The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989 Page: 12
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
tory and nature are strung together in a successful narrative frame-
work, Graves remains a perpetual favorite of the same audience that
admires the Triumvirate. Though more appreciative of Dobie than the
younger McMurtry was, Graves arrived at very similar conclusions
about the bulk of Dobie's work. He believes that Dobie "distrusted form"
and in only one book, Tongues of the Monte (the same one McMurtry
most admired), came close to achieving a satisfactory aesthetic form for
celebrating "that harsh landscape and the people it breeds"-always
Dobie's fondest subjects.15
The still double-sided response to Dobie can be seen throughout the
Texas critical community in the eighties. In Texas Monthly, for example,
editor Greg Curtis dismissed Dobie as a creator of "bedtime stories for
ten-year-olds."'6 One sees what Curtis meant, and Dobie's works are still
assigned in secondary schools, but it hardly seems likely that many ju-
veniles today would have the patience to follow Dobie's meandering or-
ganization and constant reliance upon anecdotes. McMurtry's descrip-
tion of an audience of middle-aged nostalgics seems closer to the mark.
The best proof that somebody is reading him-or at any rate buying
copies of his works-is that the University of Texas Press has virtually
all of Dobie available in paperback.
Yet it is also in Texas Monthly that Dobie has received one of his most
ringing defenses in recent years. Novelist Bryan Woolley, author of No-
vember 22 and several other novels, took the occasion of the Sesquicen-
tennial year to assess Dobie's contribution to Texas literature. Respond-
ing to those who have portrayed Dobie as "an embarrassingly primitive
ancestor," Woolley summarizes Dobie's importance: "All writers make
do with what they have, and what Dobie had was a Texas frontier ranch
background, a keen intellect, a good education, strong opinions, a deep
love of great literature, and-rare in the Texas of his day-an aware-
ness that his native place contained all the materials necessary for the
creation of art."'17
In academic circles recent estimations exhibit a similar range and po-
larity. Tom Pilkington, writing in 1984, has made the best case for ap-
preciating Dobie's literary artistry. Like Tinkle, he emphasizes Dobie's
attention to revision and finds his style "conscious and sophisticated."
Unlike most of Dobie's admirers, however, Pilkington rates Coronado's
15John Graves, "The Old Guard: Doble, Webb, and Bedichek," min The Texas Literary Traditron-
Ficton, Folklore, Hutory, ed. Don Graham, James W. Lee, and William T. Pilkington (Austin:
College of Liberal Arts, Umniversity of Texas at Austin, and Texas State Historical Association,
1983), 23.
'(Quoted in Tom Pilkmington, "Doble Revisited," Texas Books in Review, VI (1984), 25.
17Bryan Woolley, "Voice of a Mythic Land," Texas Monthly, XIV (Jan., 1986), 176.
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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/m1/39/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.