Of all the professional Texans in Texas, one of the loudest and lustiest is a mild-mannered, frail little man named Carl Victor Little, who hails from Columbus, Ohio and eats "damyankees" six days a week. His cannibalism takes place in the Houston Press, where his talents for irony, indignation and invective have made his column "By-the-Way" the best-read in Houston.
Little's literary violence often provokes equally violent reactions from readers. Last week Little joyously printed a letter denouncing him as an "ignorant, crazy imbecile" who should be confined to publishing his opinions "on a scratch pad." The stimulant for this intemperate comment was Little's latest, longest and most provincial campaign: a 41-column series dedicated to freeing Louis Bob Conley, a World War II veteran of Texas' own 36th Division, from a "concentration camp" in "medieval" Massachusetts.
A Posse of Cadillacs. Conley had been jailed for contempt of court for refusing to surrender his daughter Lynette to the custody of his divorced Yankee wife (TIME, March 30). If Houstonians had a drop of mob justice left in their veins, wrote Little, they would organize "a posse of Cadillac owners" to invade damyankee-land and free Conley. Exclaimed Little: "It is Texans like Conley who add scent to the magnolia, color to the red hibiscus, juice to the grapefruit and stature to the San Jacinto monument."
Instead of a posse. Little organized a "postcard shower" from Press readers to cheer up the jailed Texan, helped newspapers in Conley's home town of Amarillo raise a $5,500 fund for his legal defense. Last week, after 37 months in jail, Texan Conley was back home with eight-year-old daughter Lynette, aided in part by the decision of a Massachusetts judge to let Texas settle the custody question.
Carl Victor Little has been a triple-threat man on the Press. Besides his daily column, he writes a weekly book review section, and until recently (when his health gave way) also edited the editorial page. A graduate of Ohio State, Little broke in on the Cleveland Press, went to France in World War I as a swivel-chair sergeant, came home to a restless career as a tramp newspaperman. Recalls Little: "Some copyreader or some louse of an editor would get rough with my magnificent prose, and I'd feel in my pocket to see how much dough I had. If I had enough for a railroad ticket, I'd resent what he'd done and walk out. If I was broke, I'd wait until payday and then resent." Little resented his way from Cleveland to Chicago, Paris, Wichita and Oklahoma City. Along the way, he stored up inspiration for a song called Flat on My Prat in Pratt, Kansas. In 1939, Scripps-Howard transferred him to the Houston Press. Overnight Carl Victor Little became a fanatic Texan, because "there's no one more zealous than a convert."
United We Stand. Convert Little's longest previous crusade was directed against Novelist Edna Ferber for daring to try to cut Texas down to midget size in Giant. Little turned out 39 columns about Novelist Ferber; in one, he offered to play host to an autographing party so that she could be publicly hanged ("The only new note in literary criticism ... in the last 30 years").