The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989 Page: 15
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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J. Frank Dobze
It is interesting, however, that there is so much disagreement as to
which of Dobie's works is the best. Such variety of preferences suggests
that among his twenty-five books there is something for nearly every-
one, though increasingly the reader has to be interested first in the
Southwest.
Dobie's importance in his home region, though, is assured. His books
in the thirties, published by a major New York house, did much to di-
rect national attention to Texas and the Southwest as a literary region.
Katherine Anne Porter, the greater writer, cultivated both in her works
and in her life a specifically southern image, and the Texas context got
lost in appraisals of her work. But with Dobie, the Texas flavor was in-
disputable. Along with Walter P. Webb, Zane Grey, and a thousand
western movies, Dobie helped define Texas to the nation as a western
state.
He also was a tireless and sometimes eloquent polemicist for region-
alism. What he said in his essay "How My Life Took Its Turn" is telling:
If people are to enjoy their own lives, they must be aware of the significances of
their own environments. The mesquite is, objectively, as good and as beautiful
as the Grecian acanthus. It is a great deal better for people who live in the mes-
quite country. We in the southwest shall be civilized when the roadrunner as
well as the nightingale has connotations.22
But Dobie didn't just make the case abstractly; he showed in his work
the literary possibilities inherent in local materials. The next genera-
tion of Texas writers found in the older writer's works inspiration for
their own. Benjamin Capps, for example, thanked Dobie for giving
him "the first inkling that the West was not a never-never land away off
somewhere but a real place close to home."2 Billy Lee Brammer read
Dobie's books as a boy in Dallas and, according to William Broyles, felt
"that it was possible to write, that the Texas experience-whether high
school basketball in Archer City or the social complexities of beer
drinking at Scholz Garten-could be transformed into literature."24 So
did many other writers. In the Texas of his day, a state still close to the
frontier, Dobie stood for literary aspiration and the life of the mind.
His legacy as a literary pioneer seems secure.
22J. Frank Doble, Some Part of Myself (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1967), 237
23Capps to Doble, Mar. 24, 1964, Dobie Collection.
24Billy Lee Brammer, The Gay Place (1961; reprint, Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1978), in.
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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/m1/42/: accessed May 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.