ge of remote individuals. The
more he listens to the small, the smaller he grows. The hope of regional
literature lies in out-growing regionalism itself. On November 11, 1949,
I gave a talk to the Texas Institute of Letters that was published in
the Spring 1950 issue of the _Southwest Review_. The paragraphs that
follow are taken therefrom.

Good writing about any region is good only to the extent that it
has universal appeal. Texans are the only "race of people" known to
anthropologists who do not depend upon breeding for propagation. Like
princes and lords, they can be made by "breath," plus a big white
hat--which comparatively few Texans wear. A beef stew by a cook in San
Antonio, Texas, may have a different flavor from that of a beef stew
cooked in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but the essential substances of
potatoes and onions, with some suggestion of beef, are about the same,
and geography has no effect on their digestibility.

A writer--a regional writer, if that term means anything--will whenever
he matures exercise the critical faculty. I mean in the Matthew Arnold
sense of appraisal rather than of praise, or, for that matter, of
absolute condemnation. Understanding and sympathy are not eulogy. Mere
glorification is on the same intellectual level as silver tongues and
juke box music.

In using that word INTELLECTUAL, one lays himself liable to the
accusation of having forsaken democracy. For all that, "fundamental
brainwork" is behind every respect-worthy piece of writing, whether it
be a lightsome lyric that seems as careless as a redbird's flit or a
formal epic, an impressionistic essay or a great novel that measures the
depth of human destiny. Nonintellectual literature is as nonexistent
as education without mental discipline, or as "character building" in a
school that is slovenly in scholarship. Billboards along the highways of
Texas advertise certain towns and cities as "cultural centers." Yet no
chamber of commerce would consider advertising an intellectual center.
The culture of a nineteenth-century finishing school for young ladies
was divorced from intellect; genuine civilization is always informed
by intellect. The American populace has been taught to believe that
the more intellectual a professor is, the less common sense he has;
nevertheless, if American democracy is preserved it will be preserved by
thought and not by physics.

Editors of all but a few magazines of the country and publishers of m