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AUTHOR Taylor, Caroline, Ed. TITLE American Literature. INSTITUTION National Endowment for the Humanities (NFAH), Washington, D.C. PUB DATE Sep 88 NOTE 50p. PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022) JOURNAL CIT Humanities; v9 n5 Sep-Oct 1988

EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Interviews; )(Literary Criticism; )(Literary History; Novels; Short Stories; Twentieth Century Literature; )(United States Literature IDENTIFIERS Bellow (Saul); Brooks (Cleanth); Dickinson (Emily); Emerson (Ralph Waldo); National Endowment for the Humanities; Twain (Mark); Welty (Eudora); Whitman (Walt); Wilson (Edmund)

ABSTRACT Published bimonthly by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this edition of "Humanities" focuses on issues in American literature. Articles and their authors consist of: (1) "Conversations about Literature" (an interview with Cleanth Brooks and Wi/lie Morris about writing and writers in America); (2) "The Spine o.Literature" (an interview with Eudora Welty and Cleanth o,ooks); (3) "The Look of American Literary Seriousness" (Stephen J. Do)adio); (4) "Making an American Culture (S. A. Spitz); (5) "Fathoming Mark Twain" (Joanna Biggar); (6) "The Fig Tree's Lessons" Uristen Hall); (7) "Stringing Lariats" (Caroline Taylor); (E) "Bellow's New World Babylon" (Ellen Pifer); (9) "The Rise of American Literature Studies" (James Turner); (10) "America: A Reading" (Ellen Marsh); and (11) "Letters from London" (Joseph H. Brown). (MM)

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8 BEST COPYCOPY AVAILABLE a 2 Editor's Note

Working with Words

; 1 The phrase "testing new modes of reality" has become a buzzword for the eighties. According to novelist and critic Raymond Federman, the self- reflexive, nonnarrative style of literature today confronts "the unreality of Cleanth Brooks, Gray Professor Emeritus of reality....By rendering language irrational, and even unreadable, the new Rhetoric at Yale University, and Willie Mor- fiction writers have also neutralized the fiasco of reality and the imposture ris, former editor of Harper's magazine, dis- of history." While rendering language irrational, they also do what writers cuss literature in America. (Photo by William have always done: carefully work with words that most accurately reflect Ferris, University of Mississippi Archives) their vision. But what if those words baffle and even alienate the reader? What do writers of this type of fiction hope to accomplish? What indeed has happened to literature in the postmodern era? Humanities A bimonthly review published by the In search of answer to these and other questions. Humanities invited National Endowment for the Humanities Cleanth Brooks, father of the New Criticism, and Willie Morris, writer and former editor of Harper's, to talk about writers, editors, critics, writing, and Chairman: Lynne V. Cheney publishing in America. Their "Conversations About Literature," condensed Director of Publications for publication in this issue, took place in Oxford, Mississippi, on June 29. and Public Affairs: The following day, we journeyed to Jackson for a brief visit with Eudora Marguerite Hoxie Sullivan Welty. Portions of Brooks and Welty's conversation about the state of the Assistant Director for Publications story in today's fiction are featured in "The Spine of Literature." Humanities and Editor. Caroline Taylor is especially grateful to William Ferris, director of the Jniversity of Mis- Assistant Editor: James Turner sissippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture, for his assistance in ar- Production Editor: Scott Sanborn ranging, tape recording, and photographing these conversations about Production Assistant: Susan Querry Circulation Manager. Joy Evans American literature. Editorial Board: Early attempts by some of America's major writers to test new modes of John Agresto, Marjorie Berlincourt, reality are explored by Stephen J. Donadio in "The Look of American Liter- Harold Cannon, Richard Ekman, ary Seriousness." He finds in the works of Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Donald Gibson, Guinevere Griest, and Melville a declaration of literary independence from the approved liter- Jerry Martin ary structures of the past. The architectural structures of the present are Design: Hausmann/Krohn, Inc what concern Saul Bellow. In "Bellow's New World Babylon," Ellen Pifer re- veals the novelisk's vision of the urban metropolis as a temple for America's The opinions and conclusions expressed in worship of material expansion, rather than spiritual ascendancy. Humanities are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect Endowment policy. Material No foray into American literature would be complete without some ac- appearing in this publication, except for that knowledgment of the works of Mark Twain. "Fathoming Mark Twain," by already copyrighted, may be freely repro- Joanna Biggar, relates work in progress on two editions of the works and duced. Please notify the editor in advance so that appropriate credit can be given. The papers of America's favorite writer. Joseph Brown describes the first com- Chairman of the Endowment has den-mimed prehensive collection of the correspondence of Jack London in "Letters from that the publication of this periodical is Neces- London," and James Turner's essay on "The Rise of American Literature sary in the transaction of the public business required by law of this agency. Use of funds Studies" recounts the forging of an academic discipline to study America's for printing this periodical has been approved literature. by the director of the Office of Management The outlook for the post-postmodern era in American literature may de- and Budget through September 1988. Send requests for subscriptions and other commu- pend more on the number of people who read fiction and poetry than on nications to the editor, Humanities, National the writers' attachment to or distance from the literary legacy of the past. Endowment for the Humanities, 1100 Penn- But as long as there are readers, there will be writers working with words. sylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D C 20506. Telephone 202,786-0435. Annual sub- "A year or so of one writer's life has gone into the writing of a novel," Eu- scription rate: 59. (USPS 521.090) ISSN dora Welty once said. "Does this not suggest that ...words have been 0018-7526. found for which there may be no other words?" Caroline Taylor 2 cv Contents

American Literature

Conversations About Literature. Cleanth Brooks and Willie Morris talk about writing and writers in America.

The Spine of Literature. Eudora Welty and Cleanth Brooks 10examine the state of the story in contemporary literature. The Look of American Literary Seriousness by Stephen J. 12Donadio. A declaration of literary independence by America's major writers.

Making an Ameri: Cultureby S.A. Spitz. A comprehensive 15study documents Edmund Wilson's contribution to American letters.

Fathoming Mark Twain by Joanna Biggar. Two editions of the 18works and papers of Mark Twain shed light on America's favorite writer.

The Fig Tree's Lessons by Kristen Hall. Adapting Katherine 22Anne Porter's short story for children's television. Stringing Lariats by Caroline Taylor. Writers of the purple sage 24from 1510 to 1984. Bellow's New World Babylon by Ellen Pifer. The significance of 27place in the novels of Saul Bellow. The Rise of American Literature Studies by Ja:-.-,.!s Turner. 30Forging an academic discipline to study the literature of America.

America: A Reading by Ellen Marsh. Tucson tackles the major 33themes of American literature. Letters from London by Joseph H. Brown. The first full-scale 36collection of the correspondence of Jack London.

The Humanities Guide

Support for the Humanities at Two-Year Institutions by Judith Jeffrey Howard, 39/Recent NEHGrants by Discipline,42/ NEH Notes and News,45/ Deadlines, 46 CONVERSATIONS

,..:'l''....imairilitm.X., ';',;zik,4-',414,-;774, 3,- .,,,,i '2 ir" %.: :?..'... )...!.t '4 .r.,;',.;. - " e 1 - 2'v ":;:',:irr--- ' Tr- ,'1,04 r f4F:x Al -; -,., . ,, 1-t .., ; ,i. r ., , ...... ,, ,3 Ed note: The temperature reached 105 de- ' -- grees in Oxford, Mississippi, on June ...N. 29, 1988. On a cloudless afternoon in a i a. state as drought stricken as many throughout the country,Humanitiesin- vited Cleanth Brooks, Gray Professor u/c ?... J' ...,... Emeritus of Rhetoric at Yale and a former .1 xajr-07 .c" -, - v ; 7 2- Jefferson Lecturer in the qumanities, to , _ ..$ 4 i.,_ , discuss American literature with Willie ...... Morris, writer in residence at the Uni- ..., versity of Mississippi and former editor '4'14 ofHarper'smagazine. Brooks and Mor- .., . ., Cleo the cat shares the spotlight with Cleanth Brooks and Willie Morris. Asked if these is a dis- ris held a wide-ranging conversation tinctively American novel, Brooks replied, "We're still defining 'American." lasting more than two hours, at the home of William Ferris, director of the univer- sity's Center for the Study of Southern Humanities:It has been said that con-century Russian novelists. They Culture. Only Cleo the cat welcomed the temporary literature has consciously were such masters of the story. additional heat radiating from lights set drifted away from narrative, from Humanities:For those who have up by the center's film crew. storytelling. Is this true? drifted away from the story, how Brooks:I think to some extent it is many authors are we talking about? true. Certainly there is such a thing Brooks:I'm much impressed by an as "theNew Yorker"story, which of- article that Walker Percy published a fers a fairly minimal plot for most few years back in which he com- readers. There's nothing wrong withmented on how few serious writers that; you don't have to hit the readerwe have and how few serious read- over the head with a sledge hammerers. As he figured it, 2 percent of the to make a point. If there's a point American public probably reads se- there, it can be done subtly. If the rious fiction or reads it seriously, and lite of the character is changed in that means in our population around some way or his perception of the 100,000 people. So we're talking world has changed, that's enough. about just a fraction of the popula- On the other hand, sometimes tion, the vast number of whom can't you work it down a little too finely, read at all or don't read or prefer not and there's not enough story to keepto read. Those who do read seem to the reader interested. My own per- prefer the machine-made novel or sonal conviction is that somewhere story: lots of plot, lots of sex, lots of there should be some hint or more money, lots of excitement. Of that than a hint of a real narrative: Some- small group of serious writers, I thing is happening; somebody is think a great many have been tempt- doing or saying something of conse- ed to refine the story down more quence to himself or to others. and more to nuance and intimation. Morris:I agree. I believe in the beauty and efficacy of language, and I believe very strongly in narrative, in plots, but written in a beautiful and meaningful and feeling language. In Yazoo City, I grew up on nineteenth- ABOUT LITERATURE

Some brilliant handlers of language Humanities: Could you discuss cure. If we could sry that it is fiction have got away with it and justified some of the differences between characterized by a nonnarrative ap- what they're doing. modernist and postmodern fiction? proach that seems to be moving to- Morris: Take a writer like John Brooks: I have wrestled with those ward inquiring about a disordered Cheeverin my opinion one of the terms, and I hear them mentioned universe or implying that chaos can- great masters of the short story in again and again. Placed in some not be managed, rather than trying American literaturewhose work is kind of chronological context, what to impose order on chaos, what do so rich with nuance and human we've come to call "modern" runs you think writers of this type of fic- beings. I see a strain in contempo- through the twenties, thirties, and tion are saying to the reader? rary American literature with young-forties. People took off from that and Brooks: Is it the writer who is going er writers who write very well but pushed certain things further. But to bring order out of disorder and who seem to me to be only inter- the terms are too vague for me, and give you a novel or poem in which ested in the words themselves, al- I don't think I could use them prof- there is a beginning, a middle, and most as if the words themselves are itably. On the whole, the achieve- an endthings that make sense? Is enough for literature. I take issue ments of the modern writers were he actually imposing order on a radi- with some of these writers who feel magnificent. Present successes have cally disordered universe? Or is he that the word is everything; I dis- not measured up to that achieve- finding an order that we hadn't agree with this modern strain in lit- ment. There has been sonkind of noticed was there? I think what is at erature, where it's just the sentence falling off. the bottom of postmodemity is real- and the shock valuea stunning Morris: What in your opinion, ly a philosophy of life or history that scene bereft of the old verities and Cleanth, was the flowering of Amer- sees the universe as disordered: that universal truths, the human heart in ican fiction? The twenties? The there are no absolute values, there is conflict with itself, which is at the thirties? no God, there is no supreme order. core of great literature, American or Brooks: I would come down surely Morris: If there is a God, Cleanth, otherwise. to the forties when some of Faulk- he's a Methodist. Humanities: Is this turn away from ner's greatest work was published, Brooks: Well, that's what would be narrative unprecedented in liter- and we had people already doing said by a postmodernist, right? Peo- ature, or has it occurred before? their early work then, people like ple who think that would probably Brooks: One has to remember how Eudora Welty and Robert Penn War- also think that a person who is turn- comparatively new the novel and theren. But I think there's a difference ing out a coherent poem or short short story are. By general agree- between that achievement and post- story is falsifying realityis not real- ment, the English novel was born in modernity. I don't think postmodemity ly dealing with reality. He is impos- the eighteenth century; the short has come up to what modernity ing an illusion of order on a world story came even later. The earliest achieved. The very terms are clumsy. that really isn't ordered and there- novels and stories spent a great deal Postmodern. What is postmodern? fore is not telling the truth. I'm in- of time introducing the speaker, the Humanities: Let's attempt to define clined to say that this world which, writer, the person whose story is postmodern, although I feel as un- God knows, seems disordered being told. Think how much time Sircomfortable as you do. I think it's enough, does have an order but that Walter Scott spends getting one of like defining postmodern architec- because of the way in which we usu- his novels goinginordinate, most ally live, we see it as forming no pat- of us feel. I would say this relatively tern, as having no order. plotless story is a fairly recent devel- Words- rorth and Coleridge stated opment, and we could almost set the as their principles that they were time: when James Joyce wrote Dub- going to reveal something rich and liners. On the surface, many of his strange in what appeared to be just stories appear to have no plot. Actu- an ordinary, humdrum world. That ally they do, but if Joyce's example to was Wordsworth's job. Coleridge generations of young American writ ers pushed them in a certain direc- tion, it doesn't mean that some of them didn't take the ball and carry it entirely too far, to extremes that I don't think even Dubliners ever went. 6 was to take the fantastic and strange man like Faulkner trying to impose and show that, yes, it had circum- order on a chaotic universe, or was stantialitywas real: It is real, it is he just putting words on paper? solid, it has the qualities of reality. A Brooks: I think that, whatever he great deal of the modern theory that thought about the universe, he es- the world and the universe have no sentially in his deepest heart felt that order holds that any attempt to give life meant something. Anyway, he a reader a coherent or ordered art is made his novels mean something. something artificial, is a kind of lie. You don't emerge from his novels One should not tell lies, and artists saying, "Well, I might as well just least of all should not tell lies. An start in the middle and skip the be- artist should tell the truth; I think he ginning or skip the end." The novel can tell the truth and yet find order, adds up to something. for I think that order is there. One of the things that I find less Morris: But as Mark Twain once re-and less argued for in some of the marked, "Sometimes you have to lie newer theories is that there is no de- to tell the truth." terminate meaning. We're held to be Brooks Quite true, and sometimes caught in the prison of language, we as Shakespeare put it, by indirec- can't get out of it, we can't get to re- tion, find direction out, or as Emily ality, words have nothing in relation Dickinson said, "Tell the truth, but to reality. Language is just a won- tell it slant." The kind of truth the derful game of cards, all the mean- artist tells can't be told directly, the ings of which are arbitrary. But as for way a scientist would tell it. literature having any analogy or mir- Morris: As I progress in life, I real- roring in any way the nature of real- ly see no order; I see the world reallyity, this is not true, so the newer in chaos; I don't see any rationality theorists seem to say. If Faulkner had to it. All I see is that life is experi- really believed that, I can't believe he enced, nothing more than experi- would have given us any literature at enced. Let's take Faulkner. When he all because I don't see him as a man was writing The Sound and the Fury, who thought it was worthwhile giv- he wasn't thinking that the world is ing you a coherent novel about a crazy, the world is insane and full of world that he really thought had no suffering and disorder. Wasn't Mr. coherence in it. Faulkner just putting words on pa- Morris: I couldn't agree with you per? Of course, he htld to have a more, and, of course, we're sitting sense of order to write his magnifi- here in his home town. What did cent novel. One of his Virginia stu- Faulkner do for a living' He told dents said r5nce, "Mr. Faulkner, I everybody else he was a gentleman read The bound and the Fury three farmer, and he did have a farm. times, and I can't understand it. Didn't make any living on it, but What should I do?" And Faulkner, inthat typewriter constantly pecking ihat wonderful little high tenor of hisaway. What he must have done said, "Read it four times." Was a when he was writing his great works, he just had a feeling for the great complexity and suffering of human beings. One of my briefs against some of the postmodern writers, the younger ones, is that they do not care for this passing of time. They care for words and the effect of words. That in itself, I be- lieve, is part of literature, but not re- ally literature itself. Brooks: In other words, if you emp- In our latest edition of Understand- ty the words of any relation to real- ing Fiction (Prentice Hall, 1979), we ity, what is left of them? They're just put in some of the newest writing, the little shiny, bca Itiful things in what I think one would call themselves that make their own fun- postmodern. We gave four stories to ny little abstract patterns but have expose the student to what is going nothing to do with the way people on. One was by Julio Cortazar called behave and live. "The Continuity of Parks." It tells of Humanities: Some of these newer a man reclining in his country house writers are really the first generation in a park, seated in a green velvet to be reared in creative writing pro- The critic ought to chair quite relaxed and reading a grams, even at the graduate level. novel. The novel has to do with a Before then, writing was an amateur show that literature pair of lovers who are preparing to undertaking, not studied formally in commit robbery and murder. As he schools like art or music. How has is not only a reads in this quiet setting, the char- this affected current fiction? acters that he is reading about come Brooks: It has done some good, beautiful thing but to life beside his chair. It's a trick, but mostly by just giving writers a it's brilliantly done. chance to get together and talk and a valuable thing Morris: But does it work? read some books together, but it Brooks: It didn't work for me, but does little good at all except to pro- that teaches us we put it in the book because we vide this human communion. It how to live in wanted to expose it to the students would do harm if it gave the illusion our without saying whether it would to anybody that there are tricks or world and how to work or not. The point we were devices or methods you can learn making was this: Obvicusly this is a that will guarantee art or set you on understandour- writer who's testing different modes the road to being a good writer. My of reality. What is the difference be- guess is that every writer has always selves in relation to tween reality and fiction? In this had his model.;. Faulkner, who was ,ase, he made the fiction melt into self-educated, certainly had read our world. reality, and one can't tell one from himself and knew what to read, the the other at the end. great Russians, Joyce, and the rest. Humanities: How have changes in Morris: One of the most deplorable publishingthe rise of conglomer- phrases in the American language is atesand in book marketingchain when people ask, "Do you teach cre- about the phrase being horribleat bookstores, high-volume sales, pro- ative writing?" I hink writing by its Yale. He told me, "Look, I can't motional tours by authorsaffected very nature is creative. I tried to teach people how to write. I think I the writing of serious fiction? teach writing for two years at Ole can, up to a point, teach people how Brooks: I don't know a single se Miss, and I don't think writing can to read. So in my classes we take rious writer who doesn't lament the be taught. I did fall in love with one good examples and we talk about state of publishing because the big of my studentsa pretty blonde them, and I encourage the students conglomerates are taking over the from the Delta, which helped at the to think about writing and get thingspublishing houses. Then they tell timebut you cannot teach writing. down and then later on we graduate the publisher, "We're not going to The only thing you can do is to pass from talking about Joyce or Haw- censor the books; we're going to let along to young people who care thorne or Flaubert to taking to piecesyou keep your staff." But they're not about writing the advice to read what they're doing: What went really interested in literature; they're good books, but I don't think you wrong here; what went right there." interested in the bottom line. can help a young person to write. For my own part, a great deal of Morris: It's marketing. Brooks: Red Warren did teach cre- the theories advanced by the French Brooks: Marketing. A man once ative writingand I agree with you writers, including the new Marxism, told me, "One review killed my new historicism, and deconstruc- book." I read the book, and though tionism, have colored their view of it's not the greatest of novels, it's a the nature of words, whether they have anything to do with reality and whether the universe has any order in it. F modem document, on the relation ofwithout it; but the role that literature man to art and nature. does have is a valuable one, and the The poet, hearing the nightingale, testimony of the ages is that it is longs to join the nightingale in the priceless. But it's valuable not mere- world of nature, almost to the point ly to print on linen rag paper and of willing to give up his conscious- put in a fine Morocco binding. To ness itself and to die into this world "get the good of it," you have to that is, like all nature, immortal. Sea-participate in it. You have to make it sons change, plants grow and die, your own. That's what I think the but the life of nature goes on for- role of the critic ought to be. Lecture ever. The bird is immortal not be- over. cause Keats, the young medical stu- Morris: The role of the editor and dent, thought inat it had literally writer is important but vanishing. I lived for thousands of years and believe in a close relationship be- might live thousands more, but be- tween the editor and writer. Liter- cause the nightingale didn't know atureand I'm so glad, Cleanth, that that it would ever die. No animal you and I pronounce the word the knows that it's going to die. It's onlysame wayliterateurwill endure. human beings, when they get to be It's no accident that writers and four or five years old, who begin to poets suffer. It's in the nature of the realize, I too will die. Human beings obsession, and writing is an obses- are born under the sentence of sion. Do you think William Faulkner death; the animal kingdom is not. wrote because he enjoyed it? He Anyway it's a beautiful meditation wrote because he had to write. and a very deep one, a meditation Brooks: E'.actly. The writer, the which sounds the depths of what it poet, the dramatist, the fiction writ- means to be a man. The world of er, is primary. The worst thing a crit- nature is wonderfully attractive to ic can do is to say, "I am primary; I the artist, and yet, he can't join that am just as good as the writer." He world in its harmonious immortality,ought to be happy to be a kind of for to do that means giving up the handmaiden or manservant to the human consciousness in death and, Muses. The worst indictment that I once dead, he will cease to hear the know against some of the modern nightingale's song. theorists is the bold-faced audacity of In other words, I see this poem as their sayingand I'm quoting from an intellectual thing and something themthat the critic is just as impor- that makes a profound comment on tant as the poet because what the human life. poet meant by the poem or what he This is the sort of reading that, it put into the poem is indeterminate. seems to me, criticism ought to pro- Everybody makes up his own mean- mote. The critic ought also, as ing. The critic, therefore, in making Pound put it, to keep aown vermin, his meaning, is just as important as sweep trash out of the halls of the the poet. That is a howling absur- republic of letters, induct people intodity. I'm perfectly willing to fetch the mysteries if he can, show that and carry for the Muses. I think literature is not only a beautiful that's an exalted occupation. i.c thing but a valuable thing that teach- es us how to live in our world and how to understand ourselves in rela- tion to our world. That seems to me a very high and valuable thing. I don't think, however, that it can be substituted for religion. If you don't have religion, you'll just have to do The Spine A Conversation Between Eudora Weity and Cleanth Brooks

