Robert Flynn Author Novelist Teacher

Bob’s Story:

 I was born at home in a house surrounded by cotton fields.  A few miles to the east and we would would have been in an oil field.  A few miles west and we would have been on land good for nothing but running cows and chasing jackrabbits.  My grandfather had been tricked into buying the only place in twenty miles that would grow cotton.

 

It was in the cotton field that I first learned the power of the English language.  Those who chopped cotton with a hoe were not called hoers.  As my mother explained to me with a switch.  It occurred to me that if the wrong word like hoer had the power to move my mother to such action, just think what using the right word like hoe hand could accomplish.

 

That was when I first got the notion of being a writer.  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.  We didn’t go in much for writing at the country school I attended.  We studied penmanship.  But we knew what a writer was.  A writer was somebody who was dead.  And if he was any good he had been dead a long time. If he was real good, people killed him. They killed him with hemlock. Hemlock was the Greek word for Freshman Composition.

 

The country school I attended was closed, and we were bused to Chillicothe. Chillicothe, Texas is small. Chillicothe is so small there’s only one Baptist Church. Chillicothe is so small you have to go to Quanah to have a coincidence.  For a good coincidence, you have to go to Vernon.  Chillicothe was fairly bursting with truth and beauty, and my teacher encouraged me to write something that had an epiphany.  For an epiphany, you had to go all the way to Wichita Falls.

 

Real writers wrote about such things as I had never heard of.Damsels.  Splendor falling on castle walls.  For splendor, we had to go to the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show. Since I wasn’t overly familiar with damsels and  splendor, I tried reading what real writers wrote about rural life.  “Dear child of nature, let them rail.  There is a nest in a green vale.”  Which was pretty mystifying to me.  Didn’t writers get chiggers like everybody else?

 

It looked like for truth and beauty you had to cross Red River.  All I knew about was a little place called Chillicothe.  And it wasn’t even the Chillicothe that was on the map.  Truth in that mythical place was neither comic nor tragic, neither big nor eternal.  And it was revealed through the lives of common folk who belched and fornicated, and knew moments of courage, and saw beauty in their meager lives.  But I could not write about the people I knew without using the vocabulary they knew.  My father did not believe a cowboy said “golly bum” when a horse ran him through a bob wire fence.

 

Words are not casual things.  They are powerful.  Even explosive.  Words can start wars, or families.  Words can wound, they can shock and offend.  Words can also heal, and explain, and give hope and understanding.  Words have an intrinsic worth, and there is pride and delight in using the right word.  Anyone who chops cotton with an axe is a hoer.

(From “Truth and Beauty”)

 

THE REST OF THE STORY

In New Testament times, paper was expensive and writing laborious.  It is for that reason that some stories in the Gospels seem truncated.  Today you can learn The Rest of the Story:

 

The Good Deed, John 9:

 

Jesus spat on the ground and made some mud with the spittle; he rubbed the mud on the man’s eyes, and told him, “Go wash your face in the pool of Siloam.  So the man went, washed his face, and came back seeing.  His neighbors then, and the people who had seen him begging before this, asked, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?”

The rest of the story:

 

The following day, the man came to Jesus again, and said, “You have ruined my life.  I can’t read or write.  I don’t recognize numbers.  I have no skills.  And now my neighbors know I’m not blind.  How can I beg?  Are you going to let me starve?”  And Jesus spat on the ground again.

Intensity from page to stage

‘As I Lay Dying,’ rich with inner voices, an unblinking look at the human animal

• Kathleen Allen Kallen@azstarnet.com

Dylan Page and Matt Bowdren in Rogue Theatre’s production of “As I Lay Dying.” 

 

 The company opens Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying,” a novel steeped in Mississippi mud, dysfunctional characters and words so lush and writing so magical that it, along with his other works, won Faulkner a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

“One of the things I really really like about this novel is that Faulkner looks very unflinchingly at us – or makes us look at ourselves unflinchingly,” said Joseph McGrath, co-founder of Rogue and the director of this production.

“We may have all sorts of higher thoughts, but we are physical beings, and we are never really allowed to forget that. It’s an unflinching look at what it is to be human not just in an emotional, but physical sense.”

Faulkner wrote “As I Lay Dying” in 1930. Since then it has been consistently cited as one of the great American novels of the 20th century.

And the play, adapted by Annette Martin, doesn’t fool around with the master’s text.

“We aren’t doing the entire novel,” said McGrath.

“The adaptation cuts a lot out. But there isn’t a word that’s not Faulkner’s. We’ve pulled everything from the book.”

