The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989 Page: 3
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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J. Frank Dobie
remains a lively, engaging introduction to the literature of the region.
The book grew out of Dobie's own pioneering course offered for the
first time in 1930o, in the Department of English at the University of
Texas. According to legend, when Dobie proposed such a course, it met
with opposition from the English faculty, who declared that there
wasn't any literature of the Southwest. So Dobie said, all right, I'll teach
life; there's plenty of that.4 In respect to belles lettres, the English de-
partment was right (and here it must be remembered that at this time
courses in American literature were only beginning to find a place in
the curricula of many institutions). A significant body of imaginative
writing did not yet exist when Dobie began to offer the course. The
creation of such work was already underway, however, by such writers
as Harvey Fergusson, Katherine Anne Porter, Oliver La Farge, Paul
Horgan, and others. By 1943, when the Guide appeared, there was
enough fiction in the region to warrant a separate section, but the ma-
jority of the book was devoted to other kinds of writing-journals, his-
tories, autobiographies, and folklore. The fiction section contained six-
teen authors. When Dobie revised the book in 1952, he added only
four new writers to the fiction section.
Since Dobie did not revise his bibliography a third time, there is no
public record of his opinion of fiction published after 1952. But for-
tunately there is another record of Dobie's response to contemporary
writers of southwestern fiction. His extensive personal library, consist-
ing of i 2,177 volumes (8,905 titles), contained many works of fiction,
and from the prefatory remarks and marginalia in these volumes it is
possible to view Dobie's reaction to the writing that appeared in the
years from 1952 to 1964.' He was the embodiment of Ralph Waldo
Emerson's "creative reader"; he seems never to have picked up a book
without a pencil at hand. Unvarnished opinions sprinkle the pages of
books that engaged his attention; the prefatory remarks often sparkle
with delight or dislike. Two further things should be noted about the
collection. Dobie appears not to have read everything that he owned.
By the late 193os and certainly by the 195os his fame was so great that
few authors could resist sending him copies of their work-both vanity-
press authors and those with reputable houses. Dobie received a great
"Francis Edward Abernethy, J Frank Dobse, Southwest Writers Series No. i (Austin: Steck-
Vaughn & Co., 1967), 13.
SDobie's library is housed min the J. Frank Doble Room min the Peter Flawn Academic Center of
the University of Texas at Austin All quotations from Dobie's inscriptions are taken from this
collection. I am grateful to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of
Texas at Austin, to Capital National Bank, and to Mr. Edgar Kincaid for permission to quote
from these writmings
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989, periodical, 1989; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101212/m1/30/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.