Jim W. Corder on Living and Dying in West Texas: A Postmodern Scrapbook

by Jim W. Corder, James S. Baumlin (Editor), Eric Knickerbocker (Editor)

Jim W. Corder will be remembered by students and colleagues at Texas Christian University for his writing, teaching, and original thinking. He was one of the most influential composition specialists of his generation―his Handbook of Rhetoric went through numerous editions, becoming a classroom staple nationwide―yet he gave his final years to the “fourth genre” of creative nonfiction. His numerous publications include Lost in West Texas (1988), Chronicle of a Small Town (1989), and Life on the Far Side of Change (1992).

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Adam Lauver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hope-affirming yet drenched in sadness, sparse yet teeming with life, On Living and Dying in West Texas is the final memoir of an aging-dying-living man--and a wise one at that. Brimming with beauty and truth and navigating through faithfulness and doubt, Corder's "postmodern scrapbook" is a tenderly nostalgic reflection on narrative, identity, and human life that paints in clear, luminous strokes the shifting sands on which we inevitably create ourselves. Indeed, Corder swoops gently but critically through the self he's created, expressing with extraordinary pathos both regret at the incompleteness of (self-)knowledge, and peace at accepting that there's no other way.

Certainly one of the most piercing and honest books I've ever read, and one that I plan to return to in the years to come.