1998. Southern Methodist University Express.
MORE STORIES BY TEXAS WRITERS READ BY TEXAS ACTORS

Host: Barry Corbin.

Produced by Kay Cattarulla. Directed by Raphael Perry.
Recorded at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of the literary series "Arts & Letters Live".

Tom Doyal's "Sick Day": Read by Barry Corbin. Marshall Terry's "Angels Prostate Fall": Read By Randy Moore. R.E. Smith's "The Gift Horse's Mouth": Read by Peri Gilpin. James Lee Burke's "The Convict": Read by James Black. Robert Olen Butler's "Jealous Husband Returns In Form Of Parrot": Read by Octavio Solis. Barbara Hudson's "The Arabesque": Read by Marcia Gay Harden. Donald Barthelme's "The School": Read by Raphael Perry.

"On the first night of the new literary season, the actor Barry Corbin brought the house down, Texas Style.
He was reading 'Sick Day," a short story by Tom Doyal about a middle-aged bookkeeper's day off, to a packed auditorium at the Dallas Museum of Art, and he could barely get through a line without hysterical laughter from the audience.
Mr. Corbin - who played the wealthy, overbearingly macho former astronaut in the television series 'Northern Exposure' - wore an oversized stetson and full quill ostrich cowboy boots. From his mouth dangled the stub of a cigar, which he kept pulling out at the punch lines while thumping his heel.
Lester, the story's main character, 'watched a quiz show for a while,' Mr. Corbin said, thumbing his rodeo-championship belt buckle.
'Not only could he not answer the questions, he didn't even recognize some of the categories. 'I need to read more,'' the actor recited, quoting Lester's lament in a deep, although clogged-up (Lester has a sinus problem), Texas accent - no difficult task for Mr. Corbin, himself a native Texan."

David Barboza, The New York Times, Sunday, May 5, 1996.