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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

Articles

D. W.'s: The Displaced Writer in America

Katherine Anne Porter Comes to Kansas

Thomas Hart Benton Comes Home

Canallers in Waster Land: Some Considerations of Edmond's Rome Haul

The Catcher in the Rye Revisited

Caste and Class: Howell's Boston and Wharton's New York

Edith Wharton as Short Story Writer

Verse

In the Aura of a Cabin Light

Yes to the Sea

Grandeur

Two Poems

Day's Honey Dream

The Hawk in Motion

Odenwald

Seascape

Woman and Child

The Menagerie

Abstract

in this issue. . .

BY MIDWINTER it had become obvious to the editors that it would be possible to devote our summer issue to American Literature exclusively. Before the winds of March had blown in April's rain, the editors had decided to produce a special summer literary number; this was made possible by our possession of a good supply of interesting, important, and varied analyses of several aspects of American artistic and literary life. This issue, therefore, begins with an incisive essay on the generally unhappy position of the writer in American culture, and succeeding articles treat not only novelists and short story writers but the distinguished American artist, Thomas Hart Benton, who has some claim to being a writer also. In view of the centennial of Edith Wharton's birth, the editors are particularly happy to be able to present two articles touching on her work as novelist and superb short story writer.

WHENEVER we receive a manuscript from R. D. LAKIN of Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, at least two questions immediately arise: how does he find the time to do it? and, what will he think of next? With the publication of his article on the displaced writer, Dean Lakin achieves a unique position in the annals of this journal: he has appeared in all of our four volumes-and each article has dealt with a different question or area of interest. His participation in our publication began in the summer of 1960 with an essay on William Butler Yeats; in January, 1961, he contributed "Mark Twain and the Cold War," and in April, 1962, we published his ''Philosophy of the Missing Purpose." Besides teaching philosophy and literature at Colorado State, he has published articles and reviews in The Antioch Review, The Minority of One, The Nation, and The Progressive within the past year or so, and the last good word from him, toward the end of May, was that he had won a Fulbright grant for a year's study in philosophy at University College, London. With characteristic candor, he admits "I am pleased and excited about this." So are we.

THE TAPE-RECORDER is gradually earning recognition as an accepted tool of scholarship, not only to expedite research in the archives but also to catch the word on the wing, so to speak. Herewith we submit two documents in substantiation of this claim: JAMES RUOFF of the University of Wichita caught on tape an extended informal group-interview with Katherine Anne Porter during her visit to his campus two years ago this September. ELIZABETH and HOMER BROWN, both members of the Department of Language and Literature here, teamed up with some of their colleagues in American Literature about a year ago to interview Thomas Hart Benton at his home in Kansas City. These two interviews are different in organization, subject matter, and form, but each shows some of the possibilities in the intelligent use of tape recording.

In the case of Miss Porter, Dr. Ruoff was able to catch the substance of an informal discussion between Wichita students and faculty and the celebrated short story writer whose novel Ship of Fools has attracted much favorable attention. He assures us that "the conversation in my article is literal," and we agreed rather quickly that his article is "extremely rich in literary facts that cover the whole range of Miss Porter's life and works, and are not to be found anywhere else." The Browns chose to set forth their interview with Mr. Benton in the old question-answer or trial-transcript form with the addition of a few paragraphs of introductory explanation. Their result is extremely rich in artistic facts and opinions that cover the whole range of Mr. Benton's life and works, and some of these are not to be found anywhere else. Astute readers will, we think, find some relationships between the Lakin discussion of the place· of the writer in American life and these records of two American artists who, after rather long lives, have arrived at positions of enviable eminence in artistic accomplishment.

Professor Ruoff, born and raised in Seattle, attended the University of Washington, and earned master's and doctor's degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. Presently associate professor of English at the University of Wichita where he has served since 1960, he has also taught at Alfred University, New York, and Washington State University. His fields of interest are Renaissance and modem literature, and he has published in The University of Kansas City Review and Research Studies of Washington State University. He is working on a book about Shakespearean criticism.

