David Courtney joined Texas Monthly in 2005 and has written “The Texanist” since 2007. He has also contributed to features such as the annual Bum Steer Awards, the quinquennial review of the fifty best barbecue joints in Texas, “The Great Terquasquicentennial Road Trip,” “The 50 Greatest Hamburgers in Texas,” and “The 40 Best Small-Town Cafes,” as well as “Snap Judgment” (a compilation of the ten greatest plays in Texas college football history) and “The Texanist’s Parenting Quiz,” among others. He lives in Austin.

Jack Unruh (1935–2016) was an award-winning illustrator whose art was featured in numerous publications, including Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Atlantic Monthly, Time, Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest, New York Magazine, National Geographic, Sports Afield, Field and Stream, and His work was included in Communication Arts Illustration Annual since its inception and also appeared in numerous issues of American Illustration, Graphis, AIGA, and Print.

6.25.2017  David Courtney unmasked, on “The Texanist,” Temple, and teamwork with the late Jack Unruh

David Courtney, the Texas Monthly writer and editor behind the popular nom de plume The Texanist, talked with Lone Star Lit this week via email about his new collection. The Texanist: Fine Advice on Livingalso showcases a selection of acclaimed illustrator Jack Unruh’s work, gathering the best of the illustrations he created for Texas Monthly’s back-page column, along with the serious and not-so-serious questions that inspired them.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Dear Texanist: We are a startup digital news site that writes only about Texas books, authors, and Texas bookish events. What advice do you have for us? —Curious in Lubbock

THE TEXANIST: Now, here is a business model that cannot fail. Keep having smart, talented, interesting, handsome folks of wholly unassailable character on as your front-page profile guests and continued success will be assured. The Texanist wouldn’t change a thing.

Davd, when did you discover Texas Monthly and when did Texas Monthly discover you?

My earliest memories of the magazine are as a kid growing up in Temple. My parents were subscribers and, like many a young Texan, I remember seeing various issues lying around the house. There is a hallway at the magazine’s office that is hung with all the covers, going back to the very beginning, and there are certain ones that conjure very specific memories, or images, of that particular issue sitting on a particular coffee table or end table at my parents’ house. But it wasn’t until late in high school and early in college that I started picking it up and reading it. Joe Nick Patoski, who was senior editor at the time, was always doing great stuff and I remember regularly looking for his name on the contents pages. Joe Nick, it turned out, was also managing Joe King Carrasco and the Crowns at the time and I was a huge Joe King fan—a devoted member of the fan club and everything. To this day one of my proudest achievements is having won the Joe King Carrasco Fan Club Essay Contest, which, it is very likely, Joe Nick judged. Coincidence? Kismet? I cannot say. Anyway, I got to be Crown for a Day, and all that that affords one, when Joe King played AquaFest in 1984.

About ten years later, following in the footsteps of my friend and colleague John Spong, I did an internship at the magazine. And back in those days you could kind of attach yourself to a writer, which I did with—drumroll, please—Joe Nick. That was my real introduction to the actual magazine.

I enjoyed your piece in November about your dad being the mayor of Temple in 1976. What was growing up in Temple in the seventies like?

Temple was a great place to grow up in. It was big enough, or seemed big enough to me at the time, to not be completely boring. It was also rural-ish and relaxed enough for a kid to experience plenty of adventure. I have great memories of traipsing the banks of Bird Creek from one end of town to the other. We’d wander along the creek, from fort to fort, as it ran through people’s backyards, behind industrial facilities, and beneath I-35, via the “Bat Cave,” without a care in the world. Smoking grapevine, looking for snakes, happening upon a stash a of dirty magazines, all the while openly armed with sling shots, pellet guns, and firecrackers. I also had a mini-bike that I rode all over town—without a helmet! What were our parents thinking?! I wonder if any of that goes on today? Maybe it was more of time thing than a place thing.

In 1984 you began attending UT. What was it like being a college student in Austin in the eighties?

Coming from Temple, which I quickly discovered was actually a fairly sleepy little town comparatively, I found UT and Austin to be, as you might imagine, quite exhilarating. There were as many students as there were people back in Temple. The overall diversity of the student population, as well as the Austin population, is probably what struck me most. Just as it happens these days with newcomers, I quickly became enamored with the music scene. We’d go to Antone’s, little blues clubs on the East Side, honky-tonks out on Burnet road and elsewhere, and soak it all up. The options, even back then, really were endless. I also remember embarking on what we called “Hill Country Drinkin’ Tours,” which involved loading up a cooler with beer and spending the day driving all over the Hill Country—Wimberley, Blanco, Johnson City, Luckenbach, Fredericksburg, Llano, you name it. To say it was a carefree time would be to understate it severely.

