The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 40 No. 1

Authors

• Duane R. Carr
• Catherine Cowen Olson
• John Rodden
• Michael C. C. Adams
• Peter Donahue
• Jerold Waltman
• James Scofield
• Corrine De Winter
• Jim Thomas
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES 

The Dispossessed White as Naked Ape and Stereotyped Hillbilly in the Southern Novels of Cormac McCarthy  

You Are What You Eat: Food and Power in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres 

Zarathustra Unbound? The New Nietzsche in the New Germany 

The "Good War" Myth and the Cult of Nostalgia  

Alleys: Reading Urban Abjection and Anonymity 

Citizenship and Civic Republicanism in Contemporary Britain  

THE MINUTES YOU CLAIM TO OWN (Poems): 

I Am, Said He 

a day of elegies 

A Putting Down 

Man With No Shadow 

Lullaby 

A Congealed Daydream 

Spring Sparkle And The Cock-Bird Shriek 

The Holding Shed  

Bees 

Azrael' s Call 

Elegy 

Life 

REVIEWS 

Lyn Lifshin; Cold Comfort  

Joe Benevento; Holding On  

Abstract

DUANE R. CARR critiques the redneck stereotypes who populate the fiction of Cormac McCarthy as poorly developed grotesques providing little wisdom and much contempt for backcountry folk. Currently Adjunct Professor at Western Kentucky University, Carr has published articles on Steinbeck, Albee, Joyce, and Glasgow. The present article is drawn from a broader survey published as A Question of Class: The Redneck Stereotype in Southern Literature.

CATHERINE COWEN OLSON explores Jane Smiley's use of the food characters prepare and eat in A Thousand Acres to expose their feelings and intentions. A teacher of English at Kingwood College in Houston, Texas, she read an earlier version of this paper at a conference on "The United States and the World" at the University of Oslo. This is her first publication.

JAMES SCOFIELD, Olympia, Washington, has been writing poetry and essays for twenty-nine years, and has sat down to write each of those years. He began in 1970 his private study of English and American poetry, and by 1990 had written only forty-one poems, all of which he destroyed. In 1991 he submitted his first poem, "Festival," to the journal Bellowing Ark of Seattle. It was accepted. Since 1991, Scofield has written only thirty poems. They have appeared in America in such journals as Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Yellow Silk, The Critic, Haight-Asbury Literary Journal, Plains Poetry Journal, RE Arts & Letters, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum, Sulphur River Literary Review, and many others. Recently his work has appeared in England through the universities of Bath and Hull, and other English journals, and also Canada and India. His poems have also appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly. Scofield states, "I have written out of an enduring belief that a poem should be characterized by an outward impulse, a rhetorical surge, and a mythopoeic posture." In 1999 his only book, 30 Poems, will be published by Sulphur River Literary Publications of Austin, Texas.

JOHN RODDEN offers a glimpse of eastern Germans confronting the past the Communists attempted to bury, their complicity in the Nazi horrors, and specifically their identification with the provocative assertions of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rodden is Adjunct Professor of Speech Communication at the University of Texas-Austin and author of two books, Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of East German Education and Textbook Reds: Ideology and National Self-Legitimation in East German Schoolbooks.

MICHAEL C. C. ADAMS examines the way the Nineties looks back at World War II and the "lessons" it supposedly has, or should, teach us, and suggests that our vision is at best myopic and at worst delusional. Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University, where he chairs the Department of History and Geography, Adams has published three books, Our Masters the Rebels: A Speculation on Union Military Failure, The Great Adventure: Male Desire and the Coming of World War I, and The Best War Ever: America and World War II. He is currently working on an anthology of essays on the "right to bear arms" and a popular history of the relation between famous battles and the way cultures remember them.

PETER DONAHUE invites readers to travel the alleyways, those dark byways fetid-ripe and mysterious, illegitimate and discomforting. Donahue combines personal history with literary explorations of these unplaces. Assistant Professor of English at Sam Houston State University, he has published articles and short stories in a number of journals, and he also helps edit The Texas Review.

JEROLD WALTMAN discusses the effort in Britain to transform subjects  into citizens, the two key models for the individual's role in political society, and the problems which must be overcome in initiating this new conception. Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Mississippi, he has written Copying Other Nation's Policies, The Political Origins of the U. S. Income Tax, and American Government: Politics and Citizenship, and has co-edited Dilemmas of Change in British Politics, Political Economy: Public Policies in the U. S. and Britain, and The Political Role of Law Courts in Modem Democracies. He is currently working on a book-length study of the politics of the minimum wage.

CORRINE DE WINTER is a Pushcart Prize nominee who has published poetry, essays, and articles in over 500 literary publications, including Ellipsis, New York Quarterly, Chrysalis, Imago, Blue Violin, Phoebe, and The Writer. She lives in Springfield, Massachusetts.

JIM THOMAS, a great lover of trout fishing, is retired from the Division of Language and Literature at Truman State University. He lives in Hermann, Missouri.

Two members of the Board of Editors have recently resigned. Marshall R. Turley has now retired from the University, and so is taking up what may for him prove a more challenging assignment. Celia Patterson's new role assisting the Dean of Arts and Sciences has forced her to relinquish her post with this journal.

Now joining the Board is Professor CASIE HERMANSSON, who has in fact already been reviewing manuscripts and revisions for half a year as Dr. Patterson has had to devote her time to administrative business.

Dr. Casie Hermansson completed her undergraduate degrees in French and English at Massey University in her New Zealand home town. Before arriving at PSU last Fall to teach twentieth-century British literature, she spent a year living and working in England and another teaching English at a French high school on the Belgian border. She obtained both her M.A. and Ph.D. in English at the University of Toronto, Canada. In the course of her graduate education she presented papers at several national and regional conferences, published an article in the journal Studies in American Fiction, critical essays on novels for a CD-ROM reference work, and book reviews. In addition to her research interests-which include narrative theory and the Bluebeard fairy tale-she has published poetry.

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE FIFTH ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE

On behalf of the family of the late Professor Victor J. Emmett, Jr., the faculty of the English Department and the editors of The Midwest Quarterly are happy to announce the winner of the 1998 Emmett Memorial Prize:

Professor Tom Matchie of the University of North Dakota for his essay, "Spiritual Geography in Four Midwestern Novels," which appeared in the summer issue of The Midwest Quarterly.

Professor Matchie will receive an honorarium provided by an endowment set up by the Emmett family and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the Emmett Memorial Lecture during September, 1998.

THE ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE AND LECTURE

The editors of The Midwest Quarterly invite submission of articles on any literary topic, but preferably on Victorian or Modem British Literature, Literary Criticism, or the Teaching of Literature, to be considered for the annual Emmett Memorial Prize honoring an essay published in this journal. The winning author will receive an honorarium and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the annual Emmett Memorial Lecture. This award is given by the Emmett family in memory of the late Victor J. Emmett, Jr., who was for many years Professor of English at Pittsburg State University and this journal's Editor-in-Chief.

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

Carr, Duane R.; Olson, Catherine Cowen; Rodden, John; Adams, Michael C. C.; Donahue, Peter; Waltman, Jerold; Scofield, James; De Winter, Corrine; Thomas, Jim; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1998) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 40 No. 1," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 40: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol40/iss1/1