Liars, All
Larry McMurtry’s book with Danny Deck may be the only novel I’ve read that took place in Texas, but it’s not the only book. The Liar’s Club
Although she didn’t really talk about it, I know that Mary Karr and I grew up with the same pukey, petroleum-burning smell in the air. We both had clumps of black oil stuck to our toes when we stepped out of the Gulf of Mexico. We both knew people who had moved from the small, woody towns of East Texas, drawn by the prospect of jobs at the oil refineries.
“The Liar’s Club” was what she called her father’s group of friends that sat around drinking beer, playing dominoes and telling tall tales. My mother-in-law could probably describe her own father the same way, though he never moved away from his small East Texas town. We even have cassette tapes of him telling some of his stories, joyfully lying to us all from beyond the grave.