Brian Allen Carr runs a lap at Bill Schupp Park in just six and a half minutes, but what?s really racing is his mind.
The 32-year-old fiction writer has conceived many a storyline during his regular jogs at the North McAllen park, and the gravel track has proven to be fertile creative ground ? Carr?s piece ?The first Henley? was named the winner of the Texas Observer?s first annual short story contest Tuesday. Carr?s story was hand-picked by none other than Larry McMurtry, the iconic Texas author of Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment and The last Picture Show, who praised its ?good sense of atmosphere,? according to the magazine.
The Observer describes ?The first Henley? as a ?tale of an Old West gunfighter stripped of his capacity for holding a gun, a story which mixes fact and fiction and culminates at the first-ever Lone Star Fair in 1852 Corpus Christi.?
It?s a ?cowboy myth ? intended to poke fun at the cowboy myth,? Carr said ? a model McMurtry has used many times throughout his prolific career. The contest received entries from throughout the world.
Carr suspects McMurtry might have picked up on his ?regional voice.? ?I sound as though I come from somewhere,? he told Festiva in a recent interview. that Texas ?voice? transcends the page ? Carr speaks with a langorous drawl that points back to his childhood homes of Austin and Corpus Christi.
Carr has worked as an English instructor at South Texas College for the past two years. He followed a girlfriend down to the Rio Grande Valley in his mid-20s, then earned a degree from The University of Texas-Pan American. his only knowledge of the Valley came from reading William S. Burroughs, the legendary Beat writer who lived in South Texas in the late 1940s. He?s formed his own opinion on the region after living here for several years.
?It?s not exactly America,? he said. ?It?s kind of it?s own little country.?
The Observer?s prize comes on the heels of his first book, Short Bus, a collection of his original short stories published earlier this year by the Texas Review Press.
To varying degrees, much of Carr?s dark, witty fiction is rooted in reality.
In ?Short Bus,? the book?s title story, a special-education teacher ?with his own disabilities? takes his students on a trip to rob a bank. Carr himself worked with special-ed children at McAllen?s Nikki Rowe High School. ?a lot of it is drawn from real life, probably too much,? he said, but it?s ?pushing reality beyond the point where it could go.?
Carr is currently working on a second book, tentatively titled Vampire Conditions, which he hopes to have finished by the end of the summer.
The book will deal with the untimely death of his older brother, whose body was found in a burnt-out car 10 years ago. It?s a subject Carr is only now ready to face in his writing.
?I didn?t know how to do it in a way that wasn?t syrupy and annoying,? he said. this summer will be ?Carr?s last in the Valley. He and his family are relocating to Victoria, where he will teach at the University of Houston-Victoria.
Carr?s short story ?The Cyclops? was featured on the cover of Festiva?s first annual Creative Writing edition in 2008. Short Bus can be purchased at Barnes & Noble and amazon.com. Learn more about the book at shortbusbook.com. Click here to read a short Q&A with the author from 2008.
Watch a video of Carr reading from his book Short Bus here: youtube.com/watch?v=VFR5RuZWmfo
Brandon R. Garcia is editor of Festiva and Valley Life. you can reach him at (956) 683-4461.
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