Ed note: It rainedinOxford,, Mississip- more. I don't see the value of trying pi, the morning of June 30, 1988, but to make a change for the sake of further south, Jackson baked under a re- change. If something drives you to lentless sun. The hot topic for most con- do it, something that is a very strong versation was possible crop damage and conviction, then you should follow it barges stuck on the Mississippi, which and see where it goes, but it's still a had reached its lowest level in years. The matter of communication. subject for EudoraW:..!,y and Cleanth Brooks:Have you ever taken a cre- Brookswas the state of narrative in con- ative writing class? temporary American literature. The fol- Welty: No, I haven't. It wasn't that lowing conversation forHumanities I spurned them; I never heard of took place in the airconditioned comfort them. But nothing good was ever of the Mississippi Department of Ar- written out of anything but the indi- chivesandHistory in Jackson. vidual., personal self with a great passionate desire and conviction be- hind it. I think you can pick up and Humanities: Whatare your thoughts learn the trimmings with the intelli- about the state of narrative in con- gent help that comes through a writ- temporary literature? ing class. If you've got what it takes Welty: I'm not truly a student of to begin with, you can be helped by things as they happen. I read for criticism of method, etc., that steers pleasure, and I mostly like to read you accurately toward what you for narrative content. I don't see were going toward, but it's no sub- how narrative can ever be truly lost stitute for talent. because it is inherent in any story, Brooks:The editor, if he's really a no matter how distantly something good editor, can help the writer, and may be based on it. It's a sort of I suppose the person in the so-called spine connecting what happen withcreative writing class can perform what happens next and why it hap the same function. pened, and all the quest cins that go Welty: What you need is an objec- with ithuman character, what tive, intelligent point of view made people do things, what hap- someone who is sympathetic to what pened to people as a result of you're trying to do. What you need something. is the time and the opportunity and Brooks:Surely it is true that the the space around you to work some- narrative element is always there, thing out for yourself. You can get even if muted, even if implied. But ifplenty of help from creative writing you push past it, you're really get- classes, the right kind of editors, ting into things that lyric poetry and and, heaven knows, from reading. meditative poetry can do better. It That tells you more than anything in seems to me that some of our fiction the world. writers, trying to depend so much Brooks:Walker Percy in a recent es- on subtlety and nuance and change say ("How To Be An American Nov- of atmosphere, are really giving us a elist in Spite of Being Southern and kind of tepid, prose poetry that Catholic") warned the young south- Eudora Welty in 1976 and, above right, with Cleanth Brooks doesn't take advantage of the formal in 1983. Asked about the influence on her writing of her ern writer not to try to imitate the early work as a photographer for the WPA in Mississippi, elements of poetry and loses some ofgreat figures of the southern past Welty replied, "I wasn't helped in my writing by what I took the values of narrative poetry. who have done their job and came aphotograph of, but the same appreciation of what was out Welty:Icouldn't agree with you out of a certain context and won there that made me put it in my story made me photograph something." ofLiterature

their victory. We're all proud of gestion that the young southern the is a symptom of what we've them, but they had a different situa- writer coming along should look bee i talking about. tion to face. He is asking in this arti- around, face the facts, look at the Books: The whole pressure of cle that the young southern writers urgent issues, shape that into his modern literature is toward the lyric, face up to a world that has a great story. the I, the subjective person. The epic deal of disorder"an amalgam of Welty: You've got to do that. I keep dealt with the national hero. In the economic prosperity and spiritual forgetting how old I am, but I had drama, the characters speak for dislocation," he puts it. In effect, some students ask me, "Miss Welty, themselves in a situation. But if he's suggesting that they face up to a you always write stories about olden you're very obsessed with yourself, different situation. It seems to me, times!" I replied, "Well, the stories it's all lyric. It's what I feel, it's what I Eudora, that in The Optimist's you are talking about I wrote back in want to confess, it's what I think. Daughter, you were doing exactly the forties or something. I was writ- Obviou. ;ly there is great lyric poetry, that, long before Walker Percy made ing when those things were happen- but if you try to turn drama, epic, any of these comments. You were ing; I wasn't writing about the mys- realism, everything into the lyric facing the fact of the young southernterious, hidden past." It is important not what reality is but what 1 make girl, who's got a job in Chicago, who to understand reality but not to ob- of reality--that get's awfully boring. sees the old world change in many literate what's gone before in the in- Welty: It sure does, and it's a trap. respects, who's going back to a job terest of saying that nothing is real If you can t get out of yourself, how in Chicago, who's got to find out her but the present. will you ec er learn about life? How past, relate herself to it, accept cer- Brooks: So much of our society is can you accept the fact that other tain things in another way. Would trying to forget the past or obliterate people are .;eeing the same thing you agree that this is exactly what the the past. Students are not being a.ld that they may have a few ideas young woman in the novel is doing? taught about the past. too and that you might relate to one Welty: Yes, it applies. Of course, I Welty: They really do not know it. another? It would be a trap never to did it all through perso,Ial applica- When this museum mounted the get out of yoiir o- ,n self, your own tion because that's Liz only way I first ever exhibition on the civil body, your own preconceptions. write. I think all of writing should rights movement in Jackson, it had Brooks: Wot.ld you say, Eudora, reflect the real world, which is al- marvelous posters, photographs, ev-that one of the things we're likely to ways changing. Life is fluid and 1 erything. School childrenblack andget, particularly in southern fiction, the move, and a story has got to whitewere invited to come. None will be brilliant accounts of social catch it at a certain point to show of them had ever heard of civil mannersthe way people behave, what's going on. rights. They didn't know there had the way they talcwhich can reflect Brooks: That wonderful passage to- ever been a time when there weren't the quality of the whole society? If ward the end when Laurel is getting any. They never heard of Medgar the whole of the South were just ready to go back to Chicago and Evers. It was amazing. They passed blotted outbang!and I were com- ty7.,:k to her job, leaving the brides- through this as if it were a glass wall.missioned to reconstruct the society maids, leaving the father buried, is a -t's part of not knowing what's hap- in the way it behaved and acted, I beautiful account of a young woman pened or caring. could do soor stmlebody better who is not putting her past behind Brooks: So it's -eally a false dichoto-qualifiedfor the lower South from her at all. She's accepting it. On the my, if any of as allow ourselves to the novels of Walk ?r Percy and Eu- other hand, she has no intention or accept it, the false opinion that holds dora Welty, and foi the upper South living in that past; she's going to that a writer has to disown the past from the stories of 'eter Taylor. It's live, do her job somewhere else, bt't in order to accept the present, or ac- all there, and I think that's a valuable she doesn't have to choose. cept the past and live in it and dis- service and very mt. ch fun to read. Welty: She doesn't have to choose. own the present. Welty: Thank you, sir. That's what They can coexist. Welty: One of the problems in we've had to depend r -1 in all past Brook I can't answer for Walker modem short stories that I r,:ad is literatureto reflect lie as it was and Percy, but I would think that this the inability to get out of the presentto stand as a record c f the society would illustrate very well his sug- tense, out of the first person. To me, that existed. 401 12 The

Racing Thoughtsby Jasper Johns, 1983. Encaustic and collage on canvas. Like the words of Look of Dickinson, Emerson, or Whitman, this painting merges the familar with the strange. American Literary Seriousness

BY STEPHEN 1. DONADIO

AS A GENERAL RULE, works Much American writing reflects a In works of this kind, form no lon- that have defined American lit- wish to enact at full intensity an ex- ger serves primarily to contain some- erary ambition at its most far-reach- perience that cannot be identified asthing; its funct; n has become al- ing seem driven by impatience. That Herary in the literary terms that we most entirely cJcativ e. The formal impatience manifests itself in charac- already know. This striving for a vi- elements exist chiefly to evoke an teristically uneven textures, prolifer- sion of experience at its most unme-order of experience that can never be ating intentions, and ragged, unset- diated, intimate, and elemental is disclosed complete:y within the con- tled boundaries. Consider the visual figured, for example, in the charac- fines of present circumstances and appearance of a poem by Emily teristic shapes of Dickinson's poems,that, therefore, can never be fully Dickinson, especially a poem in which almost invariably end by represented within the limits of the manuscript, or the endlessly ex- reaching outside their frames into anindividual artistic work. Seen in this panding self-definition of Walt Whit- unarticulated space. These poems light, Emerson's writings (like man's Leaves of Grass. Works of this are completed elsewhere; they ap- Johns's painting) make visible the sort suggest an intense resistence to pear to be passing through the realmruined structures of our present un- the traditional claims of literary of our present experience on their derstanding. They function like ar- form. They reveal an abiding wish. way to somewhere else. chitectural ruins through which, at transcei ti that form, to embody an Like the writings of Ralph Waldo unexpected points, the open space experience so comprehensive that it Emerson, Dickinson's words are in- of uncomprehended actual experi- exceec's the spiritual and emotional tended not so much to be heard as ence is visible. limits associated with any estab- to be overheard; they are like the The taste for aesthetic gaps and lished literary formthat is, any discontinuous utterances of a medi- discontinuities has often been associ- form with a history. For a history um performing in the presence of anuted with the ascendance of modern- implies an inheritance, and an inher-audience. As in Jasper John's recent ism, and in this respect many read- itan,:e inevitably qualifies the painting Racing Thoughts (1983), we ers in this century have come to uniqueness of one's experience. are moved from the identifiable and regard Henry James, whose exigent the famiiiar to associations, anxi- commitment to formal closure and Stephen 1. Donadio is professor and eties, and questions that we cannot completed structure is reitera',ed chairman of the Department of American frame in words. The image as a ceaselessly in his critical pronounce- Literature and Civilization at Middle- whole defines itself not as a resolu- ments, as definitive of premodernist bury College and director of the co3ege's tion of mental wandering but as the sensibility. Contemplating the vir- 13 Literary Studies Program. occasion for it. tually borderless experience afforded by Emerson, James found himself nature; and every strange, half-seen, Finn and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The hard presses' to acconnt for that au- gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him Great Gatsby. Underlying the pre- thor's evident success, his demon- . .. seems to him the embodiment of meditated violation of standards of strated impact, in the absence of any those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through taste and de "rum that figure in the recognizable concern with the artic- self-definition of such works is a ulation of a distinct literary form. it.. . There is no life in thee, now, ex- cept that rocking life imparted by a gen- conviction that adherence to pre- Acknowledging Emerson's ability tly rolling ship; by her, borrowed from established dictates regarding appro- to speak "to the soul in a voice of di- the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable priate subject matter, language, atti- rection and authority," James ob- tides of God. But while this sleep, this tude, and tone would be a sign of served that Emerson must accord- dream is on ye, move your foot or hand imaginative servility. ingly be judged "a striking exception an inch; slip your hold at all; and your Seen in these terms, generic defi- to the general rule that writings live identity comes back in horror. .. And nitions and distinctions come to be in the last resort by their form; that perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest regarded as the literary equivalent of they owe a large part of their fortune weather, with one half-throttled shriek class distinctions in the social order. you drop through that transparent air to the art with which they have been Such distinctions imply a hierarchy composed. It is hardly too much, or into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists! in which works of the highest liter- too little, to say of Emerson's writ- ary ambition immediately declare ings in general that they were not themselves by virtue of their genre, composed at all." rhetoric, sense of style, and taste. To James, it seemed evident that For both Melville and Twain (as we Emerson "had never really mastered know from the aptly named "Royal the art of compositionof continu- Nonesuch"), expectations regarding ous expression. ...Of course, the the proper appearance of high liter- way he spoke was the way that was ary art reveal themselves most viv- on the whole most convenient to idly in the self-conscious and con- him; but he differs from most men spicuous adoration of Shakespeare of letters of the same degree of credit the representation of Shakespeareas in failing to strike us as having embodying the ultimate literary achieved a style." standard toward which American No shape, no style: In literary authors are doomed to strive in vain. terms, so far as James was con- Seeking a way of estimating his cerned, Emerson's works could own achievement as an author, hardly be said to exist. And the Melville ventured the judgment that American novelist v% is certainly zihis American contemporaries were right in concluding that Emerson's -2. misguided in identifying ultimate lit- ? writings cannot be regarded as dis- .., erary seriousness and philosophical crete, fully articulated literary objects depth with the formal and rhetorical with a specifiable content in any or- appearance of Shakespeare's work. dinary sense. Instead, these works "The great mistake," he asserted, are devised as no:hing more or less "seems to be that even with those than a means of transport, a way of lIns portrait of Walt Whitman appears in the Americans who look forward to the delivering the reader into a spiritual 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. coming of a great literary genius state far removed from the actual cir- amcng us, they somehow fancy he cumstances in which he begins by will come in the costume of Queen locating himself. Melville's account of the evocativeElizabeth's daybe a writer of dra- It is just this invitation to forget- power of Emerson's writing leads us mas founded upon old English his- fulness, this temptation to loseour back to an awareness of the spiritual tory or the tales of Boccaccio. Where- place in time and worldly circum- ambition at the heart of the Emer- as, great geniuses are parts of the stances, that Herman Melville foundsonian project: the attempt at a gen- times; and possess a correspondent so profoundly seductive and that he eral transfiguration of the common- coloring." was ultimately compelled to reject. place, which necessitated, to begin For Melville, the belief in Referring obliquely but unmistaka- with, an abandonment of familiar lit-"Shakespeare's unapproachability" bly to the effects of Emersonian rhet-erary shapes. One of the most ob- was decidedly not the sort of belief

