W H AT W E TA L K A B O U T W H E N W E TA L K A B O U T M A R FA B Y K AY L A S U L E W S K I
This thesis has been a long time in the making. I’ve gone through a million cups of coffee, a few boxes of tissues, and a hundred trees worth of scratch paper. I’ve sent six million emails and recieved three million responses. I’ve driven over a thousand miles across the Texas desert. But now, it’s done. I’d like to extend my hugest thanks to my advisors, Beth Eakman and Moriah McCracken, you two have singlehandedly pushed and dragged me through the last three years (lovingly, of course) and I wouldn’t have come this far without you. Also, huge thanks to my family, friends, and all the other Honors students who struggled through this semester with me.
An Examination of Rhetoric and Language in Different Genres
INDEX
AN
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V.
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EM
18 TH
IV
06E
AT
08 MYS TIC AL, MAGIC AL M A R FA
04 S PAC E A N D P L AC E
AF
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3 0D RW
33 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
20 G O O D BY E M A R FA , T E X A S
S PAC E a n d P L AC E
I’m looking at the question of space and place. People have spent a lot of time trying to analyze the two — their differences, their relation, their poeticisms — but really to me they are two different things. A place is a location, a physically defined area that concretely exists. A space has meaning…history. It’s created by people giving a place importance and salience. Space is people. Place is geography. If place is geography, it can be easily defined by set boundaries, ones put in place by the government or the property owner. A place has its objective characteristics: 1.6 square miles of land, population density of 1,981 people, elevation of 4,685 feet. These are indisputable. This is Marfa. But a space is abstract. It’s made by people — but which people? Who gets the final say in defining this space? What are aspects of space? It’s more temporal features like the decorations inside the restaurant? The food trucks that are open on a Friday night? The music playing inside the Hotel St. George? A space is not so easily definied. What is Marfa?
ANTI 
def: challenging the traditional conventions surrounding the concept of a narrative, an antinarrative makes use of those conventions to call attention to itself and the practices and modes being used to convey meaning to an audience.
why are there so many people writing about marfa like it’s the next italian seaside resort location? any shrimp scampi you eat here will be five weeks old ridden in the back of a lukewarm eighteen wheeler shipped in from the oily coast of corpus. elizabteth taylor stayed at this hotel. i really don’t care.
N A R R AT I V E
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C I L T A S C Y I M G A FA M R A M
The essentials you’ll need right away: sunscreen, sunglasses, cash, and comfortable shoes. Marfa boasts three ATMs total, none from major banks, so get cash out in advance. The streets, especially in the early hours, can be completely empty — which to anyone used to passersby at all hours of the day and night can stir an uneasy feeling . Not many people walk through the town, so expect to be the only person on the sidewalk, when there is one, at least. Cell phone service is unreliable, though most locations offer at least one bar, so it’s best to plan and map out your daily stops in advance.
- Steff Yotka, “A City Dweller’s Guide to a Magical, Mystical Weekend in Marfa, Texas” Vogue
Ah, Marfa, Texas. The small town of about 2,000 residents has achieved almost mythic status in the past five years thanks to an influx of art institutions, stores, and New Yorkers and Angelenos who have decamped there looking for something simpler. Snuggled in a vast expanse of desert, nearly 20 miles from the next town and some 200 from the nearest major airport, the place is the subject of much modern lore—people return awestruck from the tours of the Chinati Foundation, filled with wonder from the desert landscape and starry nights, and amped up on their great Instagram snap in front of Prada Marfa. Needless to say, Marfa has amassed a lot of hype.
- Yotka
…I was spending two whole vacation days driving through nine hours of ruinous west Texas hellscape.
- Matt Carney, “In Marfa, Texas, some peace and quiet, and rock and roll” News OK
This tiny town perched on the high plains of the Chihuahua desert is nothing less than an arts world station of the cross, like Art Basel in Miami, or Documenta in Germany. It’s a blue-chip arts destination for the sort of glamorous scenesters who visit Amsterdam for the Rijksmusuem and the drugs.
- NEDA ULABY, “MARFA, TEXAS: AN UNLIKELY ART OASIS IN A DESERT TOWN” NPR
After dinner on the second night, we drove nine miles outside of town on Route 90 to look for the Marfa lights. Erika stood against the railing of the viewing platform and looked out at the horizon. I lay down on the still-warm stone floor and looked up at the stars. W. S. Merwin wrote a poem about these mysterious lights in which he called them
“…candles at noon being carried by hands never seen never caught on film never believed as they go up the long stairs…”
After a while, Erika noticed a series of white lights off in the distance that would appear and disappear. They certainly looked strange—not like car headlights. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but I felt that I was seeing something.
- Susan Harlan “Marfa, Texas” Nowhere
Marfa is the weird that Austin wishes it still was.
