A good writer can make you wish you were part of the setting in which he writes, like Dave Barry in Miami or Ridley Pearson in Seattle or Stephen King in those great little Maine towns where such horrible things happen.

Pat Conroy's books have made me absolutely love the South Carolina Low Country. I have wished many times I had grown up in Charleston or the islands just off the Carolina coast, and "Carolina" has always meant "South" to me.

A great writer, though, a great writer can make you love places you hate. One of my recent favorites, Greg Iles, has made me wish I lived in Natchez, Miss., which is exceedingly strange to me. But worst of all, Dan Jenkins has made me love Texas -- and I hate Texas.

[caption id="attachment_246" align="alignleft" width="263" caption="Dan Jenkins"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/RR-Dan-Jenkins.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-246" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/RR-Dan-Jenkins-263x300.jpg" alt="" width="263" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

For the most part, Jenkins writes funny books. He is one of the greatest sportswriters -- particularly about college football and golf -- that this country has ever produced, but it's in his novels that he allows his sense of whimsy really to run free.

No one skewers the self-made giants of the sports world the way he does, and no one has had a better sense of humor than Jenkins, who was born in 1929 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Hollywood hasn't done a whole lot with his books. Michael Ritchie messed up his great football novel "Semi Tough," making it as much about EST and other '70s self-actualization movements as it was about football. HBO did a fair job of making two of his novels -- "Baja Oklahoma" and "Dead Solid Perfect" -- into cable movies, and the former was actually one of Julia Roberts' pre-stardom turns.

Fort Worth itself -- or as Jenkins would say, its ownself -- has been a character in at least half a dozen of his novels. Jenkins attended Paschal High and Texas Christian University there, and he was a kid in the late '30s when TCU had its best football teams before 2009.

"Baja Oklahoma" is my favorite of his books, and I've read it at least a dozen times. HBO's version wasn't quite as good -- they couldn't handle the idea of a drug dealer who wasn't a bad guy -- but it still climaxed with a terrific title song written by Jenkins himself.

<em>"... it's Baja Oklahoma, but it's Texas in your soul."</em>

I wish I lived in Baja Oklahoma.