The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 3 No. 4

Authors

James L. Pauley
Alice R. Kaminsky
Charles J. Dellasega
Stuart Levine
Hans Beerman
Julia Pernat
James Binney
Marion Schoeberlein
Bob Wootton
L. W. Michaelson
Tracy Thompson
Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

Articles

To Hell With Thermodynamics

The American Jew in the Academic Novel

Kansas: Resources and Economic Growth

Melville's "Voyages Thither"

West of Karnuntum

Verse

The Partners

Afternoon

The Mexican Girl

Centennial

Motor Trip Out West

Disagreeable Water-Sprites

Sonnet

Abstract

in this issue...

READER reaction is always unpredictable. Some praised the strong concentration on contemporary continental, hemispheric, and world problems in our April issue; others expressed the hope that R. D. Lakin's essay, ''Philosophy and the Missing Purpose," indicated a new editorial direction; still others criticized the limitation of literary criticism to a single article, Richard Rupp's succinct analysis of Hart Crane's masterful treatment of Brooklyn Bridge in his "Atlantis." In the face of wide and uncorrelated demand, the editors have concluded to present a summer issue defying easy categorization. To round our Volume III we present a warm weather collection or selection designed to whet a variety of appetites whether for scientific philosophizing (from a point of view rather far removed from R. D. Lakin' s), for a relatively new field of interest to American novelists, for the economics of present-day Kansas, for a fresh look at one of Melville's more neglected novels, or for a stay-at-home visit to old Vienna. There is, obviously, no single theme in this issue. The reader is free to pick up, read, put down, as the spirit moves him and as the television commercials affront his eyes and ears, intelligence, and good taste.

THERMODYNAMICS may seem to be an over-obvious subject for summer reading, but in our editorial opinion, our colleague, JAMES L. PAULEY, professor of chemistry here at Kansas State College, has managed a deft combination of technology, philosophy, humor, and understanding. Born and raised next door in Missouri, he took his A. B. at Central College, Fayette, his M. S. at the University of Nebraska, and his Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas. He has conducted research in such fields as the properties of explosive in naval ordnance, surface films, ion exchange, and the dialectic properties of polymers. He is a past president of the Southeast Kansas Section of the American Chemical Society and for the past two summers has been a research participant at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee. Every summer he puts in a few weeks in the U. S. Naval Reserve, this summer aboard a destroyer in the North Atlantic. His articles and reviews have appeared in a number of technical journals. The paper here published was originally presented before the KSC Faculty Liberal Arts Seminar (directed by Editor Theodore M. Sperry) at its February, 1961, session.

SCHOLARLY analysis of the academic novel is a fairly recent development in literary circles. ALICE R. KAMINSKY, instructor in English at Cornell University, here explores a specialized area within the larger context of the novel of American academic life, and her findings suggest a healthy and encouraging development on the American campus. Mrs. Kaminsky earned her Ph.D. at New York University, and her areas of interest are nineteenth and twentieth century literature. She has published in PMLA and other journals and is presently preparing an edition of the literary criticism of George Henry Lewes for the Regent Critics Series of the University of Nebraska Press. Her husband is professor of philosophy at Harpur College of the State University of New York.

ALMOST everybody knows Kansas as the Wheat or Sunflower State. Visitors to this geographic center of the (pre-Alaska and Hawaii) United States are usually surprised at the diversification not only of Kansas agriculture but of her economy and resources. Those soaring white grain elevators at Hutchinson are symbolic of only one of the state's products and give no clue at all to the enormous salt deposits beneath them--or of the coal and oil, the lead and zinc, the cement and helium also extracted from the home of the deer and the antelope, not to mention Alf Landon, Mary Elizabeth Lease, William Allen White and the Menninger brothers. CHARLES J. DELLASEGA grew up among the coal mines of southeast Kansas, took his B. S. and M. S. degrees here and his doctors in economics at the University of Oklahoma, joining this faculty in 1952. Presently professor of economics, he has long been concerned with the development and improvement of economic education particularly in the secondary schools. This article was prepared as part of the Great Issues Lecture Series sponsored annually by the Department of Social Science of Kansas State College and was originally delivered last November.

CONSIDERING the volume of Melville scholarship in the past fifteen years, it is little short of amazing to discover explorations of new facets of his work. STUART LEVINE, who edits the Midcontinent American Studies Journal at the University of Kansas, delights in examining relatively obscure chapters of American literature; MIDWEST QUARTERLY readers will recall his article on Edgar Allen Poe's Julius Rodman in our April, 1960, issue. Here he takes a critical look at Mardi, probably Melville's most neglected novel. Professor Levine a New Yorker out of Brown and Harvard, is Allyn & Bacon's consultant in American literature and has just completed a text in technical writing. This summer he goes to the University of La Plata, where he will teach American literature on a Fulbright grant. From Argentina he goes to Costa Rica on an exchange grant from the Carnegie Corporation. His long essay-review, "In the Mystical Moist Night Air," will appear in this summer's American Quarterly.

SUMMER travel has a perennial appeal--aside from the frantic efforts usually necessary to prepare for departure--and in this issue we offer our readers an inexpensive tour of Vienna under the expert guidance of our peripatetic colleague, HANS BEERMAN, associate professor of foreign languages here. A seasoned world traveler, he revisited the ancient Hapsburg capital two summers back while on an extensive European lecture tour. Two of his essays have appeared previously in our pages: in the issues of October, 1959, and January, 1960.

OF THE SIX poets whose work appears in this issue, two will be quickly identified by our readers: L. W. MICHAELSON of Colorado State University, Fort Collins, and MARION SCHOEBERLEIN of Elmhurst Illinois. The former publishes frequent essays and reviews in Midwest, edited by C. R. Cuscaden in Chicago; last winter's issue contained his "Poet's Credo" as number three in . a series. This will be Miss Schoeberlein's third appearance in our pages, and another is scheduled for October. . . The four newcomers to this journal include a Kansas high school teacher, an Ohio secretary, a Pennsylvania Ph.D., and the editor of a California poetry magazine. . . . BOB WOOTTON, who teaches English IV near Kansas City, has been unpublished till now despite the fact that "a skinny collection of animated but rather undistinguished poems is bound" as his master's thesis. His contribution to this issue is a reaction to the high-jinks that crowded into the Civil War Centennial program last year. This is as good a place as any to repeat the assurance of James I. Robertson, Jr., executive director of the Centennial Commission (and former editor of Civil War History) that his commission does not endorse any re-enactments or "celebrations" of Civil War battles. . . . JULIA PERNAT is the pseudonym of a native Buckeye whose work has appeared in American Weave, The Humanist, Ohio Poetry Review, and elsewhere, including two anthologies: Contemporary Ohio Poetry and Japan: Theme and Variations. . . . JAMES BINNEY of West Chester, Pennsylvania, has his doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Pittsburgh. His articles, stories, poems, and reviews, have appeared in a large number of publications. . . . TRACY THOMPSON edits Sun, a monthly poetry journal published in San Francisco. His work has appeared in over a hundred books and periodicals including The Antioch Review, Carleton Miscellany, Fiddlehead, Isis, Kansas Magazine, The Nation, and The Western Humanities Review.

Recommended Citation

Pauley, James L.; Kaminsky, Alice R.; Dellasega, Charles J.; Levine, Stuart; Beerman, Hans; Pernat, Julia; Binney, James; Schoeberlein, Marion; Wootton, Bob; Michaelson, L. W.; Thompson, Tracy; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1962) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 3 No. 4," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 3: Iss. 4, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol3/iss4/1