oric, Melville pondered the state of vious reasons for the characteristic appropriate "for an American,... mind of the daydreaming young phi-formal inconclusiveness of Emer- who is bound to carry republican losopher high up on the masthead: son's work is its refusal to be bound progressiveness into Literature, as by any single generic definition. Thiswell as into Life." As the tone of ... lulled into such an opium-like list- lessness of vacant, unconscious reverie refusal may almost be said to define such pronouncements serves to indi- is this absent-minded youth by the a tradition of comparable American cate, the violation of decorum may blending cadences of waves with literary ventures that would include be understood as constituting a dec- thoughts, that at last he :uses his identi- Henry David Thoreau's Walden, laration of literary independence. As ty; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for Melville's Moby-Dick, and (in slightly such, it is not only an assertion of the visible image of that deep, blue, bot- different but related ways) Mark freedom from restrictions seen as tomless soul, pervading niankind and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry limiting imaginative expression in y the past, but also a gesture of renun- Fitzgerald, the attempt is to create ciation signifying moral seriousness. works that convey a sense of whim- Effectively reenacting the founding sicality and stylistic effortlessness gesture of the nation, the American works that communicate their seri- author imagines himself as having a ousness by making light of it. Ven- moral ao well as an aesthetic obliga- tures of this kind reveal an aristo- tion to reject the models of a past as- cratic disdain for announcements of sociated with intolerance and in- literary significance; they are above justice. In light of such pervasive insisting on How Very Important attitude., we might well suspect that they are and seem entirely willing to American literary works of magni- be taken for works of no conse- tude would not be very much in- c,uence. In this light, Fitzgerald's clined to establish their authority Gatsby, although it draws many of its through traditional means. If they cues from analogous attitudes in Pe- make compelling claims on our at- tronius's Satyricon, may be regarded tention, it is not on the basis of an 00,1(62Z as a rather cheeky reply to Edmund authority borrowed from acknowl- Wilson's solemn worry that Fitzger- edged masters or approved literary ald was on the verge of becoming a structures. a 1,ey J/Z (1./a 4 very popular trashy novelist. As for the deceptively unprepos- The ambitions that have figured in (/elfo-on sessing appearance of many Ameri- some of the most enduring works in can workswhich sometimes, as in our literature are ambitions that ulti- the case of Twain, pass themselves mately work against the creation of off as juvenile adventures, just as An early reviewer of the 1855 Leaves of respectable literary objects. By insist- some of Emerson's writing assumes Grass detected in the language of Whitman's poems a combination of "Yankee transcenden- ing on their independence, by refus- the disguise of the commencement talism and New York rt,..9dyism." ing to keep to the confines estab- speechthere would apear to be lished by contemporary opinion, no some religious basis for blurring the matter how enlightened, such works line between the exalted and the have regularly defied prevailing or- mundane, between the profound thodoxies. For that reason, they have and the inconsequential. it7t$1.11I OfRINIMI4lion,'Pr fond, 1) 4/1130n 1.1. 161 /11111 41 fey-, often been seen as haphazard in One way to grasp this apparent their execution, in dubious taste, un- failure to discriminate one kind of lit- sound in their moral judgments, and erary experience from another might politically incorrect. be to consider it in relation to the no- Works possessing this degree of tion of Christian ironythe irony imaginative energy have not been produced by the recognition that the produced by authors inclined to as- Son of God, the most exalted of fig- sume viewpoints certified in ad- ures, chose to manifest himself in vance as appropriate but by people hi:tory in the humblest human who have gone their own way: han- foi at Thus, eternal glory in the next dymen, recluses, part-time survey- world conceals itself as suffering and ors, ex-ministers, journalists, doc- debasement in this. tors, combat veterans, insurance The political and religious chal- men, night watchmen. To the de- lenges to ideas of generic hierarchy gree that they correspond to work together in the United States to Goethe's assessment of the greatest produce the conception of a high lit- achievements in art, works of this erary art that tends to dismiss its kind in the American tradition re- ambitions rather than insisting on main "simply unaccommodating." them. The language of works in this (One may think of Wright's Native tradition strives for the appearance Son and the writings of Nathanael of unstudied, unrevised expression. "Renunciation," by Emily Dickinson. West in this regard.) Probing our In writers like Emerson, Thoreau, sense of what constitutes the higher and Whitman, the unevenness of wisdom, bringing to light the un- verbal texture, the sudden shifts in acknowledged wishes concealed plane, produce a sense that one is the language of that original book an within the wishes we express, works encountering a fact of nature, an un- improbable combination Gf "Yankee of this magnitude (again in Goethe's predictable natural formation that of- transcendentalism and New York terms) "can, and should, please only fers a succession of aspects and per- rowdyism," and we may notice a approximando."As "aesthetic im- spectives. From the point of view of similarly audacious fusion in the peratives" rather than gestures of literary style, the result is likely to wondrous rhetoric of Saul Bellow's obedience, they are conceived in a be a volatile mix of apparently in- Henderson the Rain King, published a way that continues to compel deep compatible elements. One reviewer century later. reflection, not simply a passing of the 1855 Leaves of Grass detected in In later writers like Twain and show of approval. ..o% /5 Making 'p anAmerican Culture BY S.A. SPITZ

WHEN EDMUND WILSON With support from NEIL Dabney, died in 1972,a New York Times now acting director of the American editorial writer observed that "if Heritage Center at the University of there is an American civilization, Ed-Wyoming where he teaches, is en- mund Wilson has helped us to dis- gaged in a comprehensive study of cover it, and is himself an important Wilson's life and work. To recon- part of it." The author of more than struct Wilson's personal world, thirty books, Wilson exerted consid- Dabney has reviewed materials from erable influence on American the Wilson archive in the Beinecke culture for some five decades. Library at Yale, including Wilson's The posthumous publica- correspondence with such leading tion of his journals has literary figures as John Dos Passos perpetuated his life and and Vladimir Nabokov, and with the personality. And where women in his life. Among those the work of most critics all Dabney interviewed are Wilson's too quickly fades after third wife, Mary McCarthy; his their deaths, "Wilson has daughter Helen; and a number of grown in stature because old friends, including historian of the strength of his prose, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Russian the continuing validity of literature specialist Helen Muchnic. his judgments about liter- The biography will be brought out in ature, and his ability to speaktwo volumes by Farrar, Straus, and to a common reader about Giroux, Wilson's publishers.Edmund ideas, history, and politics," Wilson to 1940: Make's an American says Lewis M. Dabney, Culture isforthcoming within the editor of the next two years. TheCritic- and the Age: Viking Portable Idinund Wilson, 1940 to 1972 will Edmund follow. Wilson. Wilson communicated his excite- ment about tat and ideas to a wide audience, using a v,,riety of literary forms. The lasting materials dis- cussed in the first volume include his celebration of r-idernist liter- ature in the twenties, his documen- tation of the dislocations of the De- pression years, Tothe Einland Station, and the larger critical essays at the

Edmund Wilson attempted to create a new American culture by adapting theWorld Old S.A.Spitz is a freelance writer inthe heritage to New Wcld circumstances. This portrait was made in 1930. Washington, D.C., area. /6 end of the thirties. This volume will ney says, prepared him to appreciate explore the formative influences of and promote the great literature of Wilson's life: his family, his school the twenties, from Proust and Joyce and college years, and his experience to Hemingway and Dos Passos. from World War I to the Crash and Wilson's privileged isolation from the disillusioning Moscow show tri- much of American society was als. Also covered will be Wilson's ro- abruptly broken by American entry mantic liaisons, including his pursuit into World War I. He participated of poet Edna St. Vincent Mil lay and not as an officer, as did others of his marriages to Mary Blair, Margaret background, but rather as a private Cathy, and Mary McCarthy. in the hospital corps, an experience The second vol..tine will cover the that laid the basis for his Marxist remainder of Wilson's life, which be- sympathies in the Depression. In came more settled through his mar- 1922, at the moment when the mod- riage to Elena Thornton. Wilson's ernist movement was emerging after important writing covered in this }he war, Wilson launched his career volume will be his autobiographical by reviewing Ulysses and The Waste writing of the forties and fifties, his Land. As a spokesman for his gener- reviews and essays first published in ation of Americans, he could me- the New Yorker, and Patriotic Gore diate between European models and (1962), an exploration of the charac- the determination of the American ters and perspectives of Civil War-era novelists and poets of his generation Americans through their writings, to "make an American culture," as which earned him Robert Lowell's he put it. "Wilson believed that the sobriquet "our American Plutarch." challenge for Americans was to Wilson inherited a puritan ethic of adapt the heritage of the Old World hard work, probity, and service to and create a culture out of our native society. With ancestral roots in the materials and circumstances," says American colonial period, he was Dabney. That idea of a company of the only son of a successful and brilliant, lively Americans, striving principled trial attorney. His father for excellence in cultural azcomplish- was subject to periodic depressions, ment, he notes, has continued to at- and his mother was deaf, isolating tract people to the era of the twenties. the boy in his home, Dabney says, in As an editor at Vanity Fair and a way that led him to seek fellowship then the New Republic, Wilson spent with literature and ideas. He en- this decade writing about cultural joyed the privileges of his class: se- events, from the music of Stravinsky curity from material want; a trip to to the magic of Houdini. In 1931, he Europe at age thirteen, during which solidified his growing reputation he recorded his observations in a with Axel's Castle, an influential dis- journal that he published in old age; cussion of Proust, Joyce, Eliot, and a classical education at the Hill Yeats, Valery, and Stein, whom he School and Princeton. collectively dubbed Symbolists be- At Princeton, he read everything cause of their shared values and from Homer, Plato, and Dante to the techniques. In this book Wilson af- latest English novels, while practic- firmed the artist as hero, pointing to ing for his future trade as a writer the Symbolists' "new flexibility and and critic. Influenced by his reading freedom" of literary expression, of Voltaire and Flaubert, the French even as he deplored their social dis- critics Hippolyte Taine and Ernest engagement, both in style and in Renan, and the historian Jules theme. Imaginative brilliance could Micheletas well as by his French not substitute for participation in life professor Christian GaussWilson and society, he insisted. formed a consciousness of himself as His own participation took the a historical critic and arbiter of taste. form of vivid reports on the collapse He became friends with F. Scott of American society in the thirties Fitzgerald, for whom he would later collected in The American Earthquake, serve as a catalyst, admonishing and a book which demonstrates that encouraging his friend through con- writing done from a radical, even versations and correspondence. His revolutionary point of view can be experience before World War I, Dab- lasting. Wilson's work of the thirties

/7 Mary McCarthy in the 1940s. had much in common with that of showed that you do not have to be his friend Dos Passos, who was at superficial to address the general first further to the left than he and public about important issues. Nor became more conservative after- do you have to use the specialized wards. To the Finland Station, written diction of coteries." from 1934 to 1940, reflects the odys- "Wilson's great service," says sey of the literary left in this era. Dabney, "was to write about serious "Completed after the Moscow tri- artistic values and the fate of con- als," explains Dabney, "the book's temporary culture limpidly and heroic portraits of Marx and his rev- forcefully, without translating these olutionary followers reach the non- issues down in order to reach an au- Marxist conclusion that doctrine dience. He saw literature as the cen- and the 'realization' of revolutionary tral consciousness of society and doctrine in Stalin's Russiaare ulti- sought to reinforce this tradition mately less significant than the indi- through his work." vidual's acts as an essential force in Dabney's study is more thana bio- culture and history. This characteris- graphy of one man. "I'm trying to tically American, Emersonian idea present the intellectual life of Wil- informed the portraiture of Wilson's son's times in a biographical way," later years, which became an affir- Dabney explains. Indirectly, he mation of the man of letters as hero." adds, the Wilson biographymay Through the turbulelt decades of shed light on issues that confrontus the twenties and thirties, as he today: "There no longer seems to be strove to create order in his work, a common literary culture that binds Wilson lived a physically and emo- educated Americans in shared as- tionally strenuous life of parties, sumptions. Wilson's own work, drink, love affairs, and unhappy however, serves a vital function in marriages. It was a life in the tradi- connecting the culture of the post- tion of the Romantic artist rather World War II years to its roots in the than of the eighteenth-century En- American past and the humanistic lightenment, which he struggled to tradition, as well as in the twenties advance in his work. He had a brief and thirties. His example may help breakdown in 1929 when he was in us find new ways of forwarding the his mid-thirties. And the Wilson- standards of people who love books McCarthy relationship from 1938 to and ideas." 1945 was full of tension and drama. Wilson lived for and in his ideas, They were attracted to each other in- in a constant tension of seemingpar- tellectually, with Wilson encouraging ""11131. adoxes. "He was a patriot but nota McCarthy to develop her writing tal- chauvinist, an eager critic of his ent, but their love could not survive country in the name of what ought their bitter quarreling. Wilson remained to be," Dabney says. "He adhered to a bohemian, without money and a the standards derived from the old fixed residence until the success of classical education without ever con- Memoirs of Hecate County and his doning the assumption thata demo- marriage to Elena Thornton in 1946. cratic society teas somehow doomed "Wilson proved that one could be to be second-rate." One of Wilson's intensely engaged in life, as both a old friends, Dabney recalls, closed journalist and an activist, while ap- an interview about Wilson with plying standards derived from the these words: "The last thing that I old idea that art outlasts the people want to say about Edmund is that he who produce it," Dabney says. He loved America and hoped by his assumed the role of literary jour- work to make it better." 0 nalist as it had been exercised in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century a Britain and France and practiced it Through the Fellowships for College a very much in terms of America in Teachers and independent Scholars Pro- the twenties and thirties. 'Wilson gram Of the Division of Fellowships and was a representative American char- Seminars, Lewis Dabney received acter," Dabney adds. "He worked $27,500 in outright funds in 1986 to very hard, applied the Protestant Fcomplete "The Life and Work of 1.-,dinund ethic to the tasks of the artist, and _r Wilson."

John Dos Passos, ca. 1935. IS Fathoming

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iri---Pe'I, et,X.1.41.40,I {A eit.e eLisly -- ',-.c.el BY JOANNA BIGGAR

,1,4-1,1. 244A:I n't -fe'L -oe kte-C, erg--4 t I: (4.10----,-4 /4 Ar 1 Ar Li '- 71.-Lt -pa .r....c.. :V 4 . itc( -cv cycl __--t, -0 /r/c2 L(.-clte2 F RUDYARD KIPLING, Mark 4 et.4 C 4,c...6 /4 zet...c.1 -01.0-i-e-c, it7 44 r EGZ.e.e....e - Twain once said, "Between us /4 -41.1 i la-2 r#i 5, er_i_,_,.;e .7Ii !..0' -evo,,, -62 we cover all knowledge. He knows alte-e--r-1. ji : 0 fl-G---eti---77:60 /0. A--cf.4-04.44,0e-to all that can be known, and I know all et/ 1 -2(9 ecv-e ,t 4,-- a...2a.e....; "11.-6_,0e..c.e.e-ILL"lie the rest." The remark might almost ,44.d-- 444 /42-f,-.01c"/ LC -674z-s-c--11 e f a.4.-. ot4e2 serve as the motto of the Mark Twain 7G .7.---c de 4:7-it, 4 fz-4.-vvf-e-r-t-,/ 41# CACIA Project, supported by NEH. Formed .4 4."-t--cr- fc-F e:( MI /a 17.4-4441 by the 1980 merger of the University .14.."- A 0--et_e Ate 11- 7e4:14.4" of Iowa'sWorks of Mark Twainand the .6 4 t!- University of California's MarkTwain Papers(begun in 1961-62 at Iowa City r. and Berkeley), its ambition is to know all that can be known about Twainand then know all the rest. The purpose of the project is to publish a complete scholarly edition of Mark Twain calledThe Mark Twain Papers and the Works of Mark Twain, projected at seventy volumes. A sec- ondary goal is to issue a reader's edi- tion called theMark Twain Library (seven of some twenty-five volumes have so far appeared), reproduced without scholarly apparatus from thePapers and Works.TheLibraryvol- umes include the original illustra- tions by artists like E.W. Kemble, Frank T. Merrill, John Harley, and Letter from Samuel Langhorne Daniel Beard, which were firstand Clemens to Orion and Mary E. often lastpublished by Twain him- amens, 19 and 20 October, self. TheLibraryalready includes 1865, stating, "... Ihavehad Huckleberry Finn, Connecticut Yankee', 'call' to literature...." andTom Sawyer. The significance of this project for scholars and general ieaders alike, says Robert ri. Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project, lies in Twain's standing as one of the most widely read and profoundly charac- teristic American writers, both here and abroad. This edition provides, often for the first time, a readily available, accurate, and well-anno- tated source for everything that Twain ever wrote, includ;og some Clemens had a lifelong fondness for cats. "Mama loves morals and papa lows cats" runs the epigram he attributed to his eleven-year- old daughter in 1883. Joanna Biggar is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C.,area. Mark Twain

