J. Frank Dobie

Although I have not read much in the way of Texas Literature, I have read a fair amount over the last year about Texas Literature. Anybody who delves into this topic must deal with the overwhelming presence of J. Frank Dobie. Dobie, perhaps more than any other author defined Texas as Western. The iconic event for this occurred back in 1939 when the Texas Institute of Letters awarded its first "Best Texas Book" to Dobie over Katherine Anne Porter. Politics aside, it points out a dichotomy in the identity of Texas, Dobie represents the West, Porter the South.
If one looks at a road map of Texas, taking I-35 as their guide, one can best see the division. To the east is that Texas which is Southern, to the west Western. The awarding of the TIL prize signified that Texas was hereafter to be considered a Western state.

And Still More Dobie

In the days of Washington and Jefferson and on through the years till the Civil War, the ambition of able- and many not able- young lawyers was to be a United States senator and to help in a grand way to govern their country. By the time big business took over government, the usual ambition of a bright young lawyer became, as it still is, to get himself retained by some corporation. The desire to serve his country had changed to a desire to sell his soul to a rich corporation....Not all of the first age could be John Randolphs or Websters, or all in the second age draw salaries from Standard Oil, but all got the kind of thing they wanted to get.
- J. Frank Dobie. A Texan in England. (79-80)

More Dobie

I have been struck how through the repeated decades of American history the people have got what they wanted. In the beginning they were greatly concerned with "the rights of man" and with not only freedom but enlightenment. They got noble Washington, great and thoughtful Jefferson, righteous and unyielding John Quincy Adams for their leaders. A hundred years went on, and the people were all mad for "normalcy." Democracy consisted no longer in their "unalienable rights" of man to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but in having things. The American way of life became the business way of life. And the people got as their leader a business man- Warren G. Harding, as sorry and muddleheaded a character as ever occupied the sorriest throne of the most rundown principality of Europe.
-J. Frank Dobie. A Texan in England. (79)

Dobie on Government

What a decent world it could so easily be if public spokesmen, instead of stirring up the people to distrust and shortsighted grasping, would allow the natural goodness in human hearts on both sides of the Atlantic to operate. The kind of people we can trust humanly are the kind of people we can trust governmentally.
- J. Frank Dobie. A Texan in England. (94-95)