“As I Lay Dying” chronicles the journey of the dirt-poor Bundren family members as they attempt to bring the wife and mother, Addie, to her requested burial site.

It is character-rich, and each of them delivers monologues, revealing inner thoughts, turmoils and troubles.

“They are all narrators, but not all the narrators are reliable,” said McGrath.

“So what you’re doing is piecing together what is happening and what is true and reliable. The effect is one of isolation, where every person is in his own world.”

McGrath is compelled by the family in this story, and the nature of family that Faulkner addresses in “As I Lay Dying.”

“This family is so inept without its mother,” he said.

“We join them as they are in the death watch, and already the family is beginning to disintegrate. Their journey, without that figure of Addie that would help them make decisions along their way, is pretty inept and comic. I hope to bring out the comedy. In a way, it’s deeply disturbing and very close to farce.”

And as for those who fear Faulkner, this may be your chance to embrace the author.

Of all of his works, this is the “shallow end,” said McGrath.

“This is the easy way to get into Faulkner.”

• Presented by: The Rogue Theatre.

• Adapted by Annette Martin

• Where: 300 E. University Blvd. in the Historic Y.

The story

Addie Bundren is dying, watching as her son Cash builds her coffin. She has one wish: to be buried in a town 40 miles away.

It’s a difficult request to fulfill, but the family tries. Addie’s body in hand, they take nine days and deal with flood, fire and buzzards in their quest to bring Addie to her final resting place in her hometown of Jefferson, Miss.

While committed to granting their mother’s desire, the characters, through a series of monologues, reveal some desires of their own that they think can be fulfilled in Jefferson.

ANOTHER ADAPTATION OF ‘”AS I Lay Dying” was written by Robert Flynn. called “Journey to Jefferson” and was first directed by PAUL BAKER at the Dallas Theater Center.  Robert Flynn’s adaptation was later widely produced and won international awards.

IT IS TIME DALLAS SAVED Frank Lloyd Wright’s crumbling Kalita Humphreys Theater

Staff photographer

It’s time for Dallas to save Frank Lloyd Wright’s crumbling Kalita Humphreys Theater

Written by

Mark Lamster, Architecture Critic

Of all the buildings in Dallas, none has been so consistently misunderstood, mistreated, misused, mismanaged, maligned and generally neglected as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kalita Humphreys Theater.

It is a sorry treatment that began before this landmark structure was even completed, in 1959, and has pretty much continued unabated ever since. Even this paper has been guilty of defamation. After one of the many unfortunate renovations inflicted upon the theater over the years, my predecessor as architecture critic bemoaned it as a “forlorn ammonite in a sea of asphalt.”

Let me suggest a more generous reading.

The Kalita, which became a city landmark in 2005, is an iconic late work by America’s most singular architect; a masterpiece of structural daring wedged with care into a verdant landscape; and an enveloping jewel that promotes innovative theatrical productions. At least this is how it was conceived, and in many ways how it remains, although its attributes have been veiled and sometimes erased by decades of accumulated degradation, in both the physical and figurative senses.

🎙️ DMN architecture critic Mark Lamster discusses the Kalita Humphreys Theater on KERA’s Art & Seek Podcast:

PAUL BAKER was Randy Ford’s greatest mentor.  Randy followed him from the Dallas Theater Center, Baylor University. Trinity University, and back to the Dallas Theater Center.  Randy received his Masters of Fine Arts from Trinity University at the Dallas Theater Center.  That is a lot of history.

                                                 

KEEP GOING DOWN

PAUL BAKER AND INTEGRATION OF ABILITIES

Paul Baker and the Integration of Abilities Hardcover –  

by Robert Flynn(Editor), Eugene McKinney(Editor)

1. 

   Integration of Abilities: Exercises for Creative Growth

   Paul Baker

“Irritating, arrogant, nuts–and a genius.” That’s what Charles Laughton said of Paul Baker. He also said, “Paul Baker is one of the most important minds in the world theater. He seems to have invented new ways of doing things, and I think something big will come out of it.”

About the Author

Robert Flynn is the author of twelve books including North to Yesterday, Wanderer Springs, and Tie-Fast Country. Flynn’s stage adaptation of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dyingpremiered at Baylor Theater and was presented by the Dallas Theater Center at the Theater of Nations competition in Paris.

