This book is an
apologia for the rooted intellectual against the disdainful condescension of the cosmopolitan intellectual—an apology in the Socratic sense of the word. It reflects the author’s Texas rootedness unapologetically and offers a polemical but thoughtful indictment of the intellectual prejudice against rootedness; but it is ultimately about the universal human struggle with origins.
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments and Disclaimers
Introduction: Attempts: Philosophy as Essay
One: A Good Intellectual Is Hard to Find
Two: Mind Forg'd Manacles
Three: Running and Being
Four: The Queen's English, or That Awful English Language
Five: Wine of Wyoming
Six: Wit and the Art of Conversation
Seven: The Fish
Eight: “A Minor Regional Novelist”
Nine: Wana
Ten: Culture Vultures
Eleven: Centennial
Twelve: The Sweet Science and the Competitive Spirit
Thirteen: The Halfe Ars'd Angler
Fourteen: Blood Sports and Haute Cuisine
Fifteen: Bread and Wine
Sixteen: Idols of the Academic Theater
Seventeen: Westward I Go Free
Bibliograpy
About the Author
Index