his articles on Woody Guthrie, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, directors Sam Peckinpah and John Huston, and the filming ofThe Last Picture ShowandOne Flew over the Cuckoo's Nestremain some of the finest writing ever done on popular culture.

To introduce Grover Lewis to a new generation of readers and collect his best work under one cover, this anthology contains articles he wrote forRolling Stone,Village Voice,Playboy,Texas Monthly, andNew West, as well as excerpts from his unfinished novelThe Code of the Westand his incomplete memoirGoodbye If You Call That Goneand poems from the volumeI'll Be There in the Morning If I Live. Jan Reid and W. K. Stratton have selected and arranged the material around themes that preoccupied Lewis throughout his life--movies, music, and loss. The editors' biographical introduction, the foreword by Dave Hickey, and a remembrance by Robert Draper discuss how Lewis's early struggles to escape his working-class, anti-intellectual Texas roots for the world of ideas in books and movies made him a natural proponent of the counterculture that he chronicled so brilliantly. They also pay tribute to Lewis's groundbreaking talent as a stylist, whose unique voice deserves to be more widely known by today's readers.