Eugene McKinney was associated with Paul Baker for thirty-nine continuous years as a playwriting professor and playwright-in-residence. He has written and produced ten plays, four of which were published, and eight television scripts that have been produced on major networks. For twenty-four years McKinney and Flynn co-taught a fiction-writing course at Trinity University

---

More about the author

› Visit Amazon’s Robert Flynn Page

 Biography

Robert Flynn, professor emeritus, Trinity University and a native of Chillicothe, Texas, is the author of fourteen books. Nine novels: North To Yesterday; In the House of the Lord; The Sounds of Rescue, The Signs of Hope; Wanderer Springs, The Last Klick, The Devils Tiger, co-authored with the late Dan Klepper, Tie-Fast Country, Echos of Glory.and his most recent Jade:Outlaw. His dramatic adaptation of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying was the United States entry at the Theater of Nations in Paris in l964 and won a Special Jury Award. He is also the author of a two-part documentary, “A Cowboy Legacy” shown on ABC-TV; a nonfiction narrative, A Personal War in Vietnam, an oral history, When I was Just Your Age, and a memoir, Burying the Farm.

Also, three story collections, Seasonal Rain, Living With The Hyenas, Slouching Toward Zion, and a collection of essays, Growing Up a Sullen Baptist. He is co-editor of Paul Baker and the Integration of Abilities.

North to Yesterday received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times. Seasonal Rain, was co-winner of the Texas Literary Festival Award. Wanderer Springs received a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. Living With the Hyenas received a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Echoes of Glory received a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. Flynn’s work has been translated into German, Spanish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Malayalam, Arabic, Tamil, Hindi, Kanada, and Vietnamese. Flynn is a member of The Texas Institute of Letters, The Writers Guild of America, Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Associate, and P.E.N. In 1998, he received the “Distinguished Achievement Award” from the Texas Institute of Letters. (See Flynn’s Blog.)

Robert Flynn is a native of Chillicothe, Texas, the best known Chillicothe outside of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, despite its size. Chillicothe is so small there’s only one Baptist Church. Chillicothe is so small you have to go to Quanah to have a coincidence. Chillicothe is fairly bursting with truth and beauty and at an early age Flynn set out to find it.

His life and work could be described as ‘The Search for Morals, Ethics, Religion, or at least a good story in Texas and lesser known parts of the world’.

Robert Flynn (author) – STANDING ON THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

Bob’s Story:

 

I was born at home in a house surrounded by cotton fields.  A few miles to the east and we would would have been in an oil field.  A few miles west and we would have been on land good for nothing but running cows and chasing jackrabbits.  My grandfather had been tricked into buying the only place in twenty miles that would grow cotton.

 

It was in the cotton field that I first learned the power of the English language.  Those who chopped cotton with a hoe were not called hoers.  As my mother explained to me with a switch.  It occurred to me that if the wrong word like hoer had the power to move my mother to such action, just think what using the right word like hoe hand could accomplish.

 

That was when I first got the notion of being a writer.  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.  We didn’t go in much for writing at the country school I attended.  We studied penmanship.  But we knew what a writer was.  A writer was somebody who was dead.  And if he was any good he had been dead a long time. If he was real good, people killed him. They killed him with hemlock. Hemlock was the Greek word for Freshman Composition.

 

The country school I attended was closed, and we were bused to Chillicothe. Chillicothe, Texas is small. Chillicothe is so small there’s only one Baptist Church. Chillicothe is so small you have to go to Quanah to have a coincidence.  For a good coincidence, you have to go to Vernon.  Chillicothe was fairly bursting with truth and beauty, and my teacher encouraged me to write something that had an epiphany.  For an epiphany, you had to go all the way to Wichita Falls.

 

Real writers wrote about such things as I had never heard of.Damsels.  Splendor falling on castle walls.  For splendor, we had to go to the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show. Since I wasn’t overly familiar with damsels and  splendor, I tried reading what real writers wrote about rural life.  “Dear child of nature, let them rail.  There is a nest in a green vale.”  Which was pretty mystifying to me.  Didn’t writers get chiggers like everybody else?

 

It looked like for truth and beauty you had to cross Red River.  All I knew about was a little place called Chillicothe.  And it wasn’t even the Chillicothe that was on the map.  Truth in that mythical place was neither comic nor tragic, neither big nor eternal.  And it was revealed through the lives of common folk who belched and fornicated, and knew moments of courage, and saw beauty in their meager lives.  But I could not write about the people I knew without using the vocabulary they knew.  My father did not believe a cowboy said “golly bum” when a horse ran him through a bob wire fence.

 

Words are not casual things.  They are powerful.  Even explosive.  Words can start wars, or families.  Words can wound, they can shock and offend.  Words can also heal, and explain, and give hope and understanding.  Words have an intrinsic worth, and there is pride and delight in using the right word.  Anyone who chops cotton with an axe is a hoer.