10,000 letters, nearly 30 books and and relying on some editorial guide- Pamphlets, and more than 4,000 lines and the Iowa Center for Textual separate pieces of journalism. Studies to carry out the "technical" The first obligation for a compre- aspects of editing, such as collation. hensive edition is to find the docu- tlys Hirst, this plan greatly un- ments that survive. The second is to derestimated the number, value, and establish from those documents as complexity of surviving texts and accurate a text as possible. Neither original documents. obligation is simple to discharge, At Berkeley, where the Papers were Hirst points out. The search for let- begun under similar assumptions, ters, for example, culminated in the editorial logistics differed in two cru- project's Union Catalog of Clemens Let- cial, if unintentional, ways, accord- ters (1986) and, earlier this year, Marking to Hirst. First, the large archive Twain's Letters, Volume 1: 1853-1866, of Twain's papers at Berkeley was the first of an estimated twenty such gradually being supplemented by a volumes. But even these comprehen- secondary archive of photocopies sive books, says Hirst, have resulted drawn from institutions and collec- in the belated discovery of more let- tors around the world. And second, ters than they catalogue or print. graduate students (Hirst as.tong Estatili:,hing an accurate text is a ihem) were being hired by Frederick matter so various and complex that it Anderson, series editor of the Papers, gets to the core of Mark Twain schol- to assist the academic editors in what arship and to one of the reasons, in was then thought of as the routine Hirst's view, for the merger of Works drudgery of the editorial process. and Papers, which, after fifteen years Both the archive and these graduate of ambivalence, finally embraced a students, Hirst says, proved more centralized and unified approach to valuable than anyone then foresaw. editing all of Twain. Through the drudgery of tran- When the Works of Mark Twain and scription, dating, collation, and fact the Mark Twain Papers began almost checking, these young professionals thirty years ago, the projects' found- consistently turned the routine edi- ers made assumptions that have torial process into one of genuine since been overturned, Hirst ex- discovery. By 1972 they had as- plains. For example, editors of the sumed responsibility for most of the Works assumed, on the basis of the editorial labor on the Papers and for published record, that Twain habitu- establishing the texts of the Works. ally treated first publication as the ul-At that point both editions were sup- timate state. They learned, however, ported by NEH through the Center tt that he did revise his earlier work for Editions of American Authors. In 1907 Clemens received the honorary doctorate of letters af.er first publication, often more But the basic editorial approach of degree from Oxford Univers:1y. He subsequently seized every than once. the two projects remained funda- occasion for wearing his academic regalia. The founders of the Works also as- mentally different. "The Berkeley sumed that some fifteen academic editors discovered that establishing editors, with little relief from teach- the texts required intensive literary ing and committee responsibilities, and historical research, both in the could complete an edition in five files at Berkeley and elsewhere," years by working from their home says Hirst. "Their effort to answer colleges and universities, making an such editorial questions as when and occasional pilgrimage to Berkeley, how texts were changed turned up 20 Ai-

vital and unsuspected documenta- tion ;.bout the texts' composition." Hundreds of new documents were discovered during this process. These documents, of interest to the Workseditors, also provided essen- 1. tial annotation for the letters, theau- tobiography, and other documents intended for thePaper: Hit-Mem- phasizes that the trail of lost evi- dence could hardly have been dis- Alm covered without continuous access to Mark Twain's correspondence, and to many other documents in the Paperslong known but not under- stood until their function in Twain's publications was identified. In addi- tion, a basic disagreement existed between Iowa and Berkeley about how, and even whether, to apply modern copy-text theory to Twain. With the death in 1979 of Frederick Anderson, by then series editor for both theWorksand thePapers,Hirst returned to Berkeley from a teaching position at UCLA to head the incip- Clemens's secretary Isabel Lyon took this photograph in 1907 withDorothy Quick, one of the ient merger. There he has presided surrogate granddaughters he referred to as his "angelfish." over a group of Twain loyalists, many of them from the original core of grad- uate students, while also enlisting the participation of those academic editors a pilot; and then to Nevada Territoryofficial records of Esmeralda District, who had not lost hope in seeing the and California, where, failing to is easily obtainable in proof that it is edition eventually completed. "strike it rich" as a miner, he did a true history." The Berkeley group eventually so as a journalist calling himself In 1972, eight years before the completed the search for letters and "Mark Twain." Berkeley-Iowa merger, RoughingIt still continues to find other docu- Twain eventually immortalized had become the first volume pub- ments. The group has invented new some of his early life in RoughingIt. lished in theWorks.Its editors, find- editorial methods and strategies to ButLetters, Volume 1,with its notes, ing no evidence in Clemens' letters cope with Mark Twain's literary photographs, maps, genealogy, fac- or in various histories and records of manuscripts and, most recently, his similes of original letters, andcom- Esmeralda County to substantiate letters, says Hirst. It began theMark prehensive transcriptions (1 ritheven the story of the blind lead in the Twain Library in 1982, at least in part deleted words deciphered) ismore Wild West mine, then dismissed to meet the needs of general readers, revealing. The facts in this volume, Mark Twain's assertion as little more even as thePapers and Worksad- assembled for the first time, provide than literary wish-fulfillment. dressed itself more thoroughly than a more reliable and more compre- But in 1988, the editors ofLetters, before to the needs of scholars. hensive basis for understanding Volume1, "find for the defendant." In Letters, Volume 1,where Clem- what Twain did with those facts By drawing on just those "various ens' vigorous narrative style inti- when he retold them inRoughing It histories and records" to which mates the later voice of Mark Twain, and Life on the Mississippi. Twain referred the reader more than readers have the most direct access For example, in chapter 41 of 100 years ago, they not only con- possible to the man behind the leg- Roughing It,Twain tells the story of firmed Twain's story but established end. These letters, which Clemens how he was a "millionaire" for sev- that he told part of it in his letters, wrote between the ages of seventeen eral days when he and his partner long before he wroteRoughing It. and thirty-one, trace his life from owned in, but soon lost, the "blind Another example: in a letter to his Hannibal, Missouri, to New York lead" in the Wild West mine. "It brother and sister-in-law on October and Philadelphia, where he worked reads like a wild fancy skfich," he 19-20, 1865, Twain gave an account briefly as a printer; then to the wrote, "but the evidence of many of what modern psychology might Mississippi River, where he became witnesses, and likewise that of the call an "identity cnsis." zi One of E.W.Ken& le's first-edition illustrations forAdventures of Huckleberry. Finn.

MARK TWAIN PROJECT PUBLICATIONS:

I never had but two powerful ambi- The Mark Twain Papers The Prince and the Pauper, Victor tions in my life. One was to be a pilot, & Fischer, Lin Salamo, eds., 1979. tne other a preacher of the gospel. I ac- Letters to His Publishers, 1867-1894, The Adventures of Toni Sawyer; Tom complished the one & failed in the other, Hamlin Hill, ed., 1967. because I could not supply myself with Sawyer Abroad; Toni Sawyer, Detective, the necessary stock in tradei e. re- Satires & Burlesques, Franklin R. John C Gerber, Paul Baender, Terry ligion. I have given it up forever. I never Rogers, ed., 1967. Firkins, eds., 1980. had a "call" in that direction, anyhow, & Which Was the Dream? and Other Sym- Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 2 my aspirations were the very ecstacy of Mic Writings of the Later Years, John (1864- 1865), Edgar Marquess presumption. But I have had a "call" to S. Tuckey, ed., 1967. Branch, Robert H. Hirst, Harriet literature, of a low order i.e. humor- Elinor Smith, eds., 1981. ous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is Hannibal, Huck & Tom, Walter Blair, ed., 1969. my strongest suit.... Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Walter Mysterious Stranpr Manuscripts, Wil- Blair, Victor Fisch& Dahlia Armon, Clemens concluded the letter with a liam M. Gibson, ed., 1969. Harriet Elinor Smith, eds., 1988. passing allusion to suicide: "If I do Correspondence with Henry Huttleston not get out of debt m three months, Rogers, 1893-1909, Lewis Leary, ed., The Mark Twain Library pistols or poison for oneexit me. 1969. [There's a text for a sermon on Self- No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, John MurderProceed.1" Fables of Man, John S. Tuckey, Ken- S. Tuckey, William M. Gibson, eds., neth M. Sanderson, and Bernard L. Was this a genuine personal crisis, 1982. Stein, eds., 1972. or was Clemens merely posturing? The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, John The editors answer that question by Notebooks & Journals, Volume I C. Gerber, Paul Baender, eds., 1982. (1855-1873), Frederick Anderson, including in the notes some Clemens Tom Sawyer Abroad/Tom Sawyer, De- marginalia in which, forty-four years Michael 3. Frank, Kenneth M. Sand- erson, eds., 1975. tective, John C. Gerber, Terry later in 1909, he recalls this period: Firkins, eds., 1982. "I put a pistol to my head but wasn't Notebooks & Journals, Volume II The Prince and the Pave', Victor man enough to pull the trigger. (1877-1883), Frederick Anderson, Many times I have been sorry I did Lin Salamo, Bernard L. Stein, eds., Fischer, Michael B. Frank, eds., 1983. not succeed, but I was never 1975. ashamed of having tried." Notebooks & Journals, Volume Ill A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's This connection between two dis- (1883-1891), Robert Pack Browning, Court, Bernard L. Stein, ed., 1983. tant documents would not have been Michael B. Frank, Lin Salamo, eds., Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Walter possible, Hirst stresses, had the edi- 1979. Blair, Victor Fischer, eds., 1985. tors been obliged to concentrate on Letters, Volume 1: 1853-1866, Edgar Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among tin' editing exclusively either the Papers Indians, and Other Unfinished Stories, or the Works, or had they not had Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, Kenneth M. Sanderson, eds., 1988. Dahlia Armon, Walter Blair, Paul continuous access to and intimate fa- Baender, William M. Gibson, and miliarity with as complete as possi- Franklin R. Rogers, eds., 1988. ble an archive of both. And yet, says The Works of Mark Twain Hirst, it is through just such insights Other Mark Twain Project Publications and clarifications that our common Roughing It, Franklin R. Rogers, Paul Baender, eds., 1972. understanding of Mark Twain, our The Devil's Race-Track: Mark Twain's ability to read and understand what What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Great Dark Writings/The Best front he wrote, are certain to be perma- Writings. Paul Baender, ed., 1973. "Which was the Dream?" and "Fables of nently changed by The Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Man," John S. Tuckey, ed., 1980. Papers and the Works of Mark Twain. 49, Court, Bernard L. Stein, ed., 1979. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters, Paul In 1986 Robert Hirst received $200,000 Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 1 Mach lis, ed., 1986. in outright funds and $350,000 in (1851-1864), Edgar Marquess matching funds for "The Mark Twain Branch, Robert H. Hirst, Harriet Project" from the Editions category of Elinor Smith, eds., 1979. the Division of Research Programs. 22 The Fig Tree's Lessons

,r. BY KRISTEN HALL Katherine Anne Porter's "The Fig Tree" was first published in a When the little chickens all ran to their group of stories, The Old Order, about an extended family. The mother under Miranda's f ; tree, one lit- child Miranda is the protagonist in many of these stories. tle chicken did not move. tie was spread out on his side with his eyes shut and his mouth open. He was yellow fur in programmin., for Dallas public sta- buries it in the family's fig grove, she spots and pinfeathers in spots, and the tion KERA-TV, was the project direc- has still not recovered from the loss rest of him was naked and sunburned. tor; Skaggs, president of Lumiere of her mother several years earlier, "Lazy," said Miranda, poking him with Productions, Inc. in New York, di- for neither her father nor her grand- her toe. Then she saw that he was dead. rected the filming of the story. mother has given appropriate con- Because "The Fig Tree" was not sideration to her grief. Miranda's WITH THESE WORDS from herwritten expressly for children, grandmother, attentive only to the short story "The Fig Tree," Skaggs and Perini consulted with customs by which dignified people written in 1929, Katherine Anne Por- Aimee Dorr, an expert in children's should comport themselves rather ter plunges her readers into the con- television, to make the story accessi-than to the emotions surrounding sciousness of a sensitive little girl ble to an audience of eight- to the death of a loved one, had simply troubled by her awareness of twelve-year-old children. To tap the insisted on a proper burial cere- deathan awareness intensified by sense of wonder at this age level and mony. A product of the old southern the failure of her father and grand- to foster questions and discussion in order with its emphasis on keeping mother to come to terms with her a family setting, Perini found that up appearances by maintaining out- mother's death. Yet beneath the storyprograms based on adult literature ward social conventions, the grand- line of a young child's confusion and are preferable to those based on lit- mother is a powerful force for emo- fear about death lies an even deeper erature written exclusively for chil- tional repression rather than level of thematic complexity: the dren. Children's literature, says Per- emotional liberation. child's intimations of the fading tra- ini, often presents a romanticized Miranda heeds her grandmother's ditions of the old South. vision of the child's world and tends injunctions about doing things "the With support from Nal, Patricia to offer pat explanations of complex right way." But just as she places a Perini and Calvin Skaggs copro- human experiences. Film dramatiza- final ceremonial fig on the chick's duced a one-hour dramatization (A tions increase children's appreciation grave, she hears a weep weep" Porter's story for the 1987 season of great literature, she continues, by sound emanating, she mistakenly premiere of Wondenvorks, a children's "presenting the same feelings foundbelieves, from the ground where she television series, aired nationally on in popular novels and short stories, buried the chick. At the .noment Mi- PBS. Perini, senior vice president of except expressed in a more literary randa concludes that she might have fashion." buried the chick alive, her family, The story takes place in central packed and impatient to leave on the Texas in the early twentieth century. annual journey to the family's farm Kristen Hall is on the staff of .,re NCH When Miranda, the young pro- in the country, calls her away. Guilt- 23 Office of Publications and Public Affairs. tagonist, finds the dead chick and stricken, Miranda obeys, abandon- ing the chick with profound reluc- whereas other programs in the seriesmatic license is necessary to portray tance. Somehow, doing things "the focused primarily on children reach- Miranda's inner world in a visually right way" ;Ines not bring her peace ing goals." The resulting film adap- concrete way, Skaggs explains. of mind. tation presented the salient features The film dramatization of Porter's On the journey, Miranda's father of "The Fig Tree" with adjustments "The Fig Tree" attempts to avoid the and grandmother respond to Miran- for comprehension and clarity. tendency in children's television pro- da's outburst of tears with annoy- When adapting literature for film, gramming to simplify profound ance. "On a mythic, ritual, and cul- says Skaggs, a director must rework human experiences. By portraying tural level," says Skaggs, "death is the original story into a dramatic the encounter of a young girl with something horrible that the family script. For example, in he written death and loss, the film aims to cannot talk about openly, cannot story, Porter assumes the omniscientevoke the questing spirit in children deal with." Miranda, however, des- perspective to convey Miranda's con-and an appreciation of children's perately needs to break through her fusion about death. Film, however, sensibilities by adults, the bond that family's conspiracy of silence, to necesLarily requires a different ap- unites Miranda and Great Aunt Eliza have her anxieties about death ad- proach. Since a character's inner life as they marvel together at the view dressed in a straightforward manner. cannot be directly presented on film,seen through Eliza's telescope of At the farm, Miranda is caught be-Skaggs and script writer Stephanie "other worlds, a million other tween her grandmother and her Keys maintained dramatic continuityworlds." 49, great aunt Eliza, who abhors the by incorporating episodes from two grandmother's tradition-bound ob- other Miranda stories by Porter In 1987, Patricia Perini of North Texas servance of formality. By witnessing "Th0 Journey" and "The Source" Public Broadcasting received $251,763 in the tension between her grand- an I by interpolating scenes not in Outright funds for "Katherine Anne Por- mother and great aunt, Miranda the original story to advance the plotter's The Fig Tree" front the Humanities learns that the adult world is not de- and to delineate Miranda's character Projects in Media Program of the Divi- fined by any single code of conduct. more fully. sion of General Programs. She senses, in fact, that her grand- One key interpolated scene, mother seeks order through memorySkaggs points out, is Miranda's and family myth, while her great prisonment in a root cellar by her aunt seeks intellectual adventure in brother and sister as the children exploration of the natural world. play. Terror wells up in her, as the The story reaches its climax when experience of being enclosed under- Miranda hears the same plaintive ground reminds her of her "prema- crying that she heard at the grave of ture" burial of the chick and triggers the chick, and Eliza explains that the the crying sound of the chick in her haunting sound is made by tree vivid imagination. Although writer frogs. Under Eliza's influence, Mi- Keys invented this scene for the randa discovers the wonders of filmed version of the story, such dra- nature, and her anxieties are re- solved with a new-found sense that the coming and going of life is one of nature's inherent rhythms. "It is a happy ending," says 0 Skaggs. "Instead of dealing at the level of myth and ritual, which the grandmother represents, Miranda learns to grasp, understand, and wonder at nature. Children need to know that it is all right to be afraid or worried about death, especially in the twentieth century when they are 16' surrounded by the consciousness of death yet robbed of its reality. Chil- dren are quite conscious of wars and Theresa Wright (left) portrays Miranda's grandmother, other disasters. They know that who acts as a powerful force for emotional :-pressionin death occurs, yet they very seldom the story. The story, nth' h takes place in central Texas in the early twentieth century,, was filmed on location see anybody die in their homes the in Waxahachie and Kaufman. Above thr young way nineteenth-century children did." heroine of "The Fig Tree," Miranda, is portrayed by The translation of Porter's story to Karron Graves. Miranda is torn between her film was encumbered by the topic it- grandmother's insistence on tradition and formality selfa difficult one for all ages, not and her green- aunt's questioning turn of mind. only for children. "This was an ex- ceptional film for the Wonderworks series," states Perini, "because it pre- sented a deep themedeath-- 2y A literary history of the American West from Garci Rodriguez Ordoliez de Montalvo in 1510 to Joan Didion in 1984

BY CAROLINE TAYLOR

k7; IKE ANY MAGICAL, mythical place, the West has its gods and demi- gods, its legends and songs, its heroes, villains, and ordinary people. The lanky, laconic lawman with lightning draw and deadly aim keeps com- pany with discoverers and explorers, grim and determined pioneer families, greed-crazed gold miners, gallant soldiers, hard-boiled detectives, desper- ate, dirt-poor farmers, and loners of all types who find in the urban sprawl iy of a city like Los Angeles a wasteland as featureless and forbidding as the A 1 salt flats of Utah. Never before have the West's chroniclers been collected into one volume, sorter into genres, resorted into regions, discussed, interpreted, indexed, and listed in chronological order. A Literary History of the American West (Texas Christian University Press, 1987), sponsored by the Western Liter- ature Association, is the first comprehensive attempt to treat the develop- ment of the West as a literary region. In 1979, with support from NEH, the association and its editor-in-chief J. Golden Taylor (1912-1982) undertook to bring together in one volume the oral and written literature of the continent that lay to the west of Plymouth and Jamestownfrom one perspective, the frontier of civilization and from another, the land in which further retreat from Anglo invaders ended in a massacre at Wounded Knee. Organizing the 1,400-page compendium presented a series of challenges to the editors, who planned to include a vast amount of material represent- ing different regions and historical periods and encompassing a wide range of genres and literary methodswritten or spokenoften in languages other than English. The compromises they made are revealed in the vol- ume's three-part arrangement. Part One gives a chronological development to 1960 of various genresfolklore, adventure tales, short fiction, novels, poetry, plays. Because so many western writers wrote about one distinctive area, Part Two is organized by subregions of the West. Part Three covers ethnic expressions of native Americans, Hispanics, As:an Americans, and others, and concludes with a section devoted to recent trends (since 1960) in fiction, poetry, drama, and criticism. What constitutes western literature? In his preface, Max Westbrook points out that definitions of western, "in terms of geography, themes, subject mat- ter, or the residence of the authors, have all proved unsatisfactory, and at- tempts to discover a distinctively western style or vision, while rewarding, are not definitive." Any frontier literature of Americathat which arises from the meeting of an expanding Euro American civilization with either the wilderness or with the Indiansshould be considered in some sense western, says Thomas Lyon of Utah State University, who as senior editor of the volume com- pleted the project launched by J. Golden Taylor. "James Fenimore Cooper is mentioned often," he points out, "yet, four of his five Leatherstocking sto- ries take place essentially in New York State. A lot of people consider that to be western." Lyon recalls several "arguments" among members of the Western Liter- ature Association in the early stages about whether to define western liter- ature as essentially frontier literature. Some argued that if one did that, the

