SOME PART OF MYSELF
By
No autobiography is as good as the best biography,"" author Dobie states at the outset of his own, and ""unless an autobiography is written in conformity with the writer's nature and business, it will not be valid."" From this vantage point, Some Part of Myself is valid if constrained autobiography, sticking pretty close to home and the surface. Dobie was born in Live Oak County, Texas, in 1888, recalls ranching, hands, neighbors, horses, books. He biographs his father and mother and Uncle Frank Byler. His parents were determined that he and their other children get a college education, so he went to Southwestern, then Columbia University, where he learned more from the town than his studies. Back home after World War I, he realized the treasure of an ancient land, wrote Coronado's Children. In closing, he pays his respects to storytellers, who include an unlikely character named Railroad Smith and who ""string out in my memory like a long, long recua of pack mules, each of a different brand, a different color, and different disposition."" A concern with roots, of essentially regional interest, and for Dobie fans.