I had just turned six when he died, I in Birmingham, Alabama, he in Aus¬tin, Texas. But somehow we have denied space, time, and even death to become friends. I never met Roy Bedichek, never sat with him at Conver¬sation Rock, and never corresponded with him. Still he has influenced me more than all but a few living men.

One might expect the editor of such a volume as this to begin with bold assertions about the power and range of fiction in Texas: as virile as a Texas bull, as varied as the Texas landscape—that sort of thing. I will spare us. Whenever fiction from this region is presented as in this volume, it is inevitably attached to the word Texas: Texas Fiction. Texas Literature. And off it goes into the back room to be shelved with the Texana between the boots and the spurs. I would like to fight that.

I hate moving. First, there are the books. I don’t know how many, a few thousand, I guess. To me, a writer and English teacher, the quantity does not strike me as anything really totally outrageous, but it’s enough that movers give me an unenthusiastic stare when we do the walk through for the bid. “Are all these going?” I say, “Yep,” and spare them the story of my life, the interests, the hobbies, the career moves, the failed career moves, the fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams and desires that these books represent.

On his lap rests The Lover Within by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. It's not what his dad would have been reading. His dad read books about the German general staff, Napolean, and the Civil War. Warriors. Moore and Gillette have written about the warrior within, too. Lyman didn't read that one. They also wrote about the magician and the king. Lyman read The King Within. Kings and Lovers, that's what Lyman thinks about. King Arthur, Lancelot, John F. Kennedy, and D. H. Lawrence.