Caroline Taylor is the editor of Humanities. istory of the American West from guez Ordonez de Montalvo in 1510 ion in 1984 Yosemite Valley, California, in an 1866 photograph by Carleton E Watkins INE TAYLOR

voiome would have to extend as farback as 1610 and include Captain Joh -1 Smith and the general history of Virginia as western "In some sense itis,' says Lyon, "but I think it is evidentthat what we ended with is a compro- mise between geography and thechronological frontier Most of the empha- sis is on the interior, semi-arid, nonurban part of the Westalthough we have a whole section on the Midwest, which is not semi-arid." Nevertheless, there are still lisagreements. "Every time the association meets," says Lyon, "we discuss exactly what to say the ;anonis made up of." To those who think it should be limited to literature of theperiod 1822-1890the classic West beginning with the fur trappers and mountain 1 men and ending with the officialclosing of the frontier by the U.S Census Bureau in 1890Lyon warns that such a narrow definitionwould rule out a great many twentieth-century writers. In selecting what to include in the volume, one major decisionfaced by the editors was how much discussion to devote to the popular novel orthe so-called formula Western. "We did include some," adds Lyon."There are chapters and references on the popular Westerns of Zane Grey and thelate Louis L'Amour, but our major emphasis was on what most people in west- ern literature studies call 'serious' westernlitcraturewriting that attempts to be significant, complex, subtle, nonformulaic." According to Lyon, most of the editors and contributors to A Literary His- tory of tite American West believe that it is important tokeep the idea of re- gional literature alive: If I could draw a generalization out of these eighty-odd chapters,it would be that of the post-frontier, examining, self-conscious attitude of senous westernliterature that is high-quality belletnstic w estern literaturewhich is distinguishedby stepping aside from or stepping beyond stereotypes, mythologies, dime novelheroics, and so forth. There is an emphasis on recognizing limits, on recognizing thatthe expan- siveness and exerc,se of individual willassociated with freedom in the era of the frontier need to be examined. A factor of cultural maturity is reflected inthis post- frontier literature, whereas the shoot-cm-up style continues to be an assertionof "freedom from," if you will, perfect indwidual will, and absolute mobilitycharacter- istic of the era of expansion. Some ha% e gone so far as to seethis recognition of limits and the consequent development of a non-expansi% e view of the world as a major contribution to world literature. The book reveals a decisix e watershed in western regional literature with the popular, frontier-bound novel on one side and post-frontierfiction on the other. Lyon recalls the words of Walter Prescott Webb:"The end of an age is always touched with sadnessfor those who lived it and those who love it. That sadness is usually attended with muchknowledge, some wisdom, and a sort of jaded sophistication. Neither knowledge norwisdom brings happiness, more often they bring disillusionment "However, Lyon points out, "there are a number of western writers,Wallace Stegner, for ex- ample, who find positive xalue in recognizing limits and taking anonfron- tier attitude toward the world." Stegner's career as novelist, sior:telicr educator, editor, conservationist, and "dean of western w riters" is described by JosephFlora in the section on "The Rocky M untains." A contributor himself, Stegner warnsagainst the temptation to escape into the Old West, rather than examiningit for what it can illuminate about the New West: 9 a In the old days we used to tie a string of lariats from house to barnso as to make it from shelter to responsibility and back again. With personal, family, and cultt.ral chores to do, I think we had better rig up such a line between past and present Stegner's essay on Bernard De Voto recounts the life and work of thenov- elist/historian/critic whose strong ideas and angry opinions defied labeling under the existing ideologies of the time. In response to a complaint from Edmund Wilson that he had no "articulated ideas," De Voto set forth his position in aSaturday Revieweditorial in February i937: t I early acquired a notion that all gospels were false and all my experience since then has confirmed it...I distrust absolutes. Rather, I long ago passed from distrust of them to opposition. And with them let me include prophecy simplification, gener- alization, abstract logic, and especially the habit of mind which consults theory first and experience only afterward.

No literary history of the west would be complete withoutDeVoto'sJournals of Lewis and Clark,which contributor James Maguire of Boise St: to University compared in importance to William Bradford'sOf Plymouth Plantation asa fundamental source of the western tradition in its documentationof the dis- coveries made by the two explorers on their momentous expedition. In the western experience, exploration is followed inevitably bysettle- ment. The experiences of those who !eft civilization behind to put down roots on the vast and lonely prairies are evoked by Willa Cather. John Mur- phy of Brigham Young University describesa writer whose stories grew from a personal sense of cultural starvation after movingat age nine from her home in Winchester, Virginia, to the tiny Nebraskatown of Rod Cloud. Her characters' strong attachment to the land is nourished by theirown up- rootedness. In MyAntonia,Murphy points out, Cather chose to symbolize the pioneer West through an immigrant girl withan illegitimate baby, as an alternative to the usual mountain men, gunfighters, and cowboys. Cowboys figure prominently in the plays of Sam Shepard, who has been Two images of the mythical and real American West. Above, called "our most interesting and exciting American playwright." In hisessay Buffalo Throwing the Hunter,bronze, by William de In on Shepard, Mark Busby of Texas A&M University writes, "many of Shep- Montagne Cary(1840 - 1922),and below, two Colt single- ard's characters wish to reembody the cowboy figure, but the fragmented action army revolvers, gold-plated mut engraved, ca. 1890. world in which they live offers little possibility of satisfaction. The cowboy is with eleven brass -cased cartridges. out of place in this world...." In Shepard's plays, that world has a decid- edly modern skew, blending fantasy and reality ina search for something solid to supersede the West's most enduring stereotype. An early practitioner of the style that hascome to be known as magical re- alisma technique often identified with Latin American writers like Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Carlos Fuenteswasthe "inevi- tably misunderstood or belittled" William Saroyan. In hisessay on Saroyan, Gerald Haslam describes a writer who never quitecame to grips with the 3early death of his father an-: who suffered from his adversarial relationships with critics. Haslam wri.rs that despitc his early fall fromgrace with the lit- erary establishment, Coroyan kept his sense of humor. Shortly before his d death, he called the Associated Press with one finalmessage: "Everybody has got to die, but I have always believedan exception would be made in my case. Now what?" O Separate chapters are also devoted to such major writersas Mark Twain,

1.1 Mary Hunter Austin, Frank Norris, Jack London, Robinson Jeffers,John 0 C Steinbeck, jack Kerouac, J. Frank Dobie, Katherine Anne Porter, William Eastlake, Larry McMurtry, Mari Sandoz, and A.I3. Guthrie, Jr. "We'd likto think this is going to be a basic reference text," Lyon says. 0 "The bibliographies in particular are complete andaccurate. We tried to reach outside literature to some degree to history and historiographyto make it a little more accessible. Of course, it is alsoa handy, one-volume survey of important writers that names those who at least some people think are the important writers of the region. At thevery least, it's a begin- ning, and people can take off from there andargue who was left out." According to Lyon, plans for a supplementary issue lie far in the future. The more than four centuries covered by the present volume providea start- ing point for discission of the tendency, especially in popular Westerns,to see the Old West as an escape from a new West, one that is settled, defined, and, some think, defiled by pioneers who destroyed the prairies in orderto tame a wilderness. By exploring the literature of both the old and thenew West, the book strings a lariat between the limitless frontier of thepast and the world that has replaced it. (49,

In 1979 the Western Literature Association was awarded $36,830 through the State, Local, and Regional History category of the Division of Research Programs forprepa- -27 rationof A Literary History of the American West. 3 Bellow's New World Babylon ma, Saul Bellow in 1977 with copies of Humboldt's Gift. BY ELLEN PIFER

VER SINCE JAMES JOYCE ex- Artur Sammler, the elderly pro- lent sections of the city were not immune. Eplored Dublin city life in Ulysses, tagonist of Mr. Sammler's Planet, is You opened a jeweled door into degrada- many novelists have given up the one of Bellow's most energetic pe- tion, from hypercivilized Byzantine lux- traditional task of relating the indi- destrians. Despite his seventy-plus ury straight into the state of nature, the vidual's life to the social environ- years, Sammler covers an enormous barbarous world of color erupting from beneath. It might well be barbarous on ment. As successors to the great amount of territory as he journeys, either side of the jeweled door. modernist writers, including Beck- mostly on foot, through the streets ett, Borges, Calvino, and Nabokov, of New York City. The sidewalk Bellow's rendering of the urban en- they have withdrawn from the social crowds, in all their eclectic variety vironment depicts a specific locale arena to ponder the human being in and theatrical display, have a great but also evokes a universal condi- his linguistic and metaphysical isola- deal to tell Sammler about contem- tion. In the novelist's view, metro- tion. In recent years, postmodernists porary America. And everywhere politan life is the central phenome- such as Barthelme, Pynchon, Barth, urban blight speaks to him of moral non of Western culture in its late Coover, and Heller, have responded disorder and decay: twentieth-century phase. "Here you to the increasingly chaotic and root- Most outdoor telephones were smashed,might see," as Sammler observes, less conditions of American life by crippled. (The booths] were urinals, also."the soul of America at grips with evoking surreal or absurdist land- New York was getting worse than Napleshistorical problems, struggling with scapes rather than the quotidian. or Salonika. It was like an Asian, an Afri- certain impossibilities." Saul Bellow, awarded the Nobel can town, from this standpoint. The opu- At the same time that it exposes Prize for Literature in 1976, creates landscapes of a different older. In a literary career spanning nearly half a century, Bellow has placed the urban metropolisprimarily his adopted city Chicago, but also New York, and more recently, Bucharest--at the heart of his fiction. The cityscape looms even when a Bellow hero, like the protagonist of Herzog, spends endless hours flat on his back in a tiny apartment, reviewing past mis- takes and licking new wounds. With its jostling traffic, blistering pave- ments, abrasive and abortive human contacts, the modern metropolis provides the setting through which IIerzog's restless mind tirelessly travels, trying one mental route after another as he ponders the meaning of contemporary life.

Ellen Pifer is associate professor of En- glish and comparative literature at the thsroltirm, \ tom 'I vi firrur %mut . Itm iii n . University of Delaware. She is currently Erastus Salisbury Field's canvas, Historical Monument of the American Republic, ca. 1870s, uses Babel- completing a book on Bellow's fiction, like towers to commemorate the U.S. centennial. Bellow's Angie March found "not a single Tower of Babel plot- ted in common, but hundreds of thousands of separate beginnings, the length and breadth of America." Saul Bellow Against the Grain.28 the soul of America at a particular moment in history, the city land- scape, in its Byzantine luxury and F degradation, rehearses anew human waywardness and barbarous corrup- I O tion. In Bellow's rendering, the con- temporary metropolis proves both timely and timeless. Engraved by modern history, the landscape is in- scribed as well with apocalyptic por- tents. "Having failed to create a spir- itual life of its own, investing every- thing in material expansion,"America, the novelist warns, "face[s] disaster." As early asThe Adventures of Angie March(1953), Bellow exposes the me- tropolis as both the product of America's worship of material power and the testimony of misplaced faith. Such confusion, he suggests, is at least as old as the biblical archi- tects of Babel, who mistook physical elevation for spiritual ascendancy. Nowadays the ambitious city builders set out to create, in the co words of Augie March, "not a single Tower of Babel plotted in common, but hundreds of thousands of sepa- rate beginnings, the length and breadth of America." These myriad plans and projections betray, for all their innovation, the same old confu- sion. Like the Tower of Babel, the constructions lead nowhere; and meanwhile, says Augie, "nothing genuine is allowed to appear, and nobody knows what's real." Recalling the long history of hu- mankind's blindness and suffering, -1"446.=*41*5. Bellow places the modern metropolis Drugstoreby Richard Estes, 1970 (oil on canvas). Theurban metropolis,especially Saul Bel- in biblical as well as ancient history. low's adopted city, Chicago, lies at the !wart of his fiction. Augie March's Chicago recalls not Like their wayward ancestors, the in-Here Bellow's language hints at the only Naples or Salonika but ancient habitants of this New World Babylonprocess by which matter, exalted and Babel or Babylon. The American have invested all trust, hope, and idolized, begins to usurp human au- city's imperial size and wealth foster faith in earthly powers. Mistaking thority, becoming "the power itself": the illusion of permanence; yet as matter for divinity, images for real- Butin this modern power of luxury, with Bellow envisions it, the mighty me- ity, they are modern-day idolaters. its battalions of service workers and en- tropolis is an empire on the verge of Even in these "times of special dis- gineers, it's the things themselves, the dissolution. "Around was Chicago," figurement and worldwide Babylo- products that are distinguished, and the Bellow writes, commencing his evo- nishness," as Bellow puts it, human individual man isn't nearly equal to their cation of the city inAugie March:"In beings persist in their yearning for great sum. Finally they are what becomes its repetition it exhausted your imag-"ulterior" reality, for ulualate or greatthe multitude of baths with never- ination of details and units, more transcendent meaning. Even mate- failing hot water,, the enormous air- units than the cells of the brain and rial power and luxury may be con- conditioning units and the elaborate ma- the bricks of Babel. The Ezekiel cal- strued as proper objects of worship chr:y. No opposing greatness is allowed. dron of wrath, stoked with bones. Inby mortals in their "Babylonish" Even the utilitarian products of ad- time the caldron too would melt. A confusion. Aware of these possibili- vanced technology recall the biblical mysterious tremor, dust, vapor, ema-ties, Augie March perceives in one idolswrought by human inge- nation of stupendous effort traveled of Chicago's luxury hotels an idol of nuity, shaped by mortal hands, and with the air." Fostered by worldly monumental proportions. Resplen- yet invested by each mortal suppli- ambition and the relentless drive for dent in its godlike scale, "its Jupiter'scant with illusory divinity. Subjugat- material expansion, Chicago re- heaviness and restless marble de- ing himself to idolatry, or false wor- hearses in amtemporary form the tail," the idol extends its dominion, ship, the human being is not age-old spectacle of human folly. "seeking to be more and more." ennobled but diminished. 2 s: 'ritual bond with others and with r creation itself. Although some of Bel- low's heroes are able to realize their bond amidst the distractions of the city, his more recent protagonists find it difficult in the extreme. Like Benn Trachtenberg, the central char- acter in Bellow's 1987 novel More Die of Heartbreak, they must quit the city and cut loose from the strictures of collective life in order to renew their connection with creation. In The Dean's December, Albert Corde ends up not in Bucharest or Chicago but in the icy atmosphere of the Mt. Palomar observatory in Cali- fornia. Dreading to discover in the "taste of the cold out there" the power of astral space to "cancel ev- erything merely human," Corde has a revelation of a different order. Ca: The City from Greenwich Village by John Sloan, 1922 (oil on canvas). Bellow views metro- ing at the starry vastness of "the liv- politan hfo as the central phenomenon of late twentieth-century Western culture. ing heavens," he does not feel re- duced to insignificance by the in- In The Dean's December, published disorder or disarray is, once again, finite reaches of space. Instead, he thirty years after Augie March, the the urban landscape"the slums we perceives that what is out there is also novel's urban setting expands be- carry around inside us. Every man's attached to what is inside him. What yond Chicago to include the Roma- inner inner city." The political and human beings know of this world is nian capital of Bucharest. In this tale economic deprivations endured by more than can be objectively regis- of two cities, Bellow explores the so- the inhabitants of both Babylons, tered. The eyes perceive, as Corde cieties of East and West, communism East and West, are only the outward says, "only as much as could be and capitalism, balancing the "cast- manifestation of a still deeper and taken in through the distortions of iron gloom" of totalitarian bureaucra- more dangerous deprivation: the the atmosphere. Through these dis cy against the degradation of Amer- steady erosion of the human being tortions, you saw objects, forms, par- ica's inner-city slums. Through his that has culminated in his abject in- tial realities. The rest was to be felt." protagonist, Albert Corde, the novel-ner poverty. ist draws comparisons between Corde's revelation, suffice it to say, Emblematic of this impoverish- takes him beyond the materialist Bucharest and Chicago that begin ment, Chicago and Bucharest are view of reality. So intense is his ex- with the December weather: "No both the product and habitation of perience of the union of mind and more sun, that was gone, only linty what Bellow calls "advanced modernmatter, spirit and nature, that he is clouds and a low cold horizon... . consciousness." Both the capitalistic reluctant to descend from the It was like the Chicago winter, which West and the communist East share heights of Mt. Palomar. Afterward, shrank your f ice and tightened your a sinister belief in the human being's when asked if he minded the cold at sphincters." Like the Chicago winter "earthenness." Having forsaken the top of the observatory dome, it continually recalls, December in commitment to moral and spiritual Corde replies, in the novel's closing Bucharest heralds more than the end ideals, advanced modern conscious- line, "The cold? Yes. But I almost of a year. Both the gloom of Roma- ness worships the realm of "sclerot- think I mind coming down more." nia's totalitarian regime and Chi- ic, blind, earthen" matter and con- That almost is all that stands between cago's urban blight serve as emblems signs the human being, along with Albert Corde's reluctance and his of universal deprivation. the rest of phenomena, to "the gen- readiness to descend to the clam- A! both ends of the earth, Bellow eral end of everything." Enslaved by orous world below. warns, the values by which human their idolatry, the inhabitants of con- One of the fortunate paradoxes of beings have ordered their existence temporary Babylon are, at both ends Bellow's novels is that, while supply- are being obliterated. Ethical princi- of the earth, dying of their devotion. ing all the evidence needed to ex- ples, the distinction between good "The view we hold of the material plain and perhaps even to justify, and evil, have been forsaken. Mech- world," Corde says, "mav put us the withdrawal of postmodernist anistic concepts and data are the into a case as heavy as lead." fiction from the maelstrom of late only approved signposts of reality. The crushing weight of matteritstwentieth-century society, the author Machines multiply; the mighty pros- worship by the scientist, bureaucrat,, has held out against retreat. Al- perbut the moral center is crum- and consumerbears down on the though his own reluctance is audi- bling. To Cord..% contemporary soci- consciousness of Bellow's protago- ble in Corde's somber qualifier ety is a monstrous superstructure nists as they struggle to lift the lid, "almost"Saul Bellow, like his preceriously erected on a spiritual break open the caseto authenticate protagonist, always comes back to void. And the emblem of that moral their experience by discovering their the city. 3V The Rise of American

