ul _Potato Face_. Intense exercise of his creative power sets,
in a way, the writer apart from the life he is trying to sublimate.
Becoming a Philistine will not enable a man to interpret Philistinism,
though Philistines who own big presses think so. Sinclair Lewis knew
Babbitt as Babbitt could never know either himself or Sinclair Lewis.

J. F. D.

_The time of Mexican primroses_ 1952

1. A Declaration

IN THE UNIVERSITY of Texas I teach a course called "Life and Literature
of the Southwest." About 1929 I had a brief guide to books concerning
the Southwest mimeographed; in 1931 it was included by John William
Rogers in a booklet entitled _Finding Literature on the Texas Plains_.
After that I revised and extended the guide three or four times, during
the process distributing several thousand copies of the mimeographed
forms. Now the guide has grown too long, and I trust that this printing
of it will prevent my making further additions--though within a short
time new books will come out that should be added.

Yet the guide is fragmentary, incomplete, and in no sense a
bibliography. Its emphases vary according to my own indifferences and
ignorance as well as according to my own sympathies and knowledge. It is
strong on the character and ways of life of the early settlers, on the
growth of the soil, and on everything pertaining to the range; it is
weak on information concerning politicians and on citations to studies
which, in the manner of orthodox Ph.D. theses, merely transfer bones
from one graveyard to another.

It is designed primarily to help people of the Southwest see
significances in the features of the land to which they belong, to make
their environments more interesting to them, their past more alive,
to bring them to a realization of the values of their own cultural
inheritance, and to stimulate them to observe. It includes most of
the books about the Southwest that people in general would agree on as
making good reading.

I have never had any idea of writing or teaching about my own section
of the country merely as a patriotic duty. Without apologies, I would
interpret it because I love it, because it interests me, talks to me,
appeals to my imagination, warms my emotions; also because it seems to
me that other people living in the Southwest will lead fuller and richer
lives if they become aware of what it holds. I once thought that, so
far as reading goes, I could