The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 26 No. 2

Authors

• John A. Mills
• William C. Pratt
• Angela Hague
• Clayton Koelb
• Edward L. Galligan
• John Churchill
• Michael Heffernan
• John Stone
• Brendan Galvin
• Gordon D. Marino
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES

"What. What-not." Absurdity in Saroyan's The Time of Your Life

Critics, Scholars, Scribes, and Partisans: Reflections upon Intellectuals in our Era

The Academic World in Modern Literature

The Text as Erotic/Auto-Erotic Device

Never Give a Sucker or Yourself an Even Break

The Humanities in Public Conversation

INTERVIEW

A Conversation with John Stone, Physician and Poet

POEMS

November

Seeing Double After Eye Surgery

Argument and After

The Circuit

Comparative Anatomy

Trying to Remember Even a Small Dream Much Less the Big Gaudy Ones in Color with Popcorn and High Ticket Prices

The Hands

REVIEWS

George Garrett; The Collected Poems of George Garrett

Debra Bruce; Pure Daughter

Sara Henderson Hay; Story Hour

Janet Malcolm; Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession

Abstract

in this issue. . .

JOHN A. MILLS finds in The Time of Your Life an absurdist meaning lurking below the surface vision of pleasant typicality. Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona, Mills has written several articles and a book, Hamlet on Stage: The Great Tradition, on the theater.

WILLIAM C. PRATT dissects the roles of the intellectual in contemporary society and finds merit still in that calling. Pratt is Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His scholarly interest in the American left and farmer and labor movements has resulted in several recent publications on radical politics in America.

ANGELA HAGUE surveys postwar fiction depicting university life and concludes the present century, like the eighteenth, sees academe as corrupt and corrupting, a place more given to cant and posture than thought. Author also of Iris Murdoch's Comic Vision and articles on contemporary literature, Hague serves as Assistant Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University.

MICHAEL HEFFERNAN interviews JOHN STONE and presents a selection of Dr. Stone's recent work. With this issue Michael Heffernan concludes his fifteen years of service as The Midwest Quarterly's poetry editor.

CLAYTON KOELB celebrates literature's delights both of body and mind, sexual and self-exploratory. Author of two recent books, Thomas Mann's Goethe and Tolstoy: Notes and Sources and The Incredulous Reader: Literature and the Function of Disbelief, and of many articles involving literary criticism, Koelb is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at The University of Chicago.

EDWARD L. GALLIGAN offers a delightful account of W. C. Fields as the clown thumbing his nose at convention, his audience, and himself. Professor of English at Western Michigan University, Galligan's interest in comic theory and practice has led to numerous publications, including an edition of H. L. Mencken's memoirs, A Choice of Days.

JOHN CHURCHILL locates the usefulness of the humanities in everyday life in their essential focus on man. Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department, Churchill has combined essays on the liberal arts with articles on Wittgenstein and religious belief.

BRENDAN GALVIN has three recent books of poems, Atlantic Flyway (1980), Winter Oysters (1983), both from University of Georgia Press, and A Birder's Dozen (1984) from Ampersand Press. A new collection, Seals in the Inner Harbor, is in the works.

GORDON D. MARINO is a Special Humanities Fellow with the Committee on Social Thought at The University of Chicago. Thanks to a fellowship from the American Scandinavian Foundation, he will spend the 1984-1985 academic year in Denmark working on a book tentatively titled, "A Kierkegaardian Critique of Psychological Man."

With this issue, his sixtieth, Michael Heffernan steps down as Poetry Editor for The Midwest Quarterly. His dedication to his art, his professionalism, and his contribution of time and inspiration will be missed. I am certain our readers and contributors will join the editors in wishing Michael well as he pursues his own career in poetry. Fortunately for all of us he will not be gone long from these pages: he returns next issue in a special celebratory selection of poems marking both the end of his active participation in the journal and the beginning of the poetry section under new guidance.

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 first 6 pages for author and publication information.

Recommended Citation

Mills, John A.; Pratt, William C.; Hague, Angela; Koelb, Clayton; Galligan, Edward L.; Churchill, John; Heffernan, Michael; Stone, John; Galvin, Brendan; Marino, Gordon D.; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1985) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 26 No. 2," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 26: Iss. 2, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol26/iss2/1