- John MacCormack “Quirky Marfa feels growing pains” San Antonio Express-News
U S V. T H E M The friendship with Rock Hudson began in the mid-Fifties, when they were making Giant in the harsh environs of Marfa, Texas, as bleak a place as you’ll find in America, except for maybe Pine Ridge, South Dakota. I won an award there recently and was able to visit the ghosts of Liz and Rock: I was given the Rock Hudson suite in the Paisano Hotel, where the actors stayed while making Giant. My writing partner, Diana Ossana, stayed in the Elizabeth Taylor suite, which was modest c o m p a r e d t o R o c k ’s d i g s ; h i s featured seven telephones. Who was he talking to, during those long dusty weeks? Not yet, probably, the world-class beauty across the hall. James Dean would have been around somewhere, doing the character of Jett Rink, his fine imitation of the long-forgotten wildcatter Glenn McCarthy. Edna Ferber, though not without some doubts, was a little too fond of the ranching elites; Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor provided so much glamour to Marfa that the town still thinks it’s important, a delusion not lessened by the Coen brothers’ dark fable No Country for Old Men, i n w h i c h To m m y L e e J o n e s ’ s furrowed brow is the closest we get to the truth. - author Larry McMurtry
THE GRUMPY TEXAS LITERARY LEGEND RIPS THE TEXAS ART AND MUSIC M E C C A I N H I S R E V I E W O F A N E W B O O K A B O U T E L I Z A B E T H T AY L O R , C A L L I N G M A R FA " A S B L E A K A P L AC E A S YO U ' L L F I N D I N A M E R I C A . " Marfa is an internationally renowned arts and cultural community today with the Judd Foundation, the Chinati Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Ballroom Marfa, the Crowley T h e a t e r, t h e M a r f a B o o k C o . (perhaps the best little book store in Texas). Marfa even has some upscale restaurants these days. Marfa is located on a mile high desert plateau in the northeastern corner of the Chihuahuan Desert surrounded by worn mountains older than the hills under a sky from another universe. Marfa is located on Highway 90 between Florida and California. Archer City houses McMurtry’s self-indulgent library and bookstore l o c a t e d i n t h e N o r t h Te x a s boondocks on State Highway 79 between Wichita Falls and Throckmorton. Marfa is a go-to place. Archer City is a ‘bleak blur’ in the road with a Dairy Queen and a bunch of books. Mr. McMurtry writes a great story but seems to me he needs to get out of Archer City more often.
- Marfa resident K.B. Whitley
G O O D BY E , M A R FA , T E X A S
“We're all sick and tired of these little fluff pieces about Marfa. There are other things to talk about,” said Emily Hocker, 72, a painter, who first came to Marfa in 1993.“This is a wonderful place, but just like other wonderful places suffering from gentrification, the poor people always get shoved aside. A lot of people who grew up here are suddenly on the fringe.”
- MacCormack
Some of Marfa's problems are tangible: The city struggles to provide basic services; school enrollment is in long-term decline; property values are soaring and affordable housing is scarce, because for years, out-of-towners have been taking the cream of it for second homes. This summer, the housing crisis hit home hard when a reappraisal of all Presidio County properties instantly doubled the county tax base from $563 million to $1.14 billion.
The changing demographics are most clearly seen at the school district. “We have 350 kids. In the '90s, we had 500. All we've done is lose kids. There are no jobs, there is no affordable housing and families cannot move to Marfa,” school Superintendent Andrew Peters said. “My teachers commute 30 miles from Fort Davis and Alpine. Sixty percent of my staff does not live in Marfa.”
Shock and panic roiled Marfa homeowners, many of whom saw their property values soar. Owners of commercial properties, including undeveloped lots, saw their values spike even more dramatically. “It's hard to find anything livable in Marfa for under $100,000, and what you get for that is a small onebedroom. We still have a lot of out-of-state people looking. Locals not so much,” said Valda Livingston, 71, who has seen home prices skyrocket in recent years. “We are thinning out the old-timers. The young people who grew up in Marfa for the most part can't stay. It's the job market. All three of my children are in San Antonio. They couldn't make a living in Marfa,” she added.
- MacCormack
On paper, the little desert town seems like my ideal sort of place — artsy, peaceful, hip, hippie. In actuality, while many of the locals are down-to-earth, friendly, and genuine small town folks, Marfa’s increasing popularity among the, well, hipster (I hate to use that word since it has so little meaning these days) crowd leaves some establishments and some people with an unpleasant, un c om f o r ta bl y h ip , co ol er - t ha n- t ho u attitude. I mean, you’re in a tiny West Texas town in the middle of the desert.
Drop the attitude.