(From “Truth and Beauty”)

 

THE REST OF THE STORY

In New Testament times, paper was expensive and writing laborious.  It is for that reason that some stories in the Gospels seem truncated.  Today you can learn The Rest of the Story:

 

The Good Deed, John 9:

 

Jesus spat on the ground and made some mud with the spittle; he rubbed the mud on the man’s eyes, and told him, “Go wash your face in the pool of Siloam.  So the man went, washed his face, and came back seeing.  His neighbors then, and the people who had seen him begging before this, asked, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?”

The rest of the story:

 

The following day, the man came to Jesus again, and said, “You have ruined my life.  I can’t read or write.  I don’t recognize numbers.  I have no skills.  And now my neighbors know I’m not blind.  How can I beg?  Are you going to let me starve?”  And Jesus spat on the ground again.

(From Slouching Toward Zion)

If you are unable to find any of Robert Flynn’s books,

contact him.  

See Robert’s page iWikipedia.com.

Author | Teacher

Robert Flynn is well known

 for his Western Novels,

which are infused with

his wry sense of humor, as well as for his sometimes controversial opinions on religion, politics, war 

and the world at large.

 

Take a look at his blog, his novels and his other books to get a taste of his unique perspective and his highly skilled narrative and style.

STANDING ON THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

NOW AVAILABLE in the Apple App Store: a new multimedia adventure, from award-winning author and Texas Literary Hall of Fame member Robert Flynn. Antarctica – If angels had blubber instead of flutter; if they sang Holy Cow instead of Hosanna, Antarctica would be paradise.

 

Beautiful beyond description because there is nothing else like it, endlessly fascinating–an everlasting exhibit of iceberg sculptures as discrete as snowflakes, penguins porpoising like synchronized swimmers, the blowing of whales, the tympani of ice cracking and glaciers calving. It is seen only by the blessed and those who know it best fear the loss of it most.

Jade: The Law

Is doing the right thing the right thing to do? Riley O’Connor did what he was taught was right. When he told his story his listeners agreed he had done the right thing. But Riley was not convinced and became Jade, a feared and respected outlaw. Then he met a woman who could prove he did the right thing but she did what everyone knew was the wrong thing and refused to confess it.

 

 

 

See Bob’s interview.

Home  About Flynn Flynn’s Blog News & Events Novels Other Books Contact Flynn

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Flynn
Flynn in 2008
Born	April 12, 1932 (age 87) Chillicothe, Texas
Occupation	Novelist
Genre	Texas literature, Western fiction, satire
Subject	Texas, war, religion
Notable works	North To Yesterday
Website
robert-flynn.net

Robert Flynn (né Robert Lopez Flynn; born 12 April 1932 Chillicothe, Texas) is an author and professor emeritus at Trinity University.

Contents

• 1Styles and themes
• 2Bibliography
  • 2.1Novels
  • 2.2Vietnam Memoir
  • 2.3Short story collections
  • 2.4Essays
  • 2.5Religious/social essays
• 3References
• 4Further reading
• 5External links

Styles and themes[edit]

Flynn’s early fame came with the novel, North to Yesterday, which was a national bestseller. In Don Quixote fashion, it mocked the legend of the cowboy in Western novels while paying homage to it at the same time (anticipating Larry McMurtry‘s Lonesome Dove). Later works focused on more modern themes: rural life, going to war, religion in modern times and conflicts between “small town morality” and mass media/pop culture.

Novels like In the House of the Lord explored more religious/spiritual themes. Wanderer Springs adopted the gently satirical tone of his earlier works while also examining the interconnectedness between people and families in a small Texas town (inviting comparison to writers like Elmer Kelton or Garrison Keillor). The Last Klick touches upon themes of his service in the Vietnam War (reminiscent of novelist Tim O’Brien). In his latest novel Tie-Fast Country, Flynn returns to earlier themes, depicting a grandmother rancher with a checkered past who is out of sync with contemporary life. (The narrator, on the other hand, is a TV news producer who has to confront her).

Flynn’s short stories touch upon more serious themes and are written perhaps with a more lyrical style.

