J. Frank Dobie taught a course at the University of Texas on “Life and Literature of the Southwest.” He got his finger on a paradox.
Human beings live in places. Places vary, and a specific human being is not improved by being ignorant of the specific place he lives in. On the other hand, looking at a provincial place with provincial eyes doesn’t improve things. Dobie’s conclusion:
Nobody should specialize on provincial writings before he has the perspective that only a good deal of good literature and wide history can give. I think it more important that a dweller in the Southwest read The Trial and Death of Socrates than all the books extant on killings by Billy the Kid.
I’m pretty sure you can get lost in either direction. You can read every title on the Great Books Foundation’s list and not know anything about the environment, history and culture of the place you call home. You can know all the plants and animals in the forest behind your house and not know anything about what some of humanity’s best thinkers had to say.
If you’re wondering what all this is about, I’m thinking about some books I want to read in 2025. I suppose I read out of some notion of self-improvement: I believe in education and am still trying to get one.
• Source: J. Frank Dobie, Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest; Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1952, p. 5.
Project Gutenberg has it here:
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