Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, with a Few ObservationsDobie, J. Frank (James Frank)
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Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, with a Few Observations
Dobie, J. Frank (James Frank)
Southwest, New -- Bibliography
There are no substitutes for nobility, beauty, and wisdom. One of the
chief impediments to amplitude and intellectual freedom is provincial
inbreeding. I am sorry to see writings of the Southwest substituted for
noble and beautiful and wise literature to which all people everywhere
are inheritors. When I began teaching "Life and Literature of the
Southwest" I did not regard these writings as a substitute. To reread
most of them would be boresome, though _Hamlet_, Boswell's _Johnson_,
Lamb's _Essays_, and other genuine literature remain as quickening as
ever.
Very likely I shall not teach the course again. I am positive I shall
never revise this _Guide_ again. It is in nowise a bibliography. I have
made more additions to the "Range Life" chapter than to any other. I
am a collector of such books. A collector is a person who gathers unto
himself the worthless as well as the worthy. Since I did not make a
nickel out of the original printing of the _Guide_ and hardly expect to
make enough to buy a California "ranch" out of the present printing,
I have added several items, with accompanying remarks, more for my own
pleasure than for benefit to society.
Were the listings halved, made more selective, the book might serve
its purpose better. Anybody who wants to can slice it in any manner
he pleases. I am as much against forced literary swallowings as I am
against prohibitions on free tasting, chewing, and digestion. I rate
censors, particularly those of church and state, as low as I rate
character assassins; they often run together.
I'd like to make a book on _Emancipators of the Human Mind_--Emerson,
Jefferson, Thoreau, Tom Paine, Newton, Arnold, Voltaire, Goethe.... When
I reflect how few writings connected with the wide open spaces of
the West and Southwest are wide enough to enter into such a volume, I
realize acutely how desirable is perspective in patriotism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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