The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought
Contents
ARTICLES
Toward an Understanding of Totalitarianism and Antisemitism
The Humanist(ic) Connection
Scientific Revolutions, Political Archetypes, and Evolutionist Critique
The Black Mirror: Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus" and Flannery O'Connor's "The Artificial Nigger"
The Cinematic Bogy Man Comes Home: American Popular Perceptions of External Threat
Private Rituals: Coping with Change in the Fiction of Bobbie Ann Mason
POEMS
Artist, Muttering
Triptych
The Man with the Left-Handed Tools
No Return
If You Turned Around Quickly
Storm
My Island
Snake Island
Frieda Lawrence Answers the Doubters
Growing Wild in the Capital
Continental Divide
Trying to Understand the Weather
River
Suburbs
Final Nightmare of the Future
Misunderstanding
The Oasis Well
Wild Swans
For the First Four Months
REVIEWS
Shahid Ali Agha; T. S. Eliot as Editor
Jonathan Rose; The Edwardian Temperament
Abstract
in this issue. . .
Egalitarianism begets totalitarianism and antisemitism. That is the provocative thesis of RONALD LARSON. Professor of Social Science at Wytheville Community College in Virginia and playwright, Larson has studied and written about modem narcissism in a number of different forums.
BETTY R. McGRAW and RODNEY O. FOX link literature and science to explore the modem view of life's basic components as lacking the certainty and unity so apparent to earlier generations of philosophers, scientists, and writers, and they end with a mention of new topics for consideration. McGraw is Associate Professor of French and Fox is a National Science Foundation Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering, both at Kansas State University in Manhattan. McGraw's articles on semiotics and postmodern literature have appeared in many journals, while Fox has authored numerous papers and is at present studying the application of probability theory and stochastic processes to chemical engineering problems.
Understanding scientific theory-change, suggests STRUAN JACOBS, poses a significant and relevant philosophical problem, one basic to appreciating the origin, development, and success of the new concept itself. Author of several articles on philosophy and science, Jacobs teaches philosophy and sociology at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.
JIMMY AUBERT of LaHarpe, Kansas, describes himself as "ex-teacher, ex-carpenter, ex-janitor, and ex-other things." His poems have appeared in several journals, including Kansas Quarterly, Little Balkans Review, Great River Review, and Southern Poetry Review.
MARGUERITE BOUVARD teaches political science and poetry at Regis College and makes her home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She has published two books of poetry, Journeys Over Water (1980) and Voice from an Island (1985). Some of her short stories, poems, and translations appear in Landscape and Exile (1985), an anthology.
NEAL BOWERS teaches English and directs the creative writing program at Iowa State University. Poems of his have appeared in such obscure mags as The New Yorker, Poetry, Harpers, Hudson Review, Sewanee Review, and others. His critical book on James Dickey appeared in 1985.
SANDRA BERRIS had a poem in the Summer 1986 issue of Midwest Quarterly. Since then she has published a poem in Rhino. She is still director of the Barrington (Illinois) Area Arts Council and editor of Whetstone.
MIKE CATHERWOOD drives a truck out of Omaha and also attends the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He recently published a poem in Elkhorn Review.
ANNE CONNER studied journalism at the University of Kansas and fiction and poetry at the University of Iowa. She was a newspaper reporter but now writes free lance and has had one poem in The Spirit that Moves Us.
CARL DJERASSI, professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, received the National Medal of Science in 1973 for his synthesis of the first oral contraceptive. His poems have appeared previously in Cumberland Poetry Review, Wallace Stevens Journal, and Kenyon Review, and a short story recently appeared in Hudson Review.
GEORGE GOTT teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Superior and has published poetry in numerous magazines and anthologies. Two chapbooks, Birds and Horses and Watching the Fire, were published in 1984. One of his poems appeared in the Summer 1985 issue of Midwest Quarterly.
FLEDA BROWN JACKSON teaches part-time at the University of Delaware and edits their literary magazine. She has had poetry appear in Kenyon Review, Beliot Poetry Journal, Cottonwood, and the most recent issue of the Midwest Quarterly. She has poems forthcoming in Poetry Northwest.