T N 1891, THE YEAR BEFORE his sense of our literary history and, literature scholars and information 1 death, Walt Whitman lamented within that growing literary tradi- from many previously unpublished the lack of an American readership tion, our awareness of a privat' and sources, including dissertations and responsive to his message. He was national selfhood." But the profes- manuscript collections, to produce a not alone in suffering this neglect. Insion is less sure of itself today than itbiography of American literature fact, American writers had only be- was forty years ago, says Vanderbilt, studies as an academic profession. gun to be appreciated in colleges, who teaches American literature in Divided into three parts, the one- and professors interested in Ameri- the Department of English and volume history portrays the rise and can literature had little sense of com- Comparative Literature at San maturation of American literature munity in the academy. Diego State University. clot only is scholarship in its broadest otclines Today, scholar-professors of Ameri- American literature generally with- and incorporates the manifold par- can literature are the bearers of a out its own department, he points ticulars of people, places, and events distinctive profession with a complex out, but many American literature in what represents a complex strand tradition, which Kermit Vanderbilt professors have suffered a crisis of of American cultural history. Book delineates in American Literature and morale with the decline of respect One, "Roots," examines the profes- the Academy: The Roots, Growth, and for humanistic learning. sion's birth in the first quartet of the Maturity of a Profession (University of Vanderbilt's book is a response to twentieth century and looks back at Pennsylvania Press, 1986), publishedthe profession's wavering identity. its gestation period in the nineteenth with NEH support. From its origins By tracing the background, birth, century. Book Two, "Growth," cov- in the 1820s to the appearance of theand maturation of American liter- ers the profession's adolescent years Literary History of the United States ature studies, Vanderbilt seeks "to during the twenties and thirties. (Macmillan) in 1948, the formal renew appreciation of the commit- And Book Three, "Maturity," dis- study of American literature has ment by earlier generations of schol- cusses the profession's attainment of evolved from the status of English ars who waged their own campaigns maturity during and immediately literature's poor relation to respecta- to build respect for American au- after World War II. Salient events bility as a discipline and primacy in thors and to establish standards of covered by Vanderbilt are the dawn shaping American cultural identity. excellence in the study and teaching of nationalistic literary self-con- Historically, Vanderbilt explains, of our literature." Aimed at scholars sciousness in the 1820s, the pre-Civil the professional mission of American of American literature, of literary War literary-critical battles waged in literature scholarship and instructionhistory, and of higher education, thecontemporary journals between has been "to create for Americans a book is the first historical account of "Americanists" and "universalists," the struggle in the American acade- pioneering American literary histo- my to define, study, and teach Amer- ries by individual scholars, the ori- James Turner is assistant editor of ican literature. Vanderbilt has gath- gin of university departments, cur- Humanities. ered photos of pioneering American riculum development, textbooks and

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3/ Literature L.5tu les13Y JAMES TURNER

anthologies, graduate study, profes-unwieldy, as their projected two-vol- the Duyckinzics (Evert and George) sional societies and politics, and ume history ballooned into four vol- produced the Cyclopaedia of American monumental literary histories pro- umes covering every conceivable Literature (Scribners, 1855), the duced by cooperative scholarship. genrefrom early verse, patriotic culminating events in the pre -Civil The first prominent landmark in songs, hymns, periodicals, and gift War movement for ar indigenous lit- American literary history was the books, to works by authors com- erature. Moses Con Tyler, who ad- four-volume Cambridge History of monly studied today. vanced the study of American liter- American Literature (CHAL) (Putnam), "As they identified the sixty-odd ary history in the classroom at published in three installments fromcontributors for the various chap- Michigan and Cornell, published A 1917 to 1921. "More than any other ters," Vanderbilt says, "the editors History of American Literature,,1607- event, the unprecedented publishingfailed to establish a common theory 1765(Putnam, 1878) and A Literary of such a large-scale, cooperative his-of literary-historical evolution, aes- History of the American Revolution tory of American literature helped thetic evaluation, and literary nation-(Putnam, 1897), earning unofficial usher in American literature scholar-alism, so that the CHAL materialized status, Vanderbilt comments, as the ship as a distinctive profession," haphazardly, without unity or a founder of the profession. Dart- Vanderbilt says. "This was the first clear sense of scope. Importantly, mouth's Charles F. Richardson pro- discussion on a grand scale of theac- though, they summarized American duced American Literature,7607-1885 complishments in the field." literature study from its beginnings (Putnam, 1887-89), encompassing The masterminds of the project in the nineteenth century, identify- the entirety of American literary his- were three adventurous professors ing the key scholars and events that tory, but not altogether successfully from Columbia UniversityCarl Vanlaid the foundation on which the in his "groping' for principles, defi- Doren, William P. Trent, and John CHAL could be built." nitions, and judgments. And Barrett Erskinesoon joined by Stuart P. Vanderbilt points out that the Wendell, who published the Literary Sherman of the University of Illinois.nineteenth-century trailblazers made History of America (Scribners, 1900), is These scholarsschooled in the par-distinctive contributions, even as credited with introducing the serious adigm that the proper study ofman- their critical methodologies were study of American literature at Harvard. kind is philology and English (not grounded in aesthetic impressionism None of this scholarship won re- American) literaturewere moved torather than historical inquiry and spectability for American literature define and explore their mutual in- elucidation. Samuel Knapp re- in the classics-centered collegecur- terest in American liter?ture, Van- covered colonial writing as an inte- riculum. Even with the establish- derbilt explains. With no precedent gral component of American liter- ment of the Modern Language Asso- for a cooperative scholarly endeavor ature in his Lectures on American ciation (MLA) in 1883 to secure and no established theory of Ameri- Literature (Elam Bliss, 1829). Rufus recognition for English and other can literature to serve as a frame- Griswold wrote Prose Writers of modern languages, American liter- work, their enterprise soon became America (Carey and Hart, 1847) and ature was virtually ignored. In the

00* ,40.. 1910s and 1920s, battle lines were pelled by Norman Foerster, the bookmate Literary History of the United still drawn between those w ho explicated Foerster's four shaping States (LI IUS), which was six years in sought a "usable past" honoring factors in American literaturethe the making Spiller's two-cycle theory American cultural achievements puritan spirit, the pioneer spirit, ro- of American literature governed the the modernk.4 critics such as Van manticism, and realisma formula- shape of the LI IUS, following his Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, Louis tion that Vanderbilt identifies as "a sense of the cresting of American liter- Untermeyer, and H.L. Mencken momentous step in redefining the ary history at the end of two flourish- and those who sought the perma- tradition of American literature." ing romantic movementsthe mid- nent and universal as against histor- Other critical developments prolif- nineteenth century and the 1930s. icism, nationalism, romanticism, anderated. The profession established Each generation should produce a aesthetic impressionismthe anti- its own journal, American Literature, literary history to redefine the past modernist New Humanists such as in 1929. Vernon L. Parrington pro- in its own terms, Spitler wrote in the Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More. duced his seminal three-volume LHUS. And after four editions of the Not until 1921 did the profession Main Currents in American Thought LHUS, a new generaticn has done so establish a political voice by forming (Harcourt Brace, 1927-30), a cross- in the one-volume Columbia 1..iterary the American Literature Group disciplinary approach to .6nencan History of the United States (Columbia (ALG) within the MLA to define thought that addresses the central University Press, 1988). Vanderbilt's American literature as an expression questions of American literary histo- story of the making of the CHAL, of American historical consciousnessry in the context of intellectual histo- Parrington's Main Currents, the instead of an offshoot of English lit- ry. And the 1930s saw a potpourri of LHUS and other pioneering literary erature. By the mid-1920s, tne most literary outpourings from critics of histories provides an introduction to prominent ALG membersJay B. assorted persuasions: leftist, resur- this recent history. Hubbell, Thomas 0. Mabbott, Robertgent new humanist, southern agrar- A definitive study of the scholars E. Spitler, Ernest E. Leisy, and Fred ian, Freudian, and nationalist. and events that forged an academic L. Patteehad become the new pro- With such scholarly fecundity, al- discipline out of uniquely American fession's political elite whose constit-most inevitably the next stage was literary materials, American Literature uency soon numbered in the hun- the making of a cooperative new lit- and the Academy may serve both dreds, as all but a few of the nation'serary history that could provide an graduate students and professors as leading universities added Americanoverarching perspective on Ameri- a key reference source on the history literature to their curricula. can literature since the appearance of professi 'nal studies in American The intellectual ferment of the of the CHAL. After a falling out with literature. postwar period spurred a rethinkingthe ALG about whether or not schol- of the premises of the CHAL and arship was ripe for an ALG-based gave rise to a major new collection cooperative literary history, Spiller of essays, entitled The Reinterpreta- of Swarthmore, Willard Thorp of Through the Pul,:ication Subvention cat- tion of American Literature (Harcourt Princeton, Thomas H. Johnson of egory of the Division of Research Pro- Brace, 1928)"indispensable read- Lawrenceville School, and Henry S. grams in 1986, the University of Penn- ing today for every person who Canby of Yale formed a private non- sylvania Press received 54,300 in would understand the rise of twen- profit organization. Cognizant of theoutright funds for publication of Ameri- tieth-century studies in American lit- flaws of the CHAL, they carefully se-can Literature and the Academy, by erature," remarks Vanderbilt. Im- lected contributors for the consum- Kermit Vanderbilt.

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141111..--44va

33 AMERICA BY ELLEN MARSH A* READING AT AN AMERICAN Library Association conference a few years ago, the deputy director of the Tucson Public Library and her companion paused to examine a display of Library of America books. The Library of America, a nonprofit program underwritten by NEH and the Ford Founda- tion, publishes authoritative hardback editions of America's major writers. The librarian and her friend remarked to etch other that it was too bad that these wonderful books, embodying the great flowering of American liter- ature, weren't getting more attention from the reading public. From this chance remark grew "America: A Reading," a successful two- year rogram sponsored by the Tucson Public Library and supported by NEH. Tucson was an ideal location for a serious reading program, says proj- ect director Roily Kent, because the Tucson library system has, over the years, developed a sizeable following for humanities programs due, in good part, to ten years' worth of NEH grants that funded several ongoing human- ities programs. The challenge for the library was to attract a wider audience than its already committed booklovers and to attempt to engage the general reader who might read only one book a year that could be classified as liter- ature. "A lot of people are eager to participate in a program of organized readings and discussions using intellectually significant books, but there are many more who, although they would like some guidance in a course of reading, do not have the time or inclination to join a book disrussion group," Kent says. "This is the audience that is importantand difficultto reach." .Ak Before writing a grant application, Kent met with a panel of advisers from Library of America in New York City and received detailed suggestions from scholars at the University of Arizona. From these talks came the notion of working through seven large themes, each of which was broad enou ,11 to admit a variety of interpretations. The first was "America: The New Land," which included readings from William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, Cabeza de Vaca, Benjamin Franklin, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others. 1111, Other topics followed: "Leaving Home: Journeys and Return"; "Modern Po- etry: Making It New"; "City Lives"; and "Scenes of the Crime," a lighter-

# f? weight summertime session that examined the mystery genre. The most popular was "In Search of Our Mothers Garden: Women in American Liter- ature," the title of which was adapted from a collection of stories by Alice Walker. The reading programs ended in the spring of 198d with "Honest Truth: The American Quest for Meaning." This final them,' examined the American regard for honesty, which Kent considers an intrinsic element in our national character. In order to target different audiences, "America: A Reading" offered a va- riety of subordinate topics under the seven general themes. Some sections met weekly for a month and a half; others lasted only two or three weeks. Publicity was important. The library gave out bookmarks advertising each topic, displayed colorful flyers and post9rs, and created reading guides for a section of Tucson's arts and culture tabloid. The reading guides, which contained a suggested list of books on each topic and a discussion of the subject and some of the texts, were also, avail- able in libraries, schools, and at the university, and were mailed to individu-

Ellen Marsh is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C., area. zZv" I MAIM on A TENURED POSITION by AMANDA (K (Jbb Ii7",.co irsusZ QV o *LI

(*Azd z 0 6.4 -4x als on the library's mailing list. "At first the reading guides were long and quite detai ed, but we found that they were more effective if they were short eg. enough to read over a cup of coffee," Kent explains. Between the formal publicity and word of mouth, news of the series began to spread. u;12n") .0 Citi" The reading guide brochure for the second topic in the series, "Leaving Home: Journeys and Return," describes the theme as follows: U113,012PVI to The American continent has been the setting for countless migrations, pilgrimages, questsjourneys from the old place to the new, voyages in America in search of VIC) wealth, self, refuge, liberation. In essential ways, 'Leaving Home' is one of the recur- ring, if not founding, great American themes.

rem i./ Four groups, each led by a different scholar, met in four libraries to dis- cuss various aspects of this theme. One section, called "Finding the Center," met on Thursday evenings to discuss such books as The Way toRainyMoun- 5 1z tain, Walden, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Another group concentrated Z;g3ift0'0 Ct4f. on "The World of William Faulkner." Kent led a third section, "Songs of the 041.1 Open Road: Men and Leaving Home," which included Whitman, Moby- Dick, Walden, and Huckleberry Finn. For the fourth group, Michelle Taigue, a set o'er0 Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona, used "Journeys to the Interior" k:Pt, ICC as her focus. To introduce the theme, she quoted W.T. Pilkington, writing about Cabeza de Vaca: "One of the recurring motifs of American literature is par the voyage of exploration, of physical and spiritual discovery, the journey to Z;s4 the interior, in which the dominant figure is man isolatedalone in the wil- CC aireMairlithi. arRITAiraMTOW a11.1URdiRliN.THE- YELLOW BRIdlgOAD derness, alone with himself." 8--11:THE-Alinf6iMfrkEY SPILLANE: -FER1PE Because of the Tucson locale and her own cultural heritage, Taigue in- ItsincsIaseth by REAJURAUttfsnY-Alr s. cluded native American oral tradition and Hispanic literature. For six weekly two-hour sessions, thirty adults considered the selections they had read be- fore each meeting, beginning with Dine Bahane': The Navajo Creation Story by SUGG IESTED Paul G. Zolbrod. They also discussed N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy P.O.ir M. READNG11.41. iMOANlir %OWle lisibers'tbroserebi %Wow Mountain, the story of the author's experience as a Kiowa; Cabeza de Vaca's ....4.10.Ionbeirei of Vb. *Ms I.* Oro Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America; Moby-Dick; "The Bear" by 404401 hoot00 Clo Ms losirmisi MI* stem Wassmos 4 Faulkner; and Casteneda's Tales of Power. The lee III INe 14 Ow iker. The IllaIssed ado StiraMer bf Mkba Soh *now These readings generated an interest in myth and imagery, says Esther V. 'WY+tr.0.01004144 M risk Ara Mob, IlaresnKoos lid * Flory, one of the participants in Taigue's group. "I'm from a small town on tbalesslayelltbSomelleisawsirImie IL{ Ai of IMAresslof 118.11 Vb. taes Sod SW M mew Maryland's Eastern Shore, and the last thing on my mind cihen I moved to tbelhoolliniarlAiseIN blow OwWm. Tucson was getting involved in Indian mythology," she remarks. "My hori- Oils of row 14 V WAWA" Violins, listelog14 bootlkserff tbSes Phre Sops zons have widened and I am planning to concentrate on native American tb.talniteistA MNog Max of IMAL01.9.11104 lore in my personal reading this summer." Vb. Mopes (*.Winbombs& Using such techniques as asking the participants to read aloud their favor- sessoolowlbillellarWe IS siloWay '11Ikao ite passages, Taigue has led several other discussion groups. She comments, "Many of my group participated in the entire two-year series, and began to discover that a certain pattern emerged: that whether the characters in the books were male or female, native American, Spanish, or New England Yankee, they were all part of the American voice and helped to create the rich, large pattern of Anw.rican life." Taigue and the other group leaders were free to select their own reading lists, choosing from a common pool of books, but always adding writings unique to their own exploration of the topic. The Tucson library purchased copies of every book discussed, and the members of the reading groups bor- rowed them. "This was a good way to augment the branch libraries' collec- tions," Taigue notes. At first the participants were mostly women, but by the third reading unitpoetrythe audience had broadened. It might seem that the some- what esoteric subject of modern poetry would not have wide appeal, but Tucsonans, both men and women, loved it. The community has many writ-

Promotional material from the Tucson Public Librar, called attention to various themes of the library's reading program. ers, Kent explains, so the topic was a natural. The members of the seven po- etry discussion groups were inspired by a lecture by visiting scholar and lit- erary critic Helen Vend ler, who spoke on Wallace Stevens. "Her talk fit right into the discussion my group was having on Emily Dickinson," Taigue re- marks. "It takes a good lecturer and a good storyteller to open a poet to an audience." Other scholars visited Tucson as part of "America: A Reading": Writer and professor Alfred Kazin introduced the first topic with a talk, "The Landscape in American Writing"; Daniel Aaron, president of the Library of Amenca, delivered a lecture on Longfellow, using him as an example of the careless way we tend to undervalue the place of our secondary writers; literary critic Leslie Fiedler spoke on Walt Whitman; writer, teacher, and editor Richard Poirier lectured on the way value and languages are interrelated; and Charles Scruggs, University of Arizona professor of English, examined the city and its image in American literature. The University of Arizona professors and doctoral candidates who led the sessions were chosen for their dynamism and love of their subject matter "Some of the group leaders developed a following and found the same peo- ple attending one section after another led by them," Kent says. Charles Scruggs, whose field is the Harlem Renaissance, guided one group in an ex- ploration of books by black women writers and, as an outgrowth of this top- ic, a section on black men writers. "My groups were mostly composed of white, older people," Scruggs states, "but they could identify with a lot of the incidents in the novels. The life experiences of older people are quite di- verse; they bring so much living to their discussion of literature. Through them I realize how rich American literature is." On the other side of the coin, participant Leo Mogi!l observes that at age 75, reading novels, especially those of black writers, is new to him. "I was struck by the anger in these books, yet I could understand the authors' feel- ings. I think I would like to continue my reading, going to a broader group of authors to get different perspectives." Programs such as "America: A Reading" present librarians with extra bur- dens in add:!:-,n to their regular duties, but Kent believes that libraries should undertake the task of being th" keepers of the nation's imagination, rather than limiting their services to the dispensing of information "Without a formidable effort to create a climate of receptivity for serious literature, past and present, interest in America's mastr: writings will become increas- ingly specialized, the exclusive domain of universities and schools," Kent fears. "It takes work to keep the imagination functioning. People build their bodies by jogging or working out in a spa. Reading-discussion programs sponsored by libraries serve the same function for the intellect." Participants Mogill and Flory concur that they learned much more from the discussions than they would have learned by merely reading the books on their own. Through "America: A Reading," the Tucson Public Library has mounted a vigorous campaign to make serious reading fashionable in the city, says Kent. "Of course we hope that for every discussion group partici- pant we saw, there were at least two or three readers we didn't see. In any case, reading-discussion programs express to people in a public way that the American language and literature are important. People who gather together to discuss literature gain a heightened sense of the power of language, the realization that language connects us to those who have gone before."

