However, the true gem in these pages is an acurate account of the style of Texas politics during this time period. It honestly reflects what life in this arena was like from someone who was there to see it for himself.

When this novel was released, the author Billy Lee Brammer was touted as the next great American writer. That prediction never came true due to the tragedy in the author's own life. We are left with this first work and a wonder of what might have followed had the author's life followed a more positive path.

Newcomers to Texas politics are often told to read The Gay Place if they want to understand Texas politics and a land where politics is best described by the words of former Governor Ann Richards...."IN TEXAS...POLITICS IS A CONTACT SPORT!"

This story tells of a state where men and women most often rise to the top through their intelligence and skill and not their bloodline. It certainly is not a tale of wealthy trust-fund princes who merely walk through doors open by their fathers.

You can feel the humid summer heat of Austin and the sexy passion of it's people as these pages unfold. While this wonderful city has changed dramatically in the past thirty years, you can still find many of the story's locations full of Texas politicos and their groupies. A well written and entertaining novel.

13 of 13 found the following review helpful:


The Real LBJ  Jul 27, 2002 By Fiona Foster
In the 500 plus pages of this remarkable trilogy, Billy Lee Brammer does more to explicate and evaluate American politics, especially Texas politics and even more especially, populist politics as practiced by Lyndon B.Johnson, than all the ponderous Caro-type analyses that weigh us down blur the color and cloy the flavor. More than a portrait of LBJ, the book is an artful depiction of the lure of politics and its terrible cost on those who pursue it. All this is conveyed with humor, sympathy and a clear-eyed vision of the American scene of the 60's.

10 of 11 found the following review helpful:


Fabulous reading  Feb 14, 1998
A wonderful trilogy. This is a gem of a book, and desrves a much wider audience than it's received to this point (but then, it's only been in print for 37 years). Not only is it a masterful series of short novels about politics, it also does a wonderful job of capturing the feel of a time and place.

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:


politics from a gimlet eye  Oct 17, 2007 By Robert J. Crawford
This is a wonderful trilogy of novels on state politics. Though they seem disjointed, they are unified around the shadowy figure of the governor, who lurks in the background manipulating people and events down to the minutest detail. Thus, the immediate action taking place is a kind of epiphenomenon, all players that are living chess pieces in the governor's grand game, which is never fully explained: that is the real art of this novel, that it leaves far more unsaid than explicitely stated. The reader has to connect the dots.

In the first novel, the governor has chosen a young legislator for an unaccustomed role in the spotlight: his life, like those of his cohorts, is a mess of alcohol and libertinism, but he is also struggling with his conscience to do the right thing. There are so many layers to what was really happening that it is impossible to explain, because the reader can only suspect what the governor is doing. The governor mixes the most intimate personal machinations, it appeared to me, with a legislative purpose and to depose (even destroy) a potential rival. It reminds me, of course, of LBJ, a politician without equal. One of the really interesting aspects is that the author describes many people just like GW Bush: priviledged, brash, debauched, and inadvertantly wondering what they should be doing. If you read this, you will understand GW Bush and his milieu much better - that is a sign of the timelessness of Bramer's achievement, truly a masterpiece.

The second novel is similar: the governor's enemies are defeated, while he stages and manipulates events to suit whatever his purposes are. It is at times brutal and sad, yet funny and even uplifting, particularly in the scenes of introspection, when the characters have flashes of insight and empathy. The plot, which is only a vehicle to expose cryptic motvations, is the governor attempting to get an appointed young senator to run for a true popular mandate - he is a complex and flawed character, whom the governor sponsors out of respect but also to keep him in his pocket. It is splendidly ambiguous, as is all politics. The third involves similar personal struggles and an ineviablle passing of power, again, very realistic and down to earth. Marriages are destroyed, while politics plays in, and the characters wallow in existential angst while working very hard and yet hardly understanding why. It is a unique combination of themes, a genuine work of literature.

One thing that really fascinated me was how similar this is to a Gore Vidal novel, a kind of comedy of the priviledged who inadvertently do politics while living their complicated lives. The political action is entirely off stage, but solved in their everyday actions and affairs and drunken parties. I have no doubt that Vidal carefullly studied the literary method that Bramer pioneered here, which resulted in his truly fine series of novels on American politics. Finally, tt really is where Bush came from, a reflection on the depth of Bramer's art, almost prescient in its intelligence and lack of facile scrutiny.

Warmly recommended as great art and a unique view into politics.

4 of 4 found the following review helpful:


The Best Novel on Politics Ever!  Aug 26, 2007 By Paul Sherr
The Gay Place is a winner in so many ways: an absorbing, deep novel, a historical novel about a key time in our history, an accurate an perceptive regional novel (about my home town, Austin!) and, the best novel on American, or maybe any, politics ever written. Billy Lee Brammer was a speech writer for Lyndon Johnson who was fascinated by the world where a sentence could start with high minded political goals and end in crude bullying. A world where bribery, humiliation and blackmail were tools of the trade, often for worthy purposes. A must-read American classic that grows in reputation as time passes.

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