Midamerica XXXII 2005
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MidAmerica XXXII The Yearbook of the Society for the Study ofMidwestern Literature DAVID D. ANDERSON, EDITOR MARCIA NOE, ISSUE EDITOR The Midwestern Press The Center for the Study of Midwestern Literature and Culture Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1033 2005 \ In Honor of Mary DeJong Obuchowski Copyright 2005 by the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this work may be reproduced without permission of the publisher MidAmerica 2005 (ISSN: 0190-2911) is a peer-reviewedjournal of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. CONTENTS Preface 4 PREFACE Lost Luggage On May 12, 2005, members of the Society for the Study of The Gwendolyn Brooks Prize Poem Claire van Breemen Midwestern Literature gathered in East Lansing for the thirty-fifth Downes 7 annual meeting of the Society. This year's conference hosted the first Review Essay: How Midwestern Literature annual Midwestern Film Festival, in addition to the Cultural Heritage Can Help Us All Get Along MarciaNoe 8 of the Midwest Symposium and the Midwest Poetry Festival. Art and the Immigrant: The Other as Muse At the awards banquet on Friday night, prizes were given for best in Cather's My Antonia and R¢lvaag's poem, story, and essay read at the 2004 conference. Patricia Clark Boat of Longing Jeffrey Swenson 16 (Grand Valley State University) received the Gwendolyn Brooks Religion and Literature in Sinclair Lewis Award for her poem "Astrid, Siggy, and Bert;' and Michael Kula and Willa Cather James Seaton 31 ·(Carroll College) received the Paul Somers Award for his short story, "Shag Carpet:' The Midwest Heritage Prize for Best Essay went to Embracing Contraries: The Competing Luchen Li (Kettering University) for "A Heart Enshrouded in the Narratives of Tom McGrath's Letter Landscape: An Impressionistic Reading of 'Big Two-Hearted to An Imaginary Friend, Part One James M. Boehnlein 38 River.'" August Derleth's Self-Promotion Kenneth B. Grant 46 Margo LaGattuta (University of Michigan-Flint) won the Mark The Nature of Learning in Garrison Twain Award for distinguished contributions to Midwestern litera Keillor's "Drowning 1954" and ture, and Mary DeJong Obuchowski (Central Michigan University) "After a Fall" Janet Ruth Heller 53 won the MidAmerica Award for distinguished contributions to the study of Midwestern literature. Suburban Self-Alienation: Louis Bromfield's Mr. Smith Jayne Waterman 61 A Dentist No More: The Destruction of Masculinity in McTeague Denise Howard Long 67 Transformation of the World: The Metaphor of Fairy Tale in the Poetry of Lise! Mueller Linda Nemec Foster 78 Thoroughly Modern Carrie: Dreiser, Realism and the Historical Moment Melanie England 88 African American Drama from the Midwest David Radavich 95 Annual Bibliography of Midwestern Literature Robert Beasecker 120 Recipients of the Mark Twain Award Inside Back Cover Recipients of the MidAmerica Award Back Cover 4 LOST LUGGAGE CLAIRE VAN BREEMEN DOWNES I am the family luggage gone astray the crates of household goods deep in the ship's hold (the heavy silver and the Belgian linens - the rocking-horse with the mane of real hair) While they dawdled in Whitechapel fiddling with visas pulling American strings I set off on my own time. My directions said Johannesburg. No change of ticket came in time to send me otherways. No one had told me frightening tales of wars of empire The ship was good enough; the voyage, fast. The rotting warehouse, confusion, and the pilfering - that was the delay. I am not to blame that I arrived twelve months tardy and bedraggled at the shabby Grand Rapids house, that the neighbors assembled for the great sight exulted secretly at my riddled carcass: no silver no linens no rocking -horse no no no Sneering they went away pretending to believe saying to each other, "We knew it all along. They're just liars and poor like the rest of us?' 7 Review Essay: How Midwestern Literature Can Help Us 9 going three miles an hour or 119. There really is nothing in between" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 29 May 2006, C3). "Nothing in between?' How apt a description for the polarization REVIEW ESSAY: HOW MIDWESTERN LITERATURE that cripples American society today. Its sharp divisions originated in p<)rt in the urban-rural dichotomy that began to shape the American CAN HELP US ALL GET ALONG consciousness over a century ago and still informs the culture. The MARCIANOE great migration from country to city that dominated nineteenth-cen tury American life was reflected in books by Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, Hamlin Garland and others who Timothy B. Spears's Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the became part of a literary movement that Carl Van Doren dubbed "the City, 1871-1919 (University of Chicago Press, 2005) revolt from the village?' For decades, this societal shift has condi tione~ us to think terms of either/or rather than both/and. Today Tom Lutz's Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and !n. Amencans seem d1v1ded as never before: coupon clippers and wel Literary Value (Cornell University Press, 2004) fare ~ecipients, Ivy League graduates and high school drop-outs, Ludd1tes and techno-geeks, Weight Watchers and Fat Pride members Robert Dunne's A New Book of the Grotesques: Contemporary Christians and non-Christians, CBS and Fox News. As we have all Approaches to Sherwood Anderson s Early Fiction (Kent State observed, these extremes generate acrimonious discourse and over University Press, 2005) simplification of issues rather than reasoned discussion and efforts to find points of agreement, as exemplified by the range of responses to William Barillas 's The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in the terrorists' attack on the World Trade Center, from Ward Literature of the American Heartland (Ohio University Press, 2006) Churchill's characterization of the people who worked there as "lit tle Eichmanns" to Ann Coulter's recommendation for dealing with Katherine Joslin's Jane Addams: A Writers Life (University of the terrorists: "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert Illinois Press, 2004) them to Christianity;' (The Washington Monthly, htto://www.wash ingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0lll.coulterwisdom.html). The David R. Pichaske's Rooted: Seven Midwest Writers of Place ?urr~nt hot-button. issue-what to do about eleven million illegal (University of Iowa Press, 2006). 1mm1grants-pred1ctably has our citizens divided into four opinion groups, according to USA Today, which reported that in two of the four groups, most people believe removing illegal immigrants would hurt our economy while in the other two groups, heavy majorities In a small Illinois town, a Catholic priest apologizes for praising think the economy would benefit from their departure. "The four the local congressman; the legislator's long record of commitment to groups are starkly at odds on basic issues, making it difficult to see progressive causes turns out to include a pro-choice stance. Robert common ground" (http//www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05- F. Kennedy Jr. quotes David Brock, the CEO of Media Matters for 29-immigration-split_xhtrn) America as saying, "We're in a situation where you have 'red facts' Ah, common ground-that elusive piece of real estate so many and 'blue facts"' (Vanity Fair, May 2005, 215). Comedian Brian of us covet but can never quite close the deal on. Six recently pub Regan observes of Atlanta's Interstate 285: "Everybody is either lished books in Midwestern studies that focus on reconciling cultural ?pposit~s may be helpful here, providing insight into our own polar ized soc1ety and suggesting ways to think in terms of both/and rather 8 Review Essay: How Midwestern Literature Can Help Us 11 10 MIDAMERICA XXXII than either/or, value multiplicity and diversity, and engage in Pioneers! offers a multiplicity of viewpoints on such topics as nature, nuanced thinking about the issues that concern us as a people. science, rural life, and social conventions and celebrates the richness Timothy B. Spears's Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the of a prairie culture comprising a variety of ethnic groups, among City, 1871-1919 emphasizes this both/and approach. Spears argues them French, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and Czechoslovakian. that the literary culture of Chicago during this period, particularly the As we are well aware, academia has suffered from polarization connections that its writers formed with each other, must be viewed no less than other sectors of American society. One skirmish in the within the context of the migration from the rural Midwest to be fully culture wars finds poststructuralists and formalists squaring off over understood. He sees the interaction between Van Doren's village questions of canonicity; like the previously discussed scholars, rebels and Chicago over seventy years of the city's literary history as Robert Dunne in The New Book of the Grotesques: Contemporary a mutually beneficial interchange through which the migrants gained Approaches to Sherwood Anderson s Early Fiction is concerned with maturity while the city became more diverse. For these writers, reconciling opposites, in this case conflicting approaches to litera Chicago was a place to construct a successful American self that ture. Is a poem, play or story a self-contained work of art or a socially comprised both the small-town Midwesterner and the city dweller. It and politically situated text that can function as an agent of social is this double-voiced quality in their writing, the unique perspective change? Dunne zeroes in on the early novels and the masterpiece of of the provincial/sophisticate, that Spears has made the subject of his one of Spears's migrants, Sherwood Anderson, to argue that just as inquiry. He shows how writers such as Willa Cather, Jane Addams, the New Critics taught us to admire the innovations in fictional tech Floyd Dell, Sherwood Anderson, and Carl Sandburg infused their nique Anderson used in Winesburg, Ohio and his short stories, so work with this dual perspective, rendering their writing more com today's theorists can teach us additional ways to read and value his plex, nuanced and meaningful.