A Quintessential Texas Novel (June 23, 2025)
by Scott Sosebee
When it comes to cultural pursuits, Texas takes a forward place in many Americans’ minds. Even though we are a large state, we still occupy an outsized role in the “sportsverse,” with Texans always finishing high on the lists of athletes in the major sports in the nation. The state is also well-represented when it comes to the world of film, predominantly due to the huge role that the western genre has played in American movies; a majority of those works had Texas as a setting. Music, of course, is filled with Texans in all forms and categories. After all, you can’t get much bigger than native Texan Beyoncé. Despite being a leading state in many such areas, I don’t think that Texas exactly comes to mind when it comes to world-class literature, which is unfortunate because the Lone Star State has produced a number of literary giants that range from Larry McMurtry to Paulette Jiles, Cormac McCarthy, and Sandra Cisneros. One name that does not come up as often as those named above, and should, is Billy Lee Brammer.
If you read that name and said to yourself, “Billy Lee Brammer? I don’t think I have heard of him,” don’t beat yourself up too much because I think a lot of Texans have no idea who he is or what literary work he produced. Published in 1961, his novel, The Gay Place (I suppose I have to mention that the title comes from an F. Scott Fitzgerald poem that contains a line I know a gay place/Nobody knows) is one of the most accurate—and just plain boisterous—looks at what it means to be a Texan and live in Texas. The book follows, in three novellas with different titles, an over-arching story of mid-twentieth century Texas Democratic politics and how it circles around the character of Governor Arthur Fenstemaker, who Brammer based on Lyndon B. Johnson who, when the book came out, had just been elected Vice-President of the United States and whom Brammer once worked for as a speechwriter (he knew his subject). Brammer’s Fenstemaker, like LBJ, was a liberal populist, but he was also a man full of flaws and one who was not afraid to, let’s say bend a few rules, to get what he wanted.
The three novellas—“The Flea Circus,” “Room Enough to Caper,” and “Country Pleasures,” delve into how Fenstemaker—aided by a cast of characters almost as colorful as he is—attempts to bring integration and a liberal voice in the Senate (a young Korean War veteran that Fenstemaker manipulates into running for a seat he never wanted to hold) to Texas using tactics that effectively accomplishes such a goal in a state that generally opposed everything the governor wants. His Fenstemaker character, much like the real LBJ, achieves his aims more through bombast and a nod to being “all things Texans”—ultra-masculine, pompous, grandiloquent when it’s called for, and “bigger-than-life” in every aspect of life. It is a grand romp through mid-century Texas politics, of course, but for a contemporary reader it is also a reminder that every though parties, politicians, and times change what makes Texas politics still has not. While Brammer based his Governor on LBJ, readers would certainly recognize a number of current officeholders in him in 2025.
When it came out, critics lauded The Gay Place as a masterpiece. The New York Times Book Review called the book, “lyrical,” and that Brammer was “an authentic writing talent,” and that he was “brilliantly promising” as a first-time novelist. Gore Vidal went so far as to say that Brammer’s novel was “one of the best ever written about American politics.” Brammer’s rookie effort was truly a masterpiece, but it would be the only novel he ever finished, and in many ways Billy Lee Brammer would become a cautionary tale of how fame that comes too quickly is often more of a curse than glory.
Brammer, who was born in Dallas in 1929, attended North Texas State College as a journalism major. After he and Nadine Cannon—who he met in college—married, he went to work at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for a bit after college, then moved to Austin to work at the Austin American-Statesman, where he met and befriended a number of friends who would for the rest of his life would try to curb the excesses that seemed to claw at Brammer’s life. He went to work for one of those friends, Ronnie Dugger, at the Texas Observer in 1955. He had only been there for a few months when he learned that Johnson wanted an “erudite liberal” to come work for him in his Senate office. He was planning to run for President in 1960 and wanted someone who could write speeches for him that could reach a national audience. Brammer needed the salary that Johnson paid, so he, Nadine, and their two daughters moved to Washington. She also went to work for Johnson. Brammer got the chance to observe the Senate Majority leader up close and personal. What he saw both thrilled and appalled him; Johnson was a master politician, but he also, personally, seemed destructive to his young aide.
His work with Johnson resulted in The Gay Place, but it also strained his marriage to Nadine. She moved back to Austin with their daughters, and both fell into affairs. After four years working for Johnson, he moved to New York to take a job for publisher Eliot Janeway. He and Nadine still lived apart, and she grew angry at his often-profligate spending. Finally, in the same year The Gay Place came out they divorced. The book gathered those glowing reviews, but its sales were modest and did not solve Brammer’s financial difficulties. He went to work as a reporter for Time, something that only lasted for about a year. He then moved back to Texas, lived for a time with Larry McMurtry. Mostly, Brammer fell into a haze of drug and alcohol abuse, including LSD usage. The rest of his life continued such a spiral; he tried to write a sequel to The Gay Place, but his lifestyle had sapped his inspiration. He had another brief marriage but would die of a methamphetamine overdose in 1979. He may, though, have only written one full length book, but what a book it was.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.