ERNEST KROLL, a former newspaperman and U. S. Government official, has published five volumes of poetry. He is the only living author among thirty-six to have a quotation from one of his poems cut in the granite floor of the new Western Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capital. One of his poems appeared in the Summer 1985 issue of Midwest Quarterly.
WALTER McDONALD teaches and directs the creative writing program at Texas Tech University. Recent poems of his have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Triquarterly. His most recent book of poems, Witching on Hardscrabble (1985), was co-winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Poetry A ward.
BARBARA MOORE teaches at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, and has had poems recently in American Poetry Review, Massachusetts Review, Poetry, and other journals. Her book of poems, The Passionate City, was published in 1979.
JOSEPH RAFFA of Kensington, Maryland, has published articles and short fiction and his poetry has appeared in a large number of journals, including Poet, Modern Images, Blue Unicorn, and Western Poetry Quarterly.
ALISON T. REED of Brentwood, Tennessee, has published poetry in Blue Unicorn, Cape Rock, Carolina Quarterly, and numerous other journals. One of her poems was selected to appear in the Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry (1985). She has published two books of poems, The First Movement (1976) and Bid Me Welcome (1978).
GREGORY A. RYAN has published poetry and short fiction in Sepia, Broadside, Appearances, and other journals. He lives and writes in New York City.
REBECCA THOMPSON of Stratford, Connecticut, has published poetry in New York Quarterly, Midwest Poetry Review, Daring Poetry Quarterly, and other journals. Her poems have also been featured in several anthologies. She has been a lecturer on poetry at several colleges and currently teaches at Baldwin Community Center in Stratford.
RICHARD J. WEEKLEY lives in Newhall, California, where he teaches at Hart High School. He is founder and co-editor of Vol. No. Magazine, and has published poetry in Bitterroot, California State Poetry Quarterly, Windless Orchard, and other journals. He has published two books of poetry, Mayan Night (1981) and Little Pianos (1982).
The illumination provided by the black doubles in works by Joseph Conrad and Flannery O'Connor serves as the focus for KATHERINE H. BURKMAN and J. REID MELOY. Author of The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter (1971) and most recently of The Arrival of Godot: Ritual Patterns in Modern Drama (1986), Burkman is Professor of English at Ohio State University. Meloy practices clinical and forensic psychology in La Jolla, California, and has recent articles in several journals of psychology.
MICHAEL J. STRADA stresses the differences between alien-invader and war films of the 1950s and those of the last two decades. Professor of Political Science at West Liberty State College in West Virginia, Strada has· published articles recently in several journals.
As ALBERT E. WILHELM explains, social changes, those passages from one context to another, provide the subject of author Bobbie Ann Mason. Wilhelm is Professor of English at Tennessee Technological University. His essays have appeared in numerous journals of literary criticism.
GARY W. CLIFT teaches writing at Kansas State University, Manhattan. He edits Literary Magazine Review and will have a new story in the next issue of Twister.
CHARLES CAGLE, Associate Professor of English, teaches creative writing at Pittsburg State University. He has published numerous novels, short stories, and plays, as well as articles on such Victorian and Edwardian writers as Wilde, Symonds, Carpenter, James, Forster, Lawrence, and Proust. He is the author of a text, Creative Writing: Fiction.
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
Larson, Ronald; McGraw, Betty R.; Fox, Rodney O.; Jacobs, Struan; Burkman, Katherine H.; Meloy, J. Reid; Strada, Michael J.; Wilhelm, Albert E.; Aubert, Jimmy; Bouvard, Marguerite; Bowers, Neal; Berris, Sandra; Catherwood, Mike; Conner, Ann; Djerassi, Carl; Gott, George; Jackson, Fleda Brown; Kroll, Ernest; McDonald, Walter; Moore, Barbara; Raffa, Joseph; Reed, Alison T.; Ryan, Gregory A.; Thompson, Rebecca; Weekley, Richard J.; Clift, Gary W.; Cagle, Charles; and Midwest Quarterly Editors
(1987)
"The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 28 No. 2,"
The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 28:
Iss.
2, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol28/iss2/1