Elizabeth Brown, a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, received her bachelor of arts in journalism from the University of Oklahoma in 1962. She has worked in a variety of newspaper and magazine assignments and was temporary instructor in Communications here this past year. Besides serving as a radio announcer, fashion model, and book store clerk, she was finalist in the Miss Arkansas contest not so long ago. Her husband, Homer Brown, of McAlester, Oklahoma, received his bachelor and master of arts degrees at the University of Oklahoma in 1959 and 1962 respectively. A graduate assistant and research assistant in the Department of English at Oklahoma, he taught in the extension program there and, during his Air Force service, had a variety of experiences in journalism, radio, and television. For the past two years he has been a literature instructor here and this fall will continue his work toward the doctorate at the Johns Hopkins University where he will be a junior instructor in English Literature. Elizabeth will serve the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution as a public relations assistant.

FROM Ship of Fools to an Erie Canal boat is a far cry, but the recent publication by Little, Brown of a handsome re-issue of three novels by Walter D. Edmonds under the title Three Stalwarts, serves to direct attention toward this writer who chose his native upstate New York as a setting for his work of a generation ago. So, for that matter, does a chapter on Edmonds in the 1962 Syracuse University Press book, Low Bridge: Folklore and the Erie Canal by LIONEL D. WYLD, assistant professor of English and American studies at the University of Buffalo. Professor Wyld, like Edmonds an upstate New Yorker, has been active in research in regional literature with the support of Renesselaer Research Fund grants, and his article herein is one of the products of that activity. His bachelor’s degree is from Hamilton College, and his master's and doctor's are from the University of Pennsylvania. He held teaching and editing positions at Notre Dame, Pennsylvania, and Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute, prior to going to Buffalo in 1961. A member of the American Folklore Society, the American Studies Association, the Canal Society of New York, the New York and Pennsylvania Folklore Societies, and the New York State Historical Association, he is presently editor of The Newsletter of the American Studies Association of New York State.

J. D. SALINGER writes about another part of New York in another time, and his work has attracted a great deal of critical attention, both pro and con, since the publication of his minor classic, The Catcher in the Rye, a dozen years ago. CHARLES CAGLE, a Texas-born Oklahoman who teaches advanced composition and creative writing courses here, contributes a re-examination of Salinger's art with particular reference to The Catcher. After completing his bachelor of arts degree at Southwestern State College at Weatherford, Oklahoma, in 1952, Mr. Cagle continued his formal education at the University of Oklahoma, completing his master of arts degree in 1955. A member of the Eastern Writers Guild of America he free-lanced in New York City for several years, and some of' his plays were produced on American and European television. He is currently continuing his graduate work in the Writer's Workshop of the State University of Iowa, Iowa City, with the Master of Fine Arts in creative writing as his objective. This summer he is devoting most of his energies to a novel. Last fall he delivered a lecture on Salinger's Catcher as part of the Great Books lecture series sponsored annually by the Department of Language and Literature here. His article herein published is in part a re-working of that lecture.

BELATEDLY we recognize the centennial of Edith Wharton's birth with two articles analyzing various aspects of her achievement. Born in 1862, she lived to the ripe age of seventy-five and made significant contributions to American literature in both the novel and the short story. ANNETTE K. BAXTER, associate in history in the Department of American Civilization of Barnard College, Columbia University, presents a parallel study of the New York City which provided the setting for much of Mrs. Wharton's work and the Boston described and analyzed by William Dean Howells (1837 -1920). Mrs. Baxter took her bachelor of arts summa cum laude at Barnard College in 1947 and followed up with two master of arts degrees, at Smith and Radcliff, in 1948 and 1949 respectively. In 1958 she was awarded the doctor of philosophy in American Civilization by Brown University. Since 1952 she has served on the faculty of Barnard in its American studies program, besides which she has been assistant curator in regional history at Cornell and a Carnegie teaching fellow in American Civilization at Brown. She is the author of Henry Miller: Expatriate, published by the University of Pittsburgh press in 1961, as well as articles and reviews in the American Quarterly, Columbia Forum, Critique, Harpers, The New York Times Book Review, and Nineteenth Century Fiction.