To support "America: A Reading," the Tucson Public Library received $206,605 in outright funds in 1986 through the Humanities Projects in Libraries and Archives Program of the Division of General Programs. LE1 TER FROMLONDON

BY JOSEPH H. BROWN don has increased. Shepard first spectively. In solurne 1, the most noticed this after he received repeat- wide ranging of the three, reaac:s ed requests to reprintLetters from Jack meet London in his twentieth year London,a 1965 edition edited by and travel with him first as he pros- JACK LONDON ONCEconfessed King Hendricks and Shepard's fa- pects in the Klondike and later cov- to being "the rottenest letter writ- ther, Irving Shepard, whose mother, ers the R.....5.,o-Japanese War for the er that ever came down the pike" Eliza, was London's stepsister. Milo Hearst syndicate. During those and to hating letter writing "worse Shepard welcomed the proposal of years, he began the intensive reg- than poison." Despite these pro- Leitz and Labor to produce .1 nPw imen that made him into a profes- testations, he was a conscientious edition that would inc:ide all of sional writer, married and divorced letter writer who wrote th-...sands ofLondon's significant correspondence.his first wife, Bessie Mae Maddern, letters during his short, busy life. The volumes cover the years and courted his second wife, Prompt, thoughtful; and straight- 1896-1905, 1906-12, and 1913-16 re- Charmian Kittredge. forward, London apparently an- swered all correspondence, regard- less of the obscurity of the corre- spondent or the triviality of the con- .frAP tents, and often in painstaking detail. 4MINI___ With support from NEH, three ed- If itorsEarle Labor, professor of En- glish at Centenary College of Loui- siana; Robert C. Leitz III, professor of English at Louisiana State Univer- A sity in Shreveport; and I. Milo Shepard, executor of London's es- `1. i tatehave reviewed some 4,000 of ..-

London's letters, selecting and an- ~\ t notating more than 1,500 for inclu- sion ;-1The Letters of Jack London.The i first fully annotated collection of o- I London's letters will be published in a three-volume set in October 1988 IIIIIIa Jack London aboard by the Stanford University Press. theRoamer,Octo- "Although London has always en- ber 1910. London joyed a fine commercial reputation," and his wife Charm- notes Leitz, "he has never been well umhoed on their received in the academic community,boat for months at a lime, sailing around precisely because of the suspicion the San Joaquin delta that he wrote for commercial rather region of California. 46 than literary purposes." Recently, ---"n.7.--.....-wc.- however, scholarly interest in Lon- a

: I Joseph Brown is a promotions manager with the University of Chicago Press. 37 Volume 2 includes letters about At the time the letters were writ- care to have you at my bedside. A ruined London's ill-fated voyage on his boat ten, London's two daughters by his colt is a ruined colt, and I do not like the Snark, meant originally to cir- first marriage were living with their ruined colts. cumnavigate the globe but aban- mother. London's frustration at Bes- doned in Australia after two years. sie's refusal to allow his daughters to Such instances are exceptional, Also included are letters about his visit him on his ranch provoked this Leitz is quick to point out. "In most recurring ill health and his business response in a January 1911 letter: of his correspondence, London kept ventures, including the purchase "Your narrowness is the narrowness these outbursts fairly well in check, and :9nsolidation of several ranches of the narrowest cell in all hell." But maintaining to the end his public im- in California's Sonoma Valley his treatment of twelve-year-old Joanage as a robust adventurer, dynamic through which he pursued his inter- in this February 1914 letter seems literary entrepreneur, and generous est in agriculture and animal hus- gratuitously cruel: host. It was a demanding role for a bandry. His fragile health and his healthy man in his prime and an in- business ventures command increas- Please remember that in whatever you credible accomplishment for a man do from now on, I am uninterested. I de-dying of uremia. ing attention through volume 3. sire to know neither your failures nor Until recently, London's letters your successes; wherefore please no "In preparing this new edition, we have been available primarily in onlymore tell me of your markings in High didn't pull any punches," Leitz ex- two books: Hendricks' and Shepard'sSchool, and no longer send me your plains. "In lieu of a definitive bio- Letters from Jack London and The Book compositions. ... If you should be graphy, we intended to give as hon- of Jack London (1921), a two-volume dying and should ask for me at your est a portrait of London as we could, biography by Charmian Kittredge bedside, I should surely come; on the allowing him to tell his own story. London. Both books are now out of other hand, if I were dying I should not The portrait that emerges is that of a print, and according to Leitz, each had its own limitations. Charmian London's book, says Leitz, is charac- teristic of the nineteenth-century , : "life in setters" approach to bio- graphy, in which the life of a loved one is portrayed sympathetica4. Leitz explains that Charmian's tran- scriptions were sometimes inaccu- rate, the letters included often frag- mentary, the choices highly partisan, and the editing arbitrary and mis- leading. Hendricks and Shepard, for their part, included only 400 of Lon- don's letters and annotated mini- mally, Leitz adds. Many of the early letters are miss- ing because London made no copies. He even discarded the manuscripts of his published work. Fortunately, a few of his closest friends saved his letters, and Charmian, who began typing for him in 1904, made car- bons and saved all he wrote. The Let- ters of Jack London will include all the essential correspondence that has so lack and Charmian far come to light. London in 1916 with Directness was a virtue for Lon- their dog Possum. don, and he was seldom one to When Charmian be- mince words. On occasion, especial- ''an typing for her ly when he felt cheated, betrayed, or husband in 1904, she saved carbons of challenged, his candor deteriorated all that he wrote. into meanness. Previously un- published and particularly virulent examples of this dark side can be found in London's correspondence with his ex-wife, Bessie, and his daughter Joan. 3? confident, yet unassuming, often day sees the work all upon the final cialist activistand candidate for may- sensitive human beingan excep- MS. I fold it up and send it off with- or of Oakland, stockbreeder, farmer, tionally open and energetic individu-out once going back to see what all factory worker, lecturer on the aca- al capable of great personal courage the previous pages were like. So, in demic circuit, war correspondent, and generosity but also susceptible fact, when a page is done, that is the and many more things besides. He to spells of self-pity and willful abra-last I see of it till it comes out in print."corresponded with publishers, fel- siveness as well as moments of bru- The letters also penetrate the pub- low socialists, aspiring writers, a tal frankness." lic mask of Jack London, tough guy. wide circle of faithful friends from The earliest letters reveal a fledg- "Ask the people who know me to- all walks of life, even his many fans ling writer, intent on improving his day," he wrote Charmian in June 1903:among ordinary Americans. He literary skills, confessing to friend A rough, savage fellow, they will say, talked about :,is experiences freely to and former sweetheart Mabel Ap- who likes prizefights and brutalities, anyone who would listen. The let- plegarth in December 1898, "The art who has a clever turn of pen, a char- ters, written in the same spon- of omission is the hardest of all to latan's smattering of art, and the inevita- taneous manner as London's fiction, learn, and I am weak at it yet. I am ble deficiencies of the untrained, unre- remain as entertaining and alive to- too long-winded, and it is hard fined, self-made man which he strives day as do the best of his works. d+ training to cut down." A letter writ- with a fair measure of success to hide be- ten in June 1899 shows him still un- neath an attitude of roughness and un- sure of himself, telling Cloudesley conventionality. Do I endeavor to uncon- vince them? It's so much easier to leave Johns, a friend and minor literary In 1980,, Louisiana State University was their convictions alone. figure, "You see, I am groping, grop- awarded $88,950 in outright funds ing, groping for my own particular Not just London scholars but through the Editions category of the Di- style, for the style which should be Americanists generally stand to prof- vision of Research Programs to support a mine but which I have not yet it from publication ofThe Letters of definitive scholarly edition of Jack Lon- found." Finally, in June 1900 a letter JackLondon. As the editors note, don's correspondance. Since 1985, the to another writer friend, Elwyn London's letters present even the Stanford University Press has received a Hoffman, shows London settled intomost casual of readers with a fas- total of $20,427 in outright funds what became a lifelong habit of turn-cinating account of a remarkable and through the Publication Subvention cate- ing out 1,000 publishable words eachrevolutionary period in American gory of the Division of Research Pro- day: "Let me tell you how I write. 1 history. London himself was an oys- grams to publish three volumes ofThe type as fast as I write, so that each ter pirate, hobo, janitor, jailbird, so- Letters of Jack London.

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x 0, St Olt .1%1 ti) 411108 N"...... 4-11 ow 4. II. 11 4. a .1. %Ow , dr 1 A - lack London at work in Glen Ellen, Cali- fornia (1909). Lon- don developed a life- long habit of turning out 1,000 publish- able words a day. 4- Support for the Humanities at Two-Year Institutions

BY JUDITH JEFFREY HOWARD

How does a two-year institution pre- a review panel might raise about the pare and submit a competitive pro- proposal and return comments in posal for a project that strengthens its time for revisions and submission of a humanities curriculum? The process final proposal by the deadline. Appli- begins with ideas for improving hu- cation deadlines for each program are manities instruction generated by col- listed on page 46. lege faculty and administrators. The The division can help institutions to next step is often a telephone call to strengthen teaching and learning in the Division of Education Programs to the humanities through several types discuss with a program officer ways in of activities serving various institution- which division programs might help to al needs. Funded projects often in- strengthen the humanities curriculum. volve faculty study, curriculum devel- Staff members are happy to work opment, or planning activities. with applicants to translate ideas into proposals. Competitive proposals lead Faculty Study teachers and students into direct en- gagement with key texts, documents, Projects of this type bring together a artistic works, and cultural artifacts by group of faculty in a single institution providing opportunities to read, wrrte, with outside scholars to discuss major and discuss major topics in the hu- works and topics in the humanities. A manities. A competitive application group of faculty members in English,, should present a clear rationale for the history, and drama might decide, for Proposed project a well-articulated example, to read Shakespeare together In the goal, a carefully thought-out schedule for three weeks in the summer and to GUIDE of activities to achieve that goal, a invite two or three noted scholars to clear institutional commitment to sup- give public lectures and faculty semi- 39 Support port the project activities, and, where nars on a given play oi topic. NEH for the applicable, an institutional commit- funding could be sought for honoraria Humanities ment to assume costs of continuing the and expenses for speakers, and sti- at Two-year program after outside funding has endedpends or released time for participat- ing faculty. lnst'tutions NEH encourages but does not re- quire submission of preliminary drafts 42 Recent NEH six to eight weeks prior to the applica- Faculty and Curriculum I Grants by tion deadline. A staff member of the Development Discipline Division of Education Programs will Currently under way is a more exten- 46Deadlines read the draft,, anticipate questions that sive faculty and curriculum develop- ment project at the Community Col- lege of Philadelphia,, "incorporating Judith Jeffrey Howard is a program of- 1 e Cultural Literacy as an Explicit Goal in ficer for the NEH Division of Educa- the Introductory English Composition tion Programs Course." The project includes two 410 Y. summer institutes engaging faculty in mon learning experience for their stu- Tacitus' The Annals of Impend! Rome the study of major works, including dents through Lore humanities ainong other \A orks NEH also supports The Autobiography of Benjamin Frank- Lours Fhe planning grant at Pied- such activities as summer ,eniinars for lin, "Song of Myself," The 5( ado Let- mont Virginia Community College led faculty to study major classical texts ter arid Their Eyes Were Watching t.) a comprehensive faculty and curric- with outstand:ng scholars God and considering ways of incorpo- ulum development project now being rating these texts into composition funded. The core course deve:oped courses. In follow-up seminars under this grant engages students in Improving Statewide throughout the academic year, partici- the study of works such as Antigone, Humanities instruction pants will meet to discuss curricular Othello, and "The Magic Flute.' The division can also fund cooperative revisions made in light of their sum- efforts to improve teaching and learn- mer study and to compare notes on Humanities in a New College ing in the hum. -cities among a group their classroom experiences. The pri- Mission of institutions. ror example, a state mary audience for this project consists Many two-year instinitions seek sup- system might apply for funds to bring of part-time faculty teaching English port for development of humanities together university, community col- composition courses in off-campus programs as their missions change. lege, and technical college faculty to locations. find ways of sharing resources fcr fac- South Puget Sound Community Col- lege, which began its institutional life ulty and curriculum development in Planning Grants the humanities. as Olympia Vocational-Technical Insti- To help institutions at early phases of tute, began awarding associate of arts curriculum development, NEH pro- degrees in 1982 and has smc been Over the past ten years, the Endow- ment has awarded grants to more than vides support in the form of planning engaged in building its humanities a hundred two-yedi colleges and to as- grants Pie mont Virginia Community program. To develop a comprehensive sociations such as the Community Col- College recently completed a project humanities curriculum, the college has lege Humanities Association. The ac- supporting released time for a faculty received NEH support for released ceptance rate of grant proposals from task force to pla i for new and re- time for faculty and curriculum devel- two-year institutions is substantially designed course offerings, for strength- opment, library acquisitions, and par- the same as the acceptance rate for the ening the library collection, and for tial support for two new positions. planning for faculty professional total pool of applicants. Approximate- ly one in three applications is funded. development. Honors Courses For guidelines and further informa- Endowment funds are used to meet a "The Classics Cluster Program" at tion, write or call the Division of Edu- wide range of institutional needs, from Richland College in the Dallas County cation Programs, Room 302, National implementing new core curricula to Community College District integrates Endowment for the Humanities, Wash- materials from the classical heritage of designing new humanities programs, ington, D.C. 20506, 202/786-0380. and from serving a college's honors Western culture into existing general Other NEH divisions also serve two- education and honors courses. An En- students to supporting efforts among year institutions. For information on groups of institutions. glish course on the epic for example, summer seminars for college teachers, includes The Epic of Gilgamesh The call the Division of Fellowships and Core Courses Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. Seminars at 202/786-0458. For infor- To examine the classical roots of our po-mation on public programs, call the The Endowment is eager to assist in- litical system, an American government Division of General Programs at stitutions attempting to provide a com- course analyzes Aristotle's Politics and 202/786-0267. ,49,

II Please enter my subscription to Humanities: $9 for 6 issues.

