Two writers discuss challenges of putting Houston into words
Houston operates as kind of an international all-you-can-eat buffet that’s open 24 hours, with everchanging offerings and a crowded cast of characters — from that splashily dressed socialite with the obviously enhanced chest, to the militant gay activist who arrived in his art car, to the energy executive clad in a designer suit and tie — even on sweltering summer days.
For decades, Texas Monthly executive editor Mimi Swartz, a San Antonio native who adopted Houston as her hometown, has written articles that collectively serve as a codebook to unlock the secrets of a place known as Space City, the Bayou City, H-town, Clutch City or simply “the Swamp.”
On Wednesday, Swartz will share the stage with Gwendolyn Zepeda — a novelist, children’s book author and the city’s first poet laureate — as part of the Books & Bylines series co-hosted by the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Public Library. They’ll talk about how challenging (and rewarding) it can be for writers to pin this city down. Here’s how Swartz has done it in the past:
Back in 1995, she identified Houston’s most surprising icon in a Texas Monthly piece called “Silicone City”: “Of all the symbols of modern Houston — the oil derrick, the building crane, the designer skyscraper — the breast is the most unlikely. The ultimate emblem of femininity — it yields, it nurtures, it entices — the breast would appear to have no more than decorative use in a place that has always been known as a man’s town of big deals and big deeds, where self-invention has achieved the status of religion. … But whether locals recognize it or not, Houston is in the grips of one enormous breast fixation. … Along with doctors and lawyers, the breast supports architects, designers, chefs, G-string purveyors, medical researchers, courthouse clerks, even hospitals. In Houston, you see, the breast that has invigorated the economy is not real but man-made, one that perfectly reflects the city’s obsession with sex and commerce, technology and individuality.”
After Hurricane Ike hit in 2008, Swartz pinpointed for Slate why the storm shocked Houston: “Texans in general and Houstonians in particular (had) viewed hurricanes with a degree of machismo. No one was still around to testify to the power of the Great Hurricane of 1900, the one that destroyed Galveston Island and paved the way for Houston to replace it as a boomtown, and few storms that followed were anywhere near as devastating. Over time, in fact, Texans got used to staring down their storms; they committed to staying put, to covering their windows with plywood or marking them with menacing masking-tape Xs, and to hosting foolish if festive hurricane parties.”
Upon Annise Parker’s election as Houston’s first gay mayor in 2009, Swartz explained in The Nation why Houstonians were unsurprised: “Once again, I’ve had to endure the national media’s shock and awe that we backward Houstonians have done something that would have been considered (almost) the norm in New York or Los Angeles. … (W)e are the fourth-largest city in the United States. Surprise! Houston also has the second-largest gay population in the nation. If you live here, you aren’t so shocked about Parker’s victory — after all, she’s been in public office here for 12 years and never once during that time was in the closet.”
In 2003, Swartz explained Houston’s most notorious and complex corporate scandal in her book “Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron,” which she wrote with whistleblower Sherron Watkins. Years later, she met up with Watkins and reflected on the moment in Texas Monthly: “As I was making my way to our lunch table at a popular Museum District canteen, I ran into another Enron ex, who beat a hasty retreat when I told her whom I was meeting. … The notorious energy company’s collapse may have happened 15 years ago this month, but not everyone in Houston would agree that, as Watkins put it upon arrival, “People are over it.” Actually, not even Watkins agrees with that sentiment. “I’m not sure anybody is over it,” she said, upon further reflection. “They just do that Houston thing of forgetting about it on purpose.”