From the archives of the Southwestern Writers Collection at Southwest Texas State University, former curator Richard Holland has selected from among thousands of Larry L. King's letters dealing with the daily warp and woof of an American writer alternately giddy with success and doubting his own talents. The result is a crazy ride of almost fifty years on a roller coaster of many dips, loops, and steep climbs.
As a Texas farm boy, young Lawrence Leo King wrote postcards or tablet-paper letters of advice and/or instruction to--among others--FDR, Winston Churchill, quarterback Sammy Baugh,...