A NEW BOOK. An Obscure Order: Reflections on Cultural Mythologies

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This new collection of essays contains presentations delivered at conferences or published in other venues, but never gathered into one volume. The theme that threads through them is looking at myths in cultural contexts as well as the beliefs that guide them. The first section, “Part I: Formal Essays” and the second section, “Part II: Essays on Culture and Psyche” contain both academic presentations as well as op-ed pieces published in Texas newspapers. Together, they offer two different rhetorical inflections on the ubiquity of myth and the energies that drive them. The cover of the book is a photograph I took of an older homesteader’s house in Big Bend National Park. Only the walls and a chimney are standing, witness to brave souls that farmed the land adjacent to the Rio Grande. I thought the monument they left was also part of the myth imbedded in this magnificent park in West Texas.