"shades of the prison house" come from oil, with all of the world's
coarse thumbs that go with oil.

GEORGE SESSIONS PERRY'S _Hold Autumn in Your Hand_ (1941) incarnates
a Texas farm hand too poor "to flag a gut-wagon," but with the good
nature, dignity, and independence of the earth itself. _Walls Rise Up_
(1939) is a kind of _Crock of Gold_, both whimsical and earthy, laid on
the Brazos River.

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER is as dedicated to artistic perfection as was A.
E. Housman. Her output has, therefore, been limited: _Flowering Judas_
(1930, enlarged 1935); _Pale Horse, Pale Rider_ (1939), _The Leaning
Tower_ (1944). Her stories penetrate psychology, especially the
psychology of a Mexican hacienda, with rare finesse. Her small canvases
sublimate the inner realities of men and women. She appeals only to
cultivated taste, and to some tastes no other fiction writer in America
today is her peer in subtlety.

EUGENE MANLOVE RHODES died in 1934. Most of his novels--distinguished
by intricate plots and bright dialogue--had appeared in the _Saturday
Evening Post_. His finest story is "Paso Por Aqui," published in the
volume entitled _Once in the Saddle_ (1927). Gene Rhodes, who has a
canyon--on which he ranched--named for him in New Mexico, was an artist;
at the same time, he was a man akin to his land and its men. He is the
only writer of the range country who has been accorded a biography--_The
Hired Man on Horseback_, by May D. Rhodes, his wife. See under "Range
Life."

CONRAD RICHTER'S _The Sea of Grass_ (1937) is a kind of prose poem,
beautiful and tragic. Lutie, wife of the owner of the grass, is perhaps
the most successful creation of a ranch woman that fiction has so far
achieved.

DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH'S _The Wind_ (1925) excited the wrath of chambers of
commerce and other boosters in West Texas--a tribute to its realism.

_The Grapes of Wrath_, by John Steinbeck (1939), made Okies a word
in the American language. Although dated by the Great Depression, its
humanity and realism are beyond date. It is among the few good novels
produced by America in the first half of the twentieth century.

JOHN W. THOMASON, after fighting as a marine in World War I, wrote _Fix
Bayonets_ (1926), followed by _Jeb Stuart_ (1930). A native Texan, he
followed the southern tradition rather than the western. _Lone Star
Preacher_ (1941) is a strong and sympathetic characterization of
Confederate fighting men woven into fictional form.