"In Adventures with a Texas Humanist, Jim Lee explores Texas life and letters and puts them in the wider context of cultural history, quoting everyone from the Bible to Shakespeare to T. S. Eliot. This book is the first to bring together Lee's strengths as a literary and cultural critic, a folklorist, and a humorist." "In the first two essays in this volume - "The Age of Dobie" and "The Age of McMurtry" - Lee places the writers, the politicians, and the cultural leaders in the context of each age. Subsequent chapters discuss writers and trends in Texas literature, such as long-standing arguments about Texas literature, and surveys bodies of work that have had an impact on the state's literary community." "The second section of the book looks at Texas folklore and culture and studies the way Texans live and work and see the world." "The final section of the book is made up of personal essays by a man whose ideas and attitudes are sometimes odd but always humorous. Lee writes of the life he has led in Texas as a college professor and takes a backward look at his life from boyhood to service in the U.S. Navy."--BOOK JACKET.