Texas hasn’t gotten its due as a major piece in the complex puzzle of American art. We’re here to rectify that. Every two weeks, H. Drew Blackburn will conduct a thoroughly scientific analysis of the 254 integral (one for every county) books, movies, tv shows, albums, podcasts, songs, and magazine articles — you name it — that best exemplify the Texas spirit. These texts, products of immense talent, dig into the marrow of our being. When it’s all said and done and we’ve built The Texas Voyager collection, we’ll (figuratively) head to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and shoot it beyond the atmosphere, into the cosmos. A wise person once posed the question: “What if the aliens are hot?” Hold onto that hope — this is our chance to impress ‘em.
Any halfway-decent writer worries about clichés. I like to think of myself as a halfway-decent writer, or at least a quarterway-decent one. The nightmare is coming across as stilted and robotic — like an athlete at a presser drolling on about “taking it one day at a time” and “execution.” Banality is to be avoided like cars on the highway with garbage bags flapping where the window should be (you don’t know whose fault that accident was).
But, sometimes clichés are cliché for a reason. The truths they hold are sincere to the point that they’re damn near scientific law. To the victor goes the spoils or that history is written by the winners are excellent examples. Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa’s novel “Texas: The Great Theft” considers those trite aphorisms and excavates them. The book is a work of historical fiction based on the infrequently discussed Cortina Troubles — a.k.a. the 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States of America. Through her prose, we get perspectives (many, many, many) on conflicts between Mexico and the United States, which are too often tucked behind the curtain. Here they get the spotlight.
In 2014, “The Great Theft” became the inaugural title produced by the Dallas-based publishing house Deep Vellum. The book was translated from Spanish by native Texan and Words Without Borders founding editor Samantha Schnee. It won the 2014 Typographical Era Translation Award and was shortlisted for the 2015 PEN Translation Award. Back then, Deep Vellum was an upstart non-profit specializing in translated literature. In the years since, Deep Vellum has opened up a bookstore in the storied Deep Ellum neighborhood. It’s also acquired a handful of publishers; resurrected “The Accommodation” a once rare, but classic book on race in Dallas (copies at one point sold for almost $1000 online); and alongside another indie bookstore called Wild Detectives, established itself as a nexus of Texas literary culture. Last spring, the New York Times published a feature on Dallas as a burgeoning literary hub, with Deep Vellum founder Will Evans at its center.
Over a video call, Evans reflected on the “The Great Theft’s” initial release a decade ago, calling it kismet. “We launched our press with one of the best Mexican authors writing a historical fiction based on a true story of Texas history in her own unique way with a Texas translator and a Texas press,” he told The Barbed Wire. “Every single thing about it was like pure stars aligning. It was the book we were meant to publish.”
It’s hard to argue with this.
The way “The Great Theft” examines history is a necessary counter to a propagandistic Americanized lens. In Texas schools, we’re taught about Manifest Destiny as if it were fact. We learn about the strong authoritarian arm of the Mexican government, so essentially we’re told every victory — and every defeat — was God’s will. Boullosa challenges these narratives, in ways that are genius and a little bizarre (I mean this in the most flattering way possible). The way “The Great Theft” is structured sees the majority of the novel taking the form of gossip. Boullosa’s prose itself is a breeze to read. It’s simple, rich, and funny, with literary flourishes (like names that do double duty as puns). And the book is still as ambitious and challenging as, say, James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”
This is because the gossip (triggered by a racist insult and an act of gun violence that happens in about a minute) flows at a rapid pace from the fictional town of Brunesville (our Brownsville) to the next town, digging into family and romantic histories, appearances, political leanings, thoughts, and desires. It all occurs across class and race, and it is liable to shoot over across the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) or into another person and place — in Mexico or America. Much of what’s whispered and shouted about occurs in realish-time and takes up two-thirds of a novel that’s roughly 300 pages long. The reprint of “The Great Theft,” published for its tenth anniversary, has a handy glossary of characters in the back with well over 200 entries. It’s controlled chaos. And brilliantly so.
It’s fascinating to watch a novel with a clear intent to establish a different record of Mexican-American conflicts with its main conduit as gossip. With the hundreds of characters, no perspective is left unturned, and you can see how gossip played a part in constructing a certain record in the first place. “The Great Theft” ultimately wrestles with how much gossip shapes our lives.
“ Gossip is human nature and it kind of goes back to the original oral forms of storytelling,” Evans said. “We pass stories on to each other. And there is, of course, something beautiful about that. It ties us all together.” Gossip is extremely fun. It’s fun to do. It’s fun to listen to. In real life or even on a podcast. People who are good at it probably have more social literacy than those who aren’t. Another thing about writers: If you put all of us in one country, we’d indulge in at least three times as much tea as Turkey.
“ It’s a universal human condition. And then, of course, there’s the idea of the unreliable narrator,” Evans said. “When the unreliable narrator gets involved and introduces additional truths or untruths to a story? it really can become something else.” Evans further explains that in “The Great Theft,” though the reader sees an accurate account of the inciting incident, the characters do not. Therefore, we see how the truth can get distorted and warped “towards what each character wants to see or wants to think is happening.” Ultimately, in “The Great Theft,” such gossip aids mobs, battles, and bloodshed.
The sheer inventiveness in how Boullosa wrote “The Great Theft” is reason enough to induct it into the Texas Voyager collection, but I’m also struck by how complex and sophisticated it is with how it approaches narratives. It seeks to create a new oral tradition about a great theft of land, culture, and life. And the former narrative that we’re inundated with has made monuments and legends of the men who orchestrated that theft — William Travis, James Bowie, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett.
You may recognize those surnames as counties, cities, colleges, and much more. Gossip creates folk heroes. Sometimes deservedly so. Sometimes it ignores their support of African chattel slavery — as is the case for the aforementioned men above. Other times it brings us some joy over some drinks or makes the group chat go crazy. It may serve as a crucial warning in a whisper network. It makes men monsters or legends. It unearths creeps and constructs icons. It can paint lies and create emotional distress for a victim.
As such, it behooves us to always consider the narrator.