John Nova Lomax has Died
Two days ago, John Nova Lomax’s father announced he had died. A few days earlier, he had written that Lomax had been removed from life support, so the news of his death was not unexpected. Weirdly enough, the time between these two events gave Lomax’s peers time to write some excellent, heart-felt obituaries. Joe Nick Patoski, another legendary Texas writer, wrote about Lomax for Texas Highways in a piece titled In Remembrance of Inimitable Texas Writer John Nova Lomax. He wrote one paragraph that connected Lomax with classic Houston writer Sig Byrd.
John wrote about Houston like Sig Byrd once did. He enjoyed lifting the rug, observing, and writing about whatever was going on. He saw beauty in the gritty, dirty, misdirected, misplaced, messy attributes. John embraced the sprawl. He loved the Astros—Mattress Mack, not so much.
The other tribute to Lomax I want to highlight is by another renowned Texas iournalist, Mimi Swartz. She wrote about Lomax for Texas Monthly.
Between these two obituaries, you get a pretty good idea of Lomax’s excellence as a writer and as a contributor to the local culture. The presence of people like Lomax makes me feel that Houston isn’t quite the culturally-barren hellhole that I know it is. At least temporarily. A Houston without John Nova Lomax is diminished,
This photo is of Lomax as a child playing cowboy. It was going to be used with his article in Exu called “Smear the Queer.” But we had to cut the photo for space reasons originally.
[Please consider supporting this publication by subscribing to it, by becoming a patron, and/or by patronizing our online store. And one more way to support this work is to buy books through The Great God Pan is Dead’s bookstore.]