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Critical Praise for Harbingers of Books to Come: A Texan's Literary Life

• Dave Oliphant's Harbingers of Books to Come is unlike most autobiographies where the author thinks back fondly (and vaguely) to youth and the rise to mastery and recognition. This memoir moves moment to moment, driven by so many interconnecting memories that it reminds one of Proust. But along the way, Oliphant illuminates the literary history of Texas over the last half of the 20th century. Figures now frozen into icons come alive again under Oliphant's admiring gaze; even J. Frank Dobie's memory is cherished by this scrupulous and thorough chronicler. As wayward student, ardent reader, gifted editor of a student literary journal and eventually the University of Texas' Library Chronicle, Oliphant has been a passionate champion of the written word. His own books of poetry and those of his Prickly Pear Press are carefully reconstructed and take their place among the texts of this astonishingly detailed summing up of a life of words in the Lone Star state. This modest narrator has grasped what may well be the golden age of Texas literature; I doubt another five decades could ever be as rich as these have been, with Dave Oliphant somewhere in the middle of it all, taking notes. This is the encyclopedia of that tumultuous era.

  — Paul Christensen, Professor, Texas A&M University. Author of West of the American Dream: An Encounter with Texas

• Dave Oliphant's voice -- as poet, critic, teacher, editor, publisher, historian of Texas jazz, and translator of Chilean poetry -- has been a significant one in Texas letters for over forty years. With detail and clarity this new memoir, Harbingers of Books to Come, traces the young Fort Worth boy's odyssey to Beaumont, Austin, Mexico City, Santiago, and beyond and demonstrates the fullness of a literary life.

  — Mark Busby, Professor, Texas State University. Past president, Texas Institute of Letters. Author of Fort Benning Blues