PATRICIA R. PLANTE, who teaches American literature at Plymouth State College in New Hampshire, received her bachelor's degree from St. Joseph's College in Maine in 1955, her master of arts from St. Michael's in Vermont in 1958, and the doctor of philosophy from Boston University in 1962. She was a teaching fellow in the Boston English department from 1958 through 1961 and developed a lively interest in Edith Wharton's writing during her graduate work. The Midwest Review, published by Nebraska State Teachers College at Wayne, last year published another Plante article entitled "Edith Wharton: A Prophet Without Due Honor." Mrs. Wharton's first volume of short stories was published in 1899 and her last appeared in 1937. Although she wrote eleven collections of short stories which elicited a great deal of criticism in both America and England, no one has ever made a serious study of her reputation as a short story writer till now. We are pleased to present this analysis of the critical reception of Mrs. Wharton's luminous and generally superb short stories. Next September Miss Plante will assume new duties as assistant professor of English at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

THE POETS, to paraphrase Carl Sandburg, keep coming on. At any rate, their contributions, singly and in groups of three, four, and five, arrive practically every day. Which is good, because it makes possible the inclusion in this issue of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY very nearly a dozen selections of what we consider outstanding merit. Of the poets whose work appear here, four are new to our pages: the other five will be more or less familiar to our readers. The quartet of poets new to us makes a rough cross-section of the nation from New Jersey to New Mexico, with Kansas and Ohio between. WENDELL B. ANDERSON of Santa Fe was born in Idaho and grew up in eastern Oregon, attending the University of Oregon and Reed College. He has worked for several years in the U. S. Forestry Service and the Game and Wild Life Service; he has lived in New Mexico since 1949. His poetry has appeared in such magazines as The Rocky Mountain Review, University Review, and The Yale Review since 1942. More recently he has published in Discourse, Inland, Hawk and Whippoorwill, The Midwest Review, Wormwood Review, and others. In collaboration with Judson and Mildred Crews of Taos he published a collection of photographs of the work of Patrocinio Barela in 1955; the text accompanying the plates in the book was composed by Anderson and Crews from notes of Barela's verbal explanations of his wood-carvings. Last year Taos Recordings and Publications brought out a striking new edition, Patrocinio Barela, Taos Wood Carver, containing thirty-three plates and almost as many verse commentaries. Its subject matter runs from "Believe it on a Star" to "Virgin and Child" to "Man Attacked by an Indian." Barela's wood carvings range from grotesque primitives to highly sophisticated, smoothly finished abstractions. His work is included in discerning museums from Baltimore to San Francisco including the Museum of Modem Art in New York City. . . . ROBERT P. DICKEY was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and now resides in the Smoky Hill River country of Kansas. He has been a practicing poet for a dozen years or so, and "The Hawk in Motion" is his first published poem. . . . STUART FRIEBERT, assistant professor of German at Oberlin College, Ohio, has taught previously at Mount Holyoke and Harvard. His articles on modem German literature have appeared in The German Quarterly. He has only recently begun to write poetry, and "Odenwald" is his first verse publication. His degrees are from the University of Wisconsin. . . . MYRON LEVOY, of Rockaway, New Jersey, a nuclear engineer engaged in studies of nuclear and electric propulsion for space vehicles, has published numerous papers on these subjects in the scientific journals, most recently in this June's journal of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His poetry has appeared or is scheduled to appear in The Antioch Review, Chelsea, Coastlines, The Massachusetts Review, and Wormwood Review. He recently returned from a six month's writing sojourn to the Barbados.

The composition of our quintet of more familiar poets is substantially East coast. JAMES BINNEY of West Chester, Pennsylvania, appears in our pages for the second summer. . . . BARBARA DENHOLM of Garden City, New York, made her debut in our April issue this year with "Gentle Rain." . . . A. D. FREEMAN of Wellesley, Massachusetts, contributed "Moiseyev Matinee" to last January's winter number. . . . This is the third time with us for Emilie Glen of New York City whose poems have appeared in our issues of October, 1961, and last April. . . . DONALD ATWELL ZOLL's "Pieta" appeared in our issue for last January. In April Prentice-Hall published his book, Reason and Rebellion, An Informal History of Political Ideas.

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