Author
Gregory Curtis
Notes from Evan Smith
"
...and if not for this week's guest, you'd be watching something else -- because I wouldn't be here.
Once upon not too long a time ago, Gregory Curtis was my boss -- the second of three editors in the history of TEXAS MONTHLY, the worthy inheritor of the job when his old pal and roommate at Rice University, Bill Broyles, headed west to run California magazine.
He took the reins of TEXAS MONTHLY in 1981 and relinquished them upon his quasi-retirement in the summer of 2000. At roughly the halfway point in his tenure, I arrived on the scene, green and eager, and he took a chance on me -- probably never imagining that I'd be the one to oneday step into shoes.
Greg, born in Corpus Christi but raised in Kansas City, was a great editor, winning acclaim for TEXAS MONTHLY by turning over creative control of the publication to the writers, as Bill did before him and I've done since, and producing, month in and month out, some of the finest literary non-fiction to be found anywhere in the country.
His tastes were sophisticated, his standards exacting, and the product spoke for itself -- which was fitting, because unlike some glib so-and-sos who start out as editors and end up on TV, Greg made modesty in all things a virtue. When he stepped down, there was talk of a book, perhaps, and in 2003, one materialized -- Disarmed, the never-before-told story, or never before told this well, of the Venus de Milo.
Art history; who'd have thunk it? This fall came another book, The Cave Painters, about the world's first artists and the work they left behind in the caves of France and Spain some 30,000 years ago. It's a great read -- elegantly and methodically put together -- like Greg himself.
"
- Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 12.21.06
