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MEXICO AND THE HISPANIC SOUTHWEST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE BY CECIL ROBINSON (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977. 391 pages, $5.45.) To write a review, the reviewer must sit down and read the book through from cover to cover. Dealing in that manner with a book like Cecil Robinson's updating of With the Ears ofStrangers (1963) brings out unfairly all its weaker aspects, for it is not a book to be read but one to be used, a sort of borderlands Baugh. Robinson works over theme after theme in the writing about Mexico and the Hispanic Southwest (he excludes the Native Americans of the latter area), and the Table of Contents or the Index of titles, authors, and main thematic headings will lead the user quickly to the appropriate section. So though a cover-to-cover reading makes the book seem very repetitious , with many of the works Robinson treats turning up over and over, it is very well organized and not in fact redundant at all. To seem superior, the reviewer must point out some omissions (Fray Angélico Chavez, John Nichols, Raymond Otis, Sabine Ulibarri) and some weaknesses (poor proofreading; the seeming lack of a stable critical point of view; many irritating if unimportant mistakes of fact). Like any book of its sort, it also deals — and should deal — with a lot of trash writing. But for the purposes of its actual market, it will function as a civilized, perceptive, thorough, and very useful reference work. THOMAS J. STEELE, S.J.* ?Jesuit Father TOM STEELE is a graduate ofthe University ofNew Mexico, Associate Professor of English at Regis CoUege, Denver, and author of intermittent works on the religious art and drama of the New Mexico Spanish. VOL. 34. NO. 2 (SPRING 1980)169 ...

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