The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 34 No. 3

Authors

• Arthur Scherr
• Alfred Cismaru
• George W. Shields
• William M. Bueler
• Wade Sikorski
• Earl Lee
• Jeanne Murray Walker
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES 

Voltaire's Candide: A Tale of Women's Equality 

Antisemitism in France  

Some Recent Philosophers and the Problem of Future Contingents 

Model for a Sustainable Future 

The Vulnerable Machine  

Beyond the Third Wave: Prophets of a New World Order 

THE AUNT JOE POEMS 

Aunt Joe Falls in Love with Wilfred Chappell 

Wilfred and Josephine Arrive in Pittsburgh 

Deciding Not to Go Back Home  

What Happens Next 

Finding Work 

The Rape 

Aunt Joe Gets Off the Train  

Summer Solstice Festival in Parkers Prairie, 1931 

Love Again  

Aunt Joe Watches Bjorn Larsen Walking in the Rain  

Abstract

In Candide, argues ARTHUR SCHERR, Voltaire's women are intelligent, resourceful, and erotic individuals, quite the equal of males, if not infrequently their superiors. Having taught history and English at Bernard Baruch College and Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, as well as the New York City high schools, Scherr is a self-styled "Renaissance person" who has published articles in a number of scholarly journals.

Human memory is a curious thing: it remembers what it wants to remember and forgets what it is inconvenient to remember or simply refuses to believe a contrary fact. So it is with antisemitism. Responsibility for martyring Christ is said to motivate those who harm living Jews and desecrate dead Jews, and this is accepted as justification. The horrors of World War II, both what happened to the Jews and the motives of those who participated in such atrocities, are displaced. In France, ALFRED CISMARU maintains, antisemitism is active and tolerated at the highest levels. Professor of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature at Texas Tech University, Cismaru has written extensively on eighteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, including three books and over one hundred scholarly articles.

"What did God know and when did God know it" might appropriately sum up the case discussed by GEORGE W. SHIELDS. Starting with the Medieval-Renaissance formulations of this dispute on divine omniscience, Shields demonstrates that modern philosophers of religion have also taken up this essential question about the nature of divinity and in many ways echo their earlier counterparts. Co-author and co-editor of Faith and Creativity and Science, Technology, and Religious Ideas, Shields is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kentucky State University.

JEANNE MURRAY WALKER, this issue's featured poet, has published poems recently in Poetry and Shenandoah, and has work forthcoming in Prairie Schooner. Her play, "Stories from The National Enquirer," has been performed recently in Washington, D.C., Boston, and London. Ms. Walker's fourth book, Stranger Than Fiction, just won the international poetry competition of The Quarterly Review of Literature. "What's a little unusual about this book," writes Ms. Walker, "is that even though it's a fiction, it's in the form of a long poem. It uses different kinds of prose poetry and blank verse to tell the story of three characters: a tabloid reporter, his wife, and his editor." Ms. Walker's fifth book, still in manuscript, is "The Parkers Prairie Poems," about a small town in Minnesota. The Aunt Joe sequence of poems comes from this volume.

Short of radical surgery, what can be done to sustain a future which preserves as much economic and political freedom as possible and also respects the limits nature has set on basic commodities such as breathable air, abundant and potable water, and the rest of life's necessities? The case for reasonable limits and identifying strategies to encourage this sustainable future is the task WILLIAM M. BUELER set for himself. Instructor in Chinese (Mandarin) at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, Bueler has written two books on mountaineering, another on U. S. China Policy and the Problem of Taiwan, one on Chinese proverbs, and a 1991 book providing a futurist's vision of restructuring America written under a pen name.

Structural fragility, WADE SIKORSKI contends, is the invariable result of centralized control and increases as reason seeks to unify and order simply because human and natural systems are too complex and contain the unpredictable, the anomaly, and the "insignificant" flaw. This essay forms part of a larger work, "Modernity and Technology: Harnessing the Earth to the Slavery of Man," soon to be published by the University of Alabama Press. Holder of a doctorate in political science and writer on the connectedness of things, Sikorski currently lives in a self-built underground house in southeastern Montana using nothing but passive solar heat and grows his vegetables in an attached greenhouse.

As a harbinger of the future, Alvin Toller, in the view of EARL LEE, transports corporate control in the Trojan Horse of informational democracy, and in so doing he recalls the statism championed by James Burnham at mid-century. Assistant Professor of Library Science at Pittsburg State, Lee has published articles in several journals, including one on "Library Censorship after Webster," and is now working on a novel.

With this issue, ROBERT L. SHEVERBUSH begins his association with Midwest Quarterly's Board of Editors. Author of numerous papers and articles in his field of psychology, Sheverbush has served as Chair of the Psychology Department of Pittsburg State and also continues as a practitioner in this discipline and in his specialty of family therapy in area medical facilities. He brings a fresh diversity of experience and expertise to this position, and his insights will certainly aid in the continuing role of this publication as muse to scholars across campus disciplines.

This arrival also means the departure of a valued Member of the Board of Editors, CALVIN H. MERRIFIELD. He joined the Board with the Autumn, 1974, issue, and has continued since then to provide valuable comments about the many manuscripts which have crossed his desk since. This is a labor of love, for Board Members receive no compensation or release time for this service, and doing so for nearly twenty years is sufficient testment to his sense of responsibility and dedication. His often terse reflections will be missed.

Permissions to Use

In accordance with database agreements, the full text of the issue is not available for download. Pittsburg State Digital Commons has only provided the front matter for author and publication information.

Recommended Citation

Scherr, Arthur; Cismaru, Alfred; Shields, George W.; Bueler, William M.; Sikorski, Wade; Lee, Earl; Walker, Jeanne Murray; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1993) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 34 No. 3," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 34: Iss. 3, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol34/iss3/1