- The Texasian Travels
W H A T D O E S T H E N E W S H O W I L O V E D I C K S AY A B O U T M A R F A ? The Marfa we see in I Love Dick would be recognizable to anyone who’s read about the town of 2,000 people in Va n i t y F a i r o r V o g u e . I t i s t h e romanticized Marfa ideal for the transplanted artist. What Marfa lacks in amenities (at one point Chris says their new house is “like the fucking Amish”) it makes up for in pastoral charm. This Marfa is a bubble. Though Soloway and her co-writer, Sarah Gubbins, cast recognizable locals in cameo roles, the pilot introduces only one native-Marfan c h a r a c t e r, D e v o n , t h e I n s t i t u t e ’ s groundskeeper. She functions as a guide of sorts, advising Chris to trade in her Birkenstocks for boots and telling her not to smoke pot outside because the Presidio County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t “like the artists.” Through Devon, we are provided glimpses to a Marfa that’s not merely the playground of the artistic elite, but an actual place, with rattlesnakes and scorpions and conservative cops.
Midway through the episode, Chris and Sylvére go to a reception at the Marfa Institute and the conversations that take place there are laughably pretentiousness. Choice lines include “My wife complains to me all the time about how I’m obsessed with models of poverty!” and “There’s Marfa realness, there’s Marfa ‘realness,’ and there’s ‘Marfa realness.’” When Sylvére attempts to impress a young woman by telling her an anecdote about Japanese koi pedicures, she shuts him down by saying she’s seen them in Bali. Then she tells him his face looks melancholy and ruined. It’s clear I Love Dick is satirizing Marfa’s a r t c o m m u n i t y. M a n y o f t h e s h o w s funniest moments occur when characters are describing their work. Take Sylvére , who has come to Marfa to reinterpret the Holocaust (“there’s something new afoot,” he says repeatedly) and Dick, a writing teacher who hasn’t read a book in a decade and considers himself “post-idea.”
Reviews of the pilot by local Marfans are mixed. According to the Big Bend Sentinel’s Sarah M. Vasquez, some residents are concerned about the attention this new portrayal may bring to the already gentrified town. “I don’t think the show is an overall glowing portrayal of Marfa,” says Vasquez. “If anything, I Love Dick makes light of the quirks we have to endure to live here.”
- Emily McCullar, Texas Monthly
It happens: Tourism swallows, ouroboroslike, the original mystique of a place. Judd wouldn’t have moved to this Marfa.
- Mallika Rao, “Goodbye Marfa, Texas” The Huffington Post
AFTERWORD
The point of this thesis, originally, was to examine Marfa’s recent spike in popularity. My research took me down this rabbit hole of articles by city girls from Vogue and The New York Times talking about this little desert ghost town I live in, not only about the art pieces and the movie sets that draw tourists, but about the magic of the place, the feel, the ethereal cleansing energy. And I realized that’s what this thesis had been all along. Everyone’s saying all these different things about Marfa. It’s old. It’s fresh. It’s dying. It’s hip. It’s dried up. It’s a cultural mecca. Everyone’s writing different narratives about the same place and it’s creating this disjointed picture of what Marfa really is. So I wanted to show that picture by putting all of these contrasting voices next to each other. I wanted them to be together in this thesis creating a living dialogue about the town, to show that no one rhetoric can represent a place, or even further, a person, an idea. A single rhetoric can’t capture a place. A place has history, memories, events, ideas, futures. It’s multi-faceted, and I think that’s exactly what this shows.


WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
"If they hadn't come," notes Aufdengarten-Scott, "this town would have dried up and blown away."
- Neda Ulaby, NPR
For now, all I can say is that we heart Marfa. We’ve seen and we’ve been seen. We’ve walked around and met the locals and removed sticker burrs from Special’s paws. We’ve howdied. We’ve train-tracked. We’ve had our car checked (the scary light came on) by a guy with one tooth. (I’m not being prejudiced here. He had one tooth.) We’ve looked at house prices (too expensive) and imagined ourselves behind the counters and desks of various stores and offices.
- Jessica Piazza, “We HEART Marfa!”
The irony, of course, is that Marfa’s appeal was always its edge-of-theplanet vibe. Today, what with all the protocol, one can end up feeling incredibly observed . - Rao
ABOUT THE DESIGN OF THIS THESIS I chose to design this book with a minimalist contemporary theme, much like the way the Marfa Chamber of Commerce’s and the Judd Foundation’s websites are designed. This theme represents the high-brow modern art that took over the culteral ether of the town in the mid-1990s following the arrival of Donald Judd. To show the contrast of this burgeoning art scene with the desert imagery of Marfa, I incorporated pictures of the stark landscape, the unique architecture, and the colorful locals. I believe that the contrast helps represent the various distinctive cultures in Marfa. The way the theme and the images work together to create a unique style reflects the way the cultures interact in real life. The fonts used in this book are Futura with 16% character spacing for titles and Arial with 5% character spacing for body text. All images are property of the photographers. No copyright infringement intended.