Hook 'em Horns

The Texas Book Festival, held each autumn in Austin, is a predictably magnanimous affair, drawing scores of authors and thousands of participants to its three-day celebration of the printed word. This year's fair, dubbed by a local rag "the finest pound-for-pound" festival in its history, drew such notables as Gore Vidal, Richard Ford, and Amy Sedaris. (Barack Obama's Saturday morning appearance won, hands-down, in the category of events-impossible-to-get-into.) There were parties and panels and pundits galore, and because the festival took place over the weekend preceding Halloween, there were also costumed revelers wandering all over Austin's famously weird city streets.

But surely the most Texas of all the gatherings took place at the black-tie literary gala on Friday night, when patrons paid $350 a head to gather at the Austin Marriott. When Gore Vidal addressed the crowd and dared to bring up George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, he was mightily received - by applause from the rich Texas liberals and jeers from the rich Texas conservatives. Only in the Lone Star state would two such disparate crowds compete to be at the same star-studded event.

Full disclosure: This writer, a native Texan long accustomed to such territorial disputes, escaped the black-tie dinner by claiming a previous commitment - an outside swim under an October moon.