You were an intern at Texas Monthly, as you mentioned, and began working there as a staffer in 2005. What’s it like to work at the National Magazine of Texas?

When you consider the magazine’s rich, rich forty-plus-year history, it is hard to think of employment there as anything but a privilege. Gary Cartwright, Billy Lee Brammer, Larry L. King, A.C. Greene, Jan Reid, Paul Burka, Stephen Harrigan, Skip Hollandsworth, Mimi Swartz, Annie Dingus, Pat Sharpe, Michael Hall, Pam Colloff, Katy Vine, Sarah Bird, and so many more great, great writers. Are you kidding? I get to associate myself with such names. That really is an honor. Also, the subject matter—Texas—never gets old. Ever.

How did you and your illustrator, the late Jack Unruh, collaborate on The Texanist?

It’s funny, but Jack and I did not meet in person until late in our relationship. Typically, I would procrastinate such that we’d only send him the lead question that I’d be answering for a particular column and not the response to that question. “Do country dancers ever go clockwise?” “Are ‘truck nuts’ appropriate?”

Luckily, he was an imaginative and patient man. With such limited information, he’d come up with an idea for a fun and whimsical image and send a rough sketch. We (the art department, the editor, and myself) would agree and then Jack would ask for reference photography—almost always of my face in some sort of crazy pose. Somewhere there is a file of some very embarrassing snapshots of myself. And then in a week or two we’d get the finished masterpiece in the mail.

Yes, in the mail. Jack had not gone fully digital. It was awesome when the package with one of his illustrations arrived. They were always covered with brown kraft paper and we’d have little unveilings. Always a mind-blowing experience. He was so good. I was so lucky.

How did the Texanist book come about?

Jack called me at about the same time he revealed his cancer diagnosis and told me that UT Press was interested in doing the book. He insisted I be his co-author. He was, I found out later than I wish I had, as gracious as he was talented. Jack’s battle was mercifully short, but I worked with his wonderful and equally gracious wife, Judy Whalen, to get the contract signed. Casey Kittrell at UT Press, a person I have known through Texas Monthly circles for a long time, made it all happen. The whole experience has been a pleasure. I could not be more proud to be associated with Jack and UT Press. The book is a great tribute to him.

Why does the Texanist always speak in third person?

The Texanist has referred to himself this way since his very first column appeared back in July 2007. This is how he communicates best with the folks that reach out to him for advice and he has no plans to change that.

When Jack passed away you decided to end “The Texanist” column as we know it. Would you explain?

At the time of Jack’s death, we had been working together on the column for nine years. He had done more than a hundred Texanist illustrations. And I had answered what felt like one million pieces of mail.

And although the decision came about under less than ideal circumstances, it was probably time to take a little break from the advice column format for a while. For the issue that would have represented our ninth anniversary working together with the Texanist, I memorialized Jack on the back page. After that I started doing essays, which have been a whole lot of fun. There are plans to in the works to revive the old-school advice column in the very near future, so keep an eye out for that. The people of Texas (and California and Oklahoma) need me. And I’m excited to slip my consultative hat back on.

Last question.

Dear Texanist: If you were stranded for a week in remote Boca Chica, which three Texas books would you be relieved to realize that you had stashed in your beach bag?

The Texanist would be very pleased if he had remembered to pack Lonesome Dove, a book that is lengthy enough to pass a fair amount of time with, and which is one tome, above maybe all others, the Texanist finds to be ever-readable. He’d also be happy to find The Gay Place, Billy Brammer’s masterpiece. The Gay Place captures Austin when it was really just becoming the Austin that it is today and the Texanist enjoys imagining himself as a minor character in the book. And, because the Texanist likes reading about Texas, he would never imaginarily travel anywhere without all five volumes (This counts as one book, right?) of Louis J. Wortham’s History of Texas. “Late in the autumn of the year 1820 a lone horseman rode through the wilderness of the Spanish province of Texas toward the town of San Antonio de Bexar…”

Additionally, the Texanist wouldn’t be bummed if he reached in his bag to find Wild Edible Plants of Texas, A Field Guide to Texas Snakes, and the Hooked on Seafood: A Compilation of Texas’s Best cookbook.

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