MAIL TO. Superintendent of Dor uments,, Government Printing Offkr, Wa4. .igton, D C. 20402-9371

1Cher k payable to the Superintendent of Do( uments GPO Deposit A( «mnt (('ompany or personal name) i . VISA or Master( and Ar r ()tint . . (Additional address/attention line)

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( I il).tylime phone int ludirws area «xlel `,IL;ri,iiiir, 9/88 COMING IN NOVEMBER: The scholar's role in public humanities programs. i-/. p

Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, Jerome Lieb- Waverly Consort, Inc , NYC, Michael Jaffee Archaeology and ling To plan a one-hour documentary $200,381 OR, $40,000 FM To fund a two-ye, on the history of bluegrass music and the legacy of project with lectures and program notes, exam! Anthropology one of its most influential players, Bill Monroe ing the relationships between music and relate GN fields in the humanities, including history, lite American Schools of Oriental Research, Philadel- ature, and the history ot the visual and drama Jewish Theological Seminary of America, NY, arts GP phia, PA, Seymour Gitin $27,500 To support Vivian Mann $150,000 OR, $50,000 FM To postdoctoral fellowships in archaeology and relat- support, in cooperation with the Jewish Museum, ed subjects at the Albright Institute for Archaeo- a resource center to train historians of Jewish art logical Research in Jerusalem RA EH Classics Flowerdew Hundred Foundation, Hopewell, VA, National Public Radio, Washington, DC, Dean James F Deetz $75,000 To conduct a five-week Boal $20,030 OR $205,000 FM To produce a institute for college teachers on the historical ar- American Philological Association, Bronx, t series of feature modules on art history and crit- Mark Morford $14,023 To fund activities re chaeology of European expansion in the 200 years icism to be distributed on National Public Radio's ing to the American Philological Association c following the voyages of Columbus EH daily arts magazine, Performance Today GN fere nce on the place of classical studies in Am U of Virginia, Charlottesville, Malcolm Bell Ill can precolleg.ate education ES $16,396 To study a Greek colonial city at Mor- Public Art Films, Inc., NYC, Tony Silver $50,000 To write one script for "Comic Strips," a American Philosophical Association, New, gantina in central Sicily by documenting the pub- [)E, David A Hoekema $300,704 OR, $50 lic buildings in the city center, preparing a study of proposed three-part, three-hour television series FM To continue work on the edition and trar city planning principles, and tracing the history of exploring aspects of the form, content, and cultur- the city into Roman times RO al impact of American comic strips and books GN Lion of the ancient commentators on Aristotle f 5C0 B C to A D 600 Some 36 titles are plan Yale U., New Haven, CT, Harvey Weiss $17,000 Lois A. Rosow. $30,000. To prepare a critical for publication RL OR; $8,000 FM To conduct an international con- edition of Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera, "Armide " Columbia U., NYC, Leonardo Taran $25,00C ference on the origins of urbanization in Meso- RE prepare an edition of Simplicius's commentar potamia, ca. 3000 B C RX U. of California, Berkeley, Alan H Nelson: Aristotle's Physics RE $75,000 OR; 525,000E 1. To continue an edition of all the records of eariy English drama in the British Isles from the beginnings to 1642 RE History-Non-U.S. Arts-History and U. of California, Santa Cruz, Michael J Warren Criticism $80,879. To support a series of public lectures, American Oriental Society, New Haven forums, bibliographies, and displays illuminating Mordechal A Friedman$39,620. To tran Shakespeare's use of Roman material in four plays correspondence, court records, and legal Actors Theatre of Louisville, KY, Rhea H Leh- to be presented during a summer Shakespeare tracts, mostly written in Judeo-Arabic fron man $187,988 To prepare a series of interdisci- festival. GP 10th to 13th century's, that deal with marriage plinary programs and e; hibitions that would illu- divorce practices in Mediterranean lewish minate the cultural sensibility of the Victorian era U. of Chicago, IL, Philip Gossett $56,000 OR, munities RL $69,000 FM To prepare a critical edition of the and the interrelationships of the social, moral, and Appalachian State U., Boone, NC, Allen V intellectual forces of the period GP works o' Giuseppe Verdi RE $16,087 To complete a study of °oldies and U. of Illinois, Chicago, Bruce A Murray $10,000 American Dance Festival, Inc., New London, CT, etv in vucatan during and prior to the Me OR, $15,000 FM To conduct an interr in/y-41f, Gerald E Myers $72,821To conduct a series ot Revolution, 1850-1915 RO interdisciplinary conference to consider how Ger- nine panel discussionsand an interpretive booklet exploring the achievements c black American man cinema has interpreted German history (lur- Columbia U., NYC, Edward AAllw $68,000 To translate the key works of Abd. cnoreographers in the development of modern ing the 20th century and the implications of such Rashid-00h Fitrat, 1836-1938, a modern ci American dance GP interpretation for German cinema, history, and culture RX Asian reformist RL American Musicological Society, Philadelphia, Committee on Bicentennial of French Re PA, Richard Crawford J06,690 To prepare a U. of Illinois, Urbana, David A Grayson tion, Baltimore, MD, Robert Forste: 515,00 coordinated, national series of scholarly editions $40,000 To prepare a critical edition of De- RE $25,000 FM To conduct an international ci of American music RE bussy's opera, "Pelleas et Melisande ence devoted to evaluating the state of schol, Boston U., MA, Robin Littauer $50,436 OR, U. of Maryland, College Park, Mitchell Litton dealing with the French Revolution RX $25,000 FM To fund a program in theater criti- $389,384 To produc? a television adaptation of cism for high school students who will explore Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Coda!, directed by Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, James the author and followed by a discussion of the Hefternan $10,000 OR, $3,000 FM To fc dramatic texts as they are produced on stage at the international conference that will analyze Huntington Theater. GP nature of theatrical texts in the era of television GN interdisciplinary way the dtterent represent John R. Elliott: $28,500 To support a.1 edition of of the French Revolution through litcratur Washington U., St Louis, MO; Michael Becker- ma nuscript evidence of all dramatis performances and historiography RX at the Inns of Court in London before 1642 RE man. $15,000 OR, $10,000 FM To conduct an international conference on Leos Janecek to ex- Film Arts Foundation, San Francisco, CA, Filmmaker's Collaborative, Semen, ille, MA, Carl plore research problems in his music The confer- S Cox 520,000 To planone-hour film P Nagin. $20,000 To plan a one-hour documm- ence will coincide with a festival of Czech music mentary, "Gullah Tides," on the Afro-Air tary film on the life and work of Chinese painter that will include the first Amer( an performanceot culture of the Sea Islands of South Carolii and forger Chang TaCh'ien, 1899-1983 GN his Third Symphony. RX Georgia GN ti 3 Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, Unicorn Projects, Inc., Washington, DC, Ray A Florida State U., Tallahassee, C Peter Ripley. Lena C Odin. $422,043 OR, $50,000 FM lo Hubbard $80,045 To omplele production ot a $110,000 OR, $60,000 FM. To prepare two vol- conduct a three-year series of institutes, seminars, one-hour animated documentaty television pro- umes of the edition ot the Black Abolitionist Pa- public lectures, workshops, arid colloquia on gram based on David Mac aulay s book Pyramid pers Project RE various aspects ot Shakespeare studies EH GN Mabou Mines Development Foundation, Inc., Fordham U., Bronx, NY, Bernice Glatzer Rosen- U. of Akron, Main Campus, OH, Barbara P C lern- NYC, William Raymond $36,500Ti, write a thal. $15,000 OR, $5,000 FM To tune an interna- ents $1 5,000 OR, 55,000 To conduct an script, adapted iron) the stage play Cold Harbor, tional conference that syill locus on the miluence international confererice designed to turthei re- tor a 90-minute that will examine the lite and of Nietzsche's writings and thought on the devel- search on the roles ot yy omen in Russian history times ot Ulysses S Grant and the processes by opment of Sovi:1 culture RX from the medieval period to the 1930s RX which historical events are interpreted GN George Washington U., Washington, DC, Joan U. of California, Los Angeles, Charlotte A Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, Atlanta, GA, Chung-wen Shih. $15,000 To ieN, Ise the script lor Crabtree 51,500,000 Ti) develop um iiationai Caybonie Carson 5138,000 OR, 5118,000 FM a one-hour documentary film on the Tang dynasty center fur research to improve history instruction To prepare a 12-volume selective edition of the of China, 618-906, as the pilot of a nine-part in elementary and secondary schools EV writings of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr RE series on China's cultural history. GN U. of California, Los Angeles, Ludwig Lauerhass, Rice U., Houston, TX; Lynda L Crust $42,840 Indiana U., Bloomington, Helen Nader. $39,944 Jr $15,903 To plan an exhibition, an inter- OR, $20,000 FM. To prepare five volumes in an To retranslate the Book of Privileges, a collection pretive catalogue, and essays on Latin American edition of the papers of Jefferson Davis. RE of royal documents by King Ferdinand and Queen development in the 19th century GL Isabella granting offices, privileges, and audio .ty Ulysses S. Grant Association, Carbondale, IL, U. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, David R to Columbus for the discovery and settlement of John Y Simon $40,000 OR, $5,000 FM To pre- Ringrose. $14,633 the New World. RL To fund the final revised pare an edition of the papers of Ulysses S Grant. phases of a collaborative study of wealth and pol- RE Lara Classics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, Pamela C itics in 19th-century Spain, with emphasis on agri- Berger. $25,000 To revise the script for a teature- cultural and urban economic interests in the re- U. of Hartford, West Hartford, CT, Donald M length dramatic film recounting the events leading gion around Madrid. RO Rogers $36,706 To support an eight-part lecture to a mid-13th-century uprising of shepherds in series on the extension of the right to vote from the U. of Illinois, Urbana, Patricia B Ebrey $27,309 and around Bourges, France. GN tounding period to the present. GP To translate the Family Rituals of Master Chu by Lehigh U., Bethlehem, PA, Michael G Baylor 12th-century neo-Confucian philosopher Chu U. of Maryland, College Park, Ira Berlin $75,000 $30,000 To translate the writings of Thomas Hsi For centuries this manual has been the model OR, $70,000 FM. To prepare a seven-volume Muntzer, an early Protestant religious and politi- for Confucian rites in the home throughout Asia edition of selected documents from the National cal thinker and a leading figure in the Peasants' RL Archives illustrating the transformation of the lives War. RL of black people in the wake of emancipation, Western Michigan U., Kalamazoo, James J Mur- 1861-67 RE Metropolitan Arts, Inc., NYC, Andrea Simon phy: 515,000 OR; $5,000 FM To support an $117,146 To write two scripts for a proposed international, interdisciplinary conference to ex- U. of Massachusetts, Amherst, Patricia G. Hol- miniseries of three two-hour historical dramas amine the p _sent state of knowledge about medi- land $110,000 OR, $75,000 FM To complete a tracing the Imes and ideas ot selected artists, writ- eval educ lion in language and literature, and to microfilm edition of the papers of Elizabeth Cady ers, philosophers, and politicians in Vienna, Aus- consider topic. future research RX Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. RE tria, from the 1880s to 1938. GN William 0. Douglas Institute, Seattle, WA; U. of Miami, Coral Gables, FL; Walter D. Kam- Michigan State U., East Lansing, David Robinson Lyman H legters $24,710 OR, $5,000 FM To phoefner $25,000 OR; $10,000 FM. To translate $43,934 OR, $20,000 FM To translar., as a re- translate the first thre9 volumes in a projected a volume of letters written between 1834 and source for scholars from different Jisciplines, series on modern social and political thought in 1936 by 20 German immigrants to the United central and eastern Europe RI seven volumes of historical, literary, political, States RL philosophical, and religious materials in various African languages. RL U. of Tennessee, Knoxville, Harold D. Moser. $60,000 OR; $85,000 FM To prepare a 16. Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, Mar- History-U.S. volume selective edition of the papers of Andrew garet L Switten: $8,79'). To fund the final phase of Jackson. RE an interdisciplinary project on the medieval lyric, including the preparation of teaching guides and American Historical Association, Washington, U. of Tennessee, Knoxville, Wayne Cutler commentaries and the addition of several mon- DC, Morey D Rothberg $40,000 CR, $25,000 $80,000 OR, $50,000 FM To prepare a 12- astic songs and Middle English lyrics. EH FM To prepare a three-volume edition of the volume edition of the correspondence of James K collected works of J. Franklin Jameson, teunder of Polk. RE New York Foundation for the Arts, NYC , Hava K the American Historical Association. RE Beller $200,381 OR, 550,000 FM. To produce a WITF, Harrisburg,PA,StewartCheifet. 90-minute film exploring the motivating pi:nci- Baruch College, NYC, Glenn W LaFantasie $160,666. To produce a one-hour television doc- pies and activities of a small group of individuals $49,491 OR, $52,640 FM To prepare tne first umentary on the development of the- Anierican within wartime Germany who comprised theanti- p-in(ed iolume and the index to the microfilm Constitution, focusing on the basic ideas, issues, Nazi underground GN edition c papers of Albert Gallatin, diplomat and historical circumstances involved in its cre- Scci y ot the Treasury from 1801 to 1814 ation GN New York Public Library. NYC, Diantha D RE Scholl. $191,168 OR, $100,000 FM To imple- ment three exhibitions, a catalogue, a symposi- CtJNY Research Foundation/Queens College, um, lectures, curricular materials, and other pub- NYC, Elizabeth M Nuxoll$176,030 OR, lications on the role of printing in the French $30,000 FM To prepare a nine-volume edition of Interdisciplinary Revolution. GL the papers of Robert Morris and the Office of Finance,, 1781-84 RE Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, Mary Beth Rose. American U., Washington, DC, Betty F. Bennett $360,938 To conduct a two-year series ot insti- Calliope Film Resources, Inc., Somerville, MA, $226,709 To conduct a three-week summer sem- tutes, workshops, and symposia in various areas Randall Conrad $750,872 OR, $50,000 FM To inar, in which faculty members will study Western of Renaissance studies EH produce a 90-minute drama based on Shays' Re- and non-Western classics in art, literature, and bellion, the postrevolutionary clash between New philosophy, and released time to permit partici- Northwestern U., Evanston, IL, John 0 Hun- England farmers and merchants that tested the pants to develop h, w general education courses wick: $76,723 OR, $10,000 FM To prepare an institutions of the new republic GN EH U8 annotated translation of a 1656 Arabic chronicle written in Timbuktu covering the history of the Duke U., Durham, NC, Anne F Scott $55,000 Association of Public Library Administrators, Songhay Empire and of the Middle Niger RL OR, $74,000 FM To complete a comprehensive Lancaster, SC, Elizabeth G Ehrenclou $151,115 guide to the microfilm edition of the papers of lane To implement "Let's Talk about It" reading and Marshall S. Shatz: $28,500 To translate, from Addams and the preparation of the first of tour discussion programs in 30 South Carolina librar- Russian, Michael Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy volumes of the print edition RE ies GL (1873), a work of theoretical and historical signifi- cance. RL Film America, Inc., Washington, DC, Karen Clinton-Essex-Franklin Library System, Platts- Thomas $100,015 OR, 599,999 FM To produce burgh, NY, Abby Zito $100,397 OR. 525,000 Stanford U., CA, Mary Jane Parrine $10,000 To a one-hour documentary film about the history FM To support reading and disc ussion programs continue work on Poverty and Crime in Early and legacy of the Virginia Statute for Religious in 56 New York libraries about social mobility, Modern Europe. A Bibliographical Survey RC Freedom. GN change, and dreams in America and about the qg history of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s as reflected in identity during the Harlem Renaissance of the an eight-v uluine edition of the letters of Joseph literature. GL 1920s GL Conrad. RE Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Barbara M U. of Mississippi, Unit ersio Ronald 'Vt,Ballet Fayetteville State U., N( ,Ion M Young Olds $84,428 To develop a course integrating 5114,112To w rite a script tor a 90- t() 12U- 552,7 51To conduct a mnterence and irk diary the humanities into undergraduate c hem.cal engi minutedramatic. ?dm un the An 11,4 d Incident GN programs illuminating the lite and w ark u1Charles neering education EH W Chesnutt, a pioneer Afro-Americ an Author GP U.of Portland,OR, Marilyn JMiller 556,046 To Defiance College, OH, Kenneth E Christiansen conduct a tour -week scmincir at Sophia Unit ersity Globe Radio Repertory, Seattle, VvA, John P Sis- $64,047. To conduct a summer institute for 15 in Tokyo to permit members ut the Japanese stud- coe $81,498 To produce 13 halt -hour radio pro- faculty members to develop two new cure cours- ies tat. ultt to pursue c. urric ulum and research proj- grams dramatizing Gustate Flaubc,1 s Madame es, The Roots of Western Civilization" and "The ects EH Bot ary GN History of Science," for addition to the college's interdisciplinary studies curriculum EH U. of Southern Maine, Gorham, Joseph A Con- Edward P. Harris: 527,880. To complete one vol- tort!$48,616 To add six graduate courses in ume in an edition of the works of Friedrich Max- Harvard U., Cambridge, MA, Nathan IHuggins New England studies by pro iding the tacultt with imilian Klinger, a late 18th-century German play- 5116,083 To prepare ten undergraduate instruc- opportunities to plan, prepare tor, and implement wright and novelist RE tional modules for introductory courses in Afro- them EH American studies. EH Howard S. Hibbett: $45,874 To translate a vol- U. of Texas, Austin, Frances EKarttunen ume of poetry with interpolated explanatory com- Howard County Library, Columbia, MD, Patricia $239,090. To conduct a six-week institute at the ments and descriptive passages composed in L. Bates $135,600 To conduct reading and dis- Institute of Latin American Studies ( n Nahuatl and 1692 by Japanese writer Ihara Saikaku. RL cussion programs in public libraries and senior the literatures of Mesoamerica and the New centers throughout Maryland. GL World EH H. Mack Horton: $27,500. To translate and anno- tate the diary of Japanese poet Saiokuken Socho, Lebanon Valley College, Ann% ille, PA, Warren Utah State U., Logan, Barre Tuelken $25,898 To 1448-1532, who chronicled the literary and po- Thompson $27,016 To conduct two workshops plan a series of projects involving four isolated litical developments that ushered in Japan's early for faculty who teach the four required core hu- western communities in an exploration of local modern period. RL manities courses. EH culture and shared traditional and emerging val- ues. GL Curt Leviant: $26,180 To translate a volume of Metropolitan Pittsburgh Public Broadcasting, short stories by Yiddish writer Abraham Reisin,, Westport, CT, RKirk Morris $300,795 OR, 1876-1956 RL $25,000 FM. To produce a 90-minute documen- tary on the life and work of American photojour- New England Foundation for the Humanities, nalist W Eugene Smith, 1918-78. GN Jurisprudence South Hadley, MA; Sarah Getty $100,000 OR; $75,000 FM. To conduct a series of reading and National Humanities Center, Research Triangle discussion programs at public libraries in six New New Images Productions, Inc., Berkeley, CA, Park, NC, Wayne JPond. $401,000 OR, England states by developing one new series of Avon Kirkland $1,000,880 OR, $500,000 FM $60,000 FM To produce 52 weekly half-hour programs and exchanging existing programs and To produce five one-hour television programs for radio programs featuring conversations with fel- resources. GL lows and visitors to the National Humanities Cen- a dramatic miniseries based on Simple Justice, ter. GN Richard Kluger's history of the Supreme Court Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, Harrison Hay- Piedmont Virginia Community College, Char- decision Brown vs Board of Education GN ford- $141,397. To complete a 15-volume edition lottesville; Evelyn Edson: $311,067. To develop of the writings of Herman Melville RE an introductory course in the human:ties, expand Richard I.. Pevear: $36,000. To retranslate Dos- library holdings, and support faculty develop- Language and Linguistics toevsky's The Brothers Karamazov from the defini- ment EH Me Russian text published in 1976 RI. Saint Joseph's Colle ?, Rensselaer, IN, Robert I Princeton U., NJ, Jerome W. Clinton: $56,743. J. of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