In 2010 and 2011, Flynn published two novels through JoSara MeDia, Jade:Outlaw and its sequel, Jade: the Law. Both novels portray the grim realities of living in west Texas in the late 19th century where settlers/Indians/Mexicans frequently clash. Jade, the protagonist, is hired as an escort for cattle, guarding property and chasing after rustlers. He quickly discovers that just to do his job means getting involved in brutal situations that trouble his conscience. Jade ends up falling in love with Crow Poison, an Indian woman whose husband he had killed. Eventually he realizes that both sides have culpability. His outrage translates into a desire to fight for the sake of justice (even if it results in tragedy). At the end of the novel, Jade (with the support of his wife) agrees to serve as sheriff for his town (which becomes the basis for the sequel, Jade: The Law). Of this ebook, San Antonio Express News book reviewer Ed Conroy writes:^[1] “Flynn brilliantly employs a directly simple, subtle and at times sardonic narrative voice to tell this tale. It is alternately tough and tender, succinct and sweet, cadenced to the clip-clop of a horse trotting down Main Street, the hullabaloo of a steam locomotive triumphantly making its way into town amid a jubilant crowd’s hoopla, and, of course, to the shots of guns of many kinds fired in self-defense, anger, treachery and haste….Through chronicling Jade’s struggles to bring some ordinary order into what eventually becomes Jade Town, Flynn makes clear that the cost of many of our male ancestors’ genocidal policies toward Indians, systematic abuse of women and fears of the “mongrelization” of the “white race” was massive social trauma of immensely tragic proportions.”

Flynn was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame in October 2012.^[2]

Flynn taught writing to college students over four decades. In a 2007 audio interview,^[3] he said, “You can read any book on writing fiction for example, and they will tell you the same thing. Someone may say it in a different way that gives you better insight, but there are no secrets in writing; it’s just a matter of doing it.”

Bibliography[edit]

Novels[edit]

• North To Yesterday
• In the House of the Lord
• The Sounds of Rescue, The Signs of Hope
• Wanderer Springs
• The Last Klick
• The Devil’s Tiger, with Dan Klepper
• Tie-Fast Country
• Jade: The Outlaw (ebook + pb) JoSara MeDia (September 1, 2010)
• Jade: The Law (ebook + pb) JoSara MeDia (October 2011)

Vietnam Memoir[edit]

• A Personal War In Vietnam

Short story collections[edit]

• Living with the Hyenas
• Seasonal Rain
• Slouching towards Zion

Essays[edit]

• When I was Just Your Age, oral histories, edited with Susan Russell
• Growing Up a Sullen Baptist
• Paul Baker and the Integration of Abilities

Religious/social essays[edit]

• The Most Famous Christian of the 20th century?
• For the love of Agape

References[edit]

1. ^ Reprinted in full on the Amazon.com Book page for this book
2. ^ “Texas Literary Hall of Fame | Fort Worth Library”. Fortworthtexas.gov. Archived from the original on 2014-05-12. Retrieved 2012-11-02.
3. ^ “Texas author Robert Flynn Interview (2007)”. Archive.org. Retrieved 3 April 2019.

Further reading[edit]

• Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists featuring Robert Flynn. Edited by Nan Cuba and Riley Robinson (Trinity University Press, 2008).

External links[edit]

• Interview with Robert Flynn(about his book Growing Up a Sullen Baptist).
• The Door: The World’s Pretty Much Only Magazine of Religious Satire. Essay by Robert Flynn.
• Robert Flynn’s Author Website
• 2007 Interview with Texas Author Robert Flynn (audio)

Authority control	BNF: cb145351460 (data) ISNI: 0000 0000 8408 6294 LCCN: n50003908 SNAC: w67954sz SUDOC: 136917534 VIAF: 111356669 WorldCat Identities (via VIAF): 111356669

Categories:

• 1932 births
• 20th-century American novelists
• 21st-century American novelists
• American male novelists
• American military personnel of the Vietnam War
• Living people
• Western (genre) writers
• Writers from San Antonio
• Novelists from Texas
• People from Chillicothe, Texas

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Robert Flynn Author- NORTH TO YESTERDAY

NORTH TO YESTERDAY

by Robert Flynn

NORTH TO YESTERDAY, first published in 1967 will become an e-book later this week (May 1, 2012). The book received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, was named one of the best books of the year by True Magazine, and was named a Notable Book by the New York Times.

Robert Flynn Author- JADE: OUTLAW, a new novel

ROBERT FLYNN’S LATEST NOVEL: Jade: Outlaw

Is doing the right thing the right thing to do? Riley O’Connor did what he was taught was right. When he told his story his listeners agreed he had done the right thing. But Riley was not convinced and became Jade, a feared and respected outlaw. Then he met a woman who could prove he did the right thing but she did what everyone knew was the wrong thing and refused to confess it.

For more about Robert Flynn and his work go to http://www.robert-flynn.net/