Everything's Bigger in Texas

September 15, 2017
The life of the one-and-only Kinky Friedman (b. 1944).In this amiable biography, journalist Sullivan (Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter, 2010) follows the life and career of this larger-than-life figure. Best known to audiences either as a singer/songwriter or an offbeat mystery novelist, Friedman has been stirring the pot for more than 50 years, counting among his friends such legends as Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. The author dutifully recounts the legend of the "Kinkster" but rarely manages to pierce the veil of the carefully constructed persona that the Chicago-born original "Texas Jewboy" has created. The book follows the phases of Friedman's life in chronological order, passing quickly over his Texas childhood to discover the songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, circa 1970, trying to sell songs to Waylon Jennings. Unlike compatriots Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and even KISS members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Friedman was unapologetically Jewish. "He wears his Jewishness like a backstage pass," said a friend. According to his brother, Friedman was able to "blend Lenny Bruce with the Flying Burrito Brothers and Hank Williams" and created a brand that set him apart from the Nashville scene. Sullivan doesn't shy away from controversy--Friedman's satire "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore" offended a wide swath of Americans, and the anti-feminist "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed" does not age well--but she does gloss over her subject's hardcore drug habit. Political correctness aside, Friedman's heart seems to be in the right place, and his cigar-chomping bravado must be a comforting guise for some American men. As his singing career cooled, we find him becoming a popular mystery novelist. "Kinky's legacy is the ability to inspire," writes the author, "to make people laugh, to make them think, to skewer sacred cows and hypocrisy, to continue to move forward, and to be his own man." A solid if conventional biography that doesn't go deep enough into the man behind the brand.

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October 15, 2017
Before he was a regular columnist for Texas Monthly; before he ran for governor of Texas ( Why the hell not? ); and before he was the author of 18 mysteries featuring himself as a crime solver, Friedman was the leader of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, famous for such satirical songs as They Ain't Makin' Jews like Jesus Anymore. A raconteur par excellence, Friedman is a fine subject for author Sullivan, and her biography greatly benefits from lengthy interviews with Friedman, his friends, and bandmates. Friedman contributes the foreword, but he claims not to have read the book (although he says he's heard good things about it). Sullivan covers Friedman's time in Borneo with the Peace Corps, his appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, his 10-year residency at the Lone Star Cafe in New York, where he found himself in the company of celebrities and an endless supply of cocaine. He returned to Texas, quit drugs, and began writing a novel a year, winning high-profile fans like Bill Clinton. Folksy in the vein of Mark Twain and Will Rogers, Friedman is strongly opinionated, eminently quotable, often immature, sometimes culturally insensitive, but always interesting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)