The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought
Contents
Articles
The Drama of Conscience and Recognition in Lord Jim
Faulkner's Pillar of Endurance: Sanctuary and Requiem for a Nun
The Wilderness Theme in Faulkner's "The Bear"
Sebastian Brant and Porter's Ship of Fools
Porter's "Hacienda" and the Theme of Change
Mencken's Criticism of Criticism
Verse
Butterfly Trees
Seven Cities of Cibola
The Man at the Race Track
St. Donat
A Digging of Sand
The Foolscap Boat
Father to Son
Hummingbird
Keeper of the Graveyard
By Evening's Yellow Waters
This Generation Too
Passage
Abstract
in this issue. . .
TURNABOUT is not only fair play but very nearly a modus operandi in the annals of this journal. Last January when she brought out the winter issue of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY as its acting editor-in-chief, Rebecca Patterson modestly and cleverly announced that that issue belonged to the then absent editor. Rather wistfully she wrote then of time off, rest, re-creation, and of the human need for "that holiday of the spirit that comes with putting the old routine behind . . . and sallying into fresh fields, . . ." Now in June she has sallied forth, and as this copy goes to the printer, she goes to Europe for a long summer of pleasant and rewarding travel from the Cotswold Hills to Parnassas, from the Louvre to St. Peter's. · Even while she reviewed European history in preparation for her holiday, she was carefully selecting the contents of this (our third) summer literary number. Indeed, all that the editor-in-chief can now do in frankness and honesty is announce that this issue of the Quarterly belongs to her.
JOSEPH CONRAD (1857 -1924), originally Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, was a Ukrainian-born British novelist renowned for his technical skill as a writer and as a close observer of human behavior under critical pressures. Probably his best-known work is Lord Jim, currently the subject (some critics say, the point of departure) for a motion picture of the same name. When PAUL B. NEWMAN of the faculty of Queens College, Charlotte, North Carolina, sent us his analysis of Lord Jim, he was not think of the movie. As he told us nearly a year ago, this discussion "is a part of a series on various modern authors who seem to be analyzing or commenting on the breakdown of individualism in our times." Of his series, "Joseph Conrad and the Ancient Mariner" and "D. H. Lawrence and The Golden Bough" have been published in The Kansas Magazine. Two others, "Hemingway's Grail Quest" and "The Natural Aristocrat in Letters," have appeared in the University of Kansas City Review. Like his bachelor's degree, his Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago, where his dissertation was on John Dos Passos. He has taught at the University of Puerto Rico and Kansas State University, Manhattan.
WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1963) was recognized widely during his lifetime as one of America's greatest writers. One indication of his complexity and stature is the impressive number of articles, dissertations, and books which have appeared, analyzing and scrutinizing every aspect of his corpus. Two articles in this issue exemplify the varieties of Faulkner scholarship. ABIGAIL ANN HAMBLEN was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in the Midwest, graduating from Coe College in Iowa and earning her master's degree at the University of Nebraska. She married into Massachusetts where she lives at Newton near Boston. American literature is her field, indeed her passion, and she is firmly convinced, she says, that Henry James is the greatest writer this country has every produced. Her articles and stories have appeared in Claremont Quarterly, Cresset, The Dalhousie Review, Forum, The Georgia Review, The Husk, Mark Twain Journal, The University of Kansas City Review, and Western Humanities Review. In the offing she has a book length study of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and a short novel for young girls. . . . LEONARD GILLEY, by contrast, grew up in New England and moved West. After taking his bachelor's degree at Bowdoin in his native Maine, he took his master's at the Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and is now nearing the Ph.D. at the University of Denver where he has been a Creative Writing and University Fellow and will be instructor in English this fall. His poems have appeared in journals and newspapers across the continent, including THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY. Some of his poetry is included in an anthology which Linden Press is to bring out this fall.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER has been winning critical acclaim and a wide following with her novels and short stories for more than a generation. Two articles is this issue analyze diverse aspects of her craftsmanship. ROBERT N. HERTZ of the department of English of Rutgers University first appeared in our pages in the spring of 1964. He did his graduate work at Cornell University, and his articles, commentaries, and reviews have appeared in The American Scholar, The Colorado Quarterly, The Minnesota Review, The New Republic, The Personalist, and Phylon. . . . ROBERT L. PERRY, a native Nebraskan, is an instructor of English at the University of Nebraska and will work toward the doctorate at the University of Wisconsin next year. His master's thesis at Nebraska is on Hart Crane and Waldo Frank.
HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN (1880-1956), American editor, lexicographer, and iconoclast, specialized during most of his adult life in the fine art of criticism. Since his death nine years ago students of American letters have given him more and more attention. Among this growing number is WILLIAM H. NOLTE of the department of English at the University of Oregon, Eugene. Like Katherine Anne Porter, Professor Nolte was born and reared in Texas. He holds the A. B. from the University of Missouri, the A. M. from the University of Texas, and the Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. His articles have appeared in Southwest Review, The Texas Quarterly, and Texas Studies in Language and Literature. The subject of his doctoral dissertation was Mencken's literary criticism, and he recently completed a book growing out of it.
NEW POETS have contributed ten of the twelve poems in this issue; the other two are both by poets who made their first appearances in THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY in our summer literary issue of a year ago. BERNICE AMES of Los Angeles spoke last September on "The Platform of the Poem" to the League of Utah Writers at their annual roundup; her recent publications include The Christian Science Monitor, the New York Herald-Tribune and Times, and The Southern Poetry Review. . . . BRANLEY ALLAN BRANSON, formerly assistant professor of biology here, is more widely known for his work in ichthyology than for his verse.
GENERALIZATION seldom works when applied to poets; this truth is abundantly demonstrable in the case of the half-dozen poets whose work we here publish in our pages for the first time. Two of them are Kansans who studied at the University of Missouri, Columbia; the other four write from the eastern seacoast-Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina-and against widely ranging academic backgrounds. E. H. BALES of Lawrence, Kansas, attended the University of Missouri; his poems have appeared in a few little magazines, and Opinion recently accepted one of his short stories. . . . SAM BRADLEY, a foremost Quaker poet and member of the board of editors of Approach, is on the faculty of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where he has been teaching African students English in a program sponsored by the U. S. Department of State. His poems have been widely published in such literary journals as The Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, The Nation, Perspective, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and The Virginia Quarterly. Golden Quill Press will bring out a book of his poems, Men--In Good Measure, later this year. Although a specialist in American literature and civilization, he has translated from several languages; Marianne Bogojavlenksy has often been his co-translator of Russian verse ranging from Pushkin to present day poets. . . . BEVERLY BRUNSON of Baxter Springs, Kansas, has her bachelor of arts from the University of Missouri and has done editorial work in New York and San Francisco. Eight of her poems have appeared in Epoch, and her play, A Bastard of the Blood, was published in New World Writing No. 10. . . . PAUL B. NEWMAN, whose article on Lord Jim also appears in this issue, has published poems widely, in Arizona Quarterly, Carleton Miscellany, Carolina Quarterly, Chicago Review, English Journal, Minnesota Review, New Mexico Quarterly, and Western Humanities Review. The Antioch Review and Prairie Schooner have recently accepted other of his poems. . . . E. WESLEY WALTON has done graduate work in his native state, in English at Southern Illinois University (1961) and in classical Greek at the University of Illinois where he was awarded the master of arts degree (1963). He now teaches Greek and Latin at Converse College, a private school for women in South Carolina. His first book of poems appeared in 1957, and a second book will be published later this year by the New Literature Foundation. Some of these poems are being translated into Japanese by Shogo Kawasoko. Argus Press is currently publishing his essayettes and translations from the Greek Anthology. . . . E. F. WEISSLITZ of Georgetown, Massachusetts, is a graduate of Hood College at Frederick, Maryland. She is married to an electronics engineer working in computer systems development and is the mother of three. Among journals which have published or accepted her work are The Massachusetts Review, The Minnesota Review, The Nation, and Poetry Northwest.
Recommended Citation
Newman, Paul B.; Hamblen, Abigail Ann; Gilley, Leonard; Hertz, Robert N.; Perry, Robert L.; Nolte, William H.; Ames, Bernice; Branson, Branley A.; Bales, E. H.; Bradley, Sam; Brunson, Beverly; Walton, E. Wesley; and Weisslitz, E. F.
(1965)
"The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 6 No. 4,"
The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 6:
Iss.
4, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol6/iss4/1