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Texas
| Features
| Books Writing
the Story of TexasEdited
by
Patrick L. Cox and Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr.
Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2013.
Pp. 310.
ISBN: 978-0-292-74537-7
Review by Dr. Kirk Bane |
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“When
J. Frank Dobie died, the Texas Observer devoted a whole issue (July 24, 1964)
to his memory, and appreciative books soon followed: Ronnie Dugger’s Three
Men in Texas: Bedichek, Webb, and Dobie (1967), Winton Bode’s J. Frank
Dobie: A Portrait of Pancho (1968), and William A. Owens’s Three Friends:
Roy Bedichek, J. Frank Dobie, and Walter P. Webb (1969). But there were also
dissonant voices that offered a fresh and generally unfavorable assessment of
the body of work. Foremost among these was Larry McMurtry, who in 1968 published
a searching piece titled ‘Southwestern Literature?’ in which Dobie and his followers
were cut down to size. McMurtry’s second and even more scathing assessment of
Dobie appeared in 1981. Wrote McMurtry: ‘Dobie’s twenty-odd books are a congealed
mass of virtually undifferentiated anecdotage: endlessly repetitious, thematically
empty, structureless, and carelessly written.’ Other negative reevaluations came
along in the years afterward. Greg Curtis, editor of Texas Monthly, declared Dobie’s
writings to be little more than ‘bedtime stories for boys in junior high’; even
that is probably no longer true because boys in junior high are watching YouTube
or playing video games.” Thus asserts UT professor Don Graham in his perceptive
offering on Dobie, now “an endangered species in the suburban/urban landscape
of twenty-first century Texas.” (An aside: Sadly, Dr. Graham is correct about
Dobie’s present irrelevant status. As a professor of Texas history at Blinn College,
I make it a point to introduce my students to this largely forgotten, though significant,
chronicler of our state’s frontier past.)
Dr. Graham’s essay is one of
fourteen in this exceptional anthology on twentieth century Lone Star historians
and folklorists. In addition to Dobie, other subjects include Eugene C. Barker,
Carlos E. Castaneda, Robert Cotner, Joe B. Frantz, Llerena Friend, J. Evetts Haley,
Robert Maxwell, Americo Paredes, Charles W. Ramsdell, Walter Prescott Webb, David
J. Weber, Ruthe Winegarten, and Ernest W. Winkler. Serious students of our state’s
heritage will, undoubtedly, recognize the majority of these authors, and may own
many of their books.
In their introduction, editors Patrick L. Cox (former
Associate Director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University
of Texas) and Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr. (Regents’ and Hardin Distinguished Professor
of American History, Emeritus, at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls)
maintain that the purpose of their study is to “furnish a collection of essays
on those who [have] provided outstanding contributions to the interpretation and
writing of our history and how this has changed over time.” The scholars examined
fall into three groups: the “early professional historians…who set the first modern
standard for historical works”; the “second generation, in the mid-twentieth century…[who]
provided new interpretations, sources, and methods”; and the third generation
of historians from “the modern, post-World War II era [who] reflect expanded research,
cultural diversity, and challenges to the histories provided by earlier generations.”
To
accomplish their aim, Cox and Hendrickson have assembled an impressive team of
scholars. Besides Graham, contributors to this commendable collection include
Felix D. Almaraz Jr. (University of Texas at San Antonio), Michael L. Collins
(Midwestern State University), Carolina Castillo Crimm (Sam Houston State University),
Light Townsend Cummins (Austin College), Jesus F. De La Teja (Texas State University),
Nancy Baker Jones (Ruthe Winegarten Memorial Foundation for Texas Women’s History),
David G. McComb (Colorado State University), Archie P. McDonald (Stephen F. Austin
State University), B. Byron Price (University of Oklahoma), Mary L. Scheer (Lamar
University), and Dan Utley (Center for Texas Public History at Texas State University).
Cox and Hendrickson also provide articles.
Every essay in this anthology
merits reading; in short, they are prime examples of solid scholarship. Students
of the Texas heritage, particularly those interested in the ever evolving interpretation
of our state’s past, will relish this engaging, insightful volume.
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Review by Dr. Kirk Bane (Blinn College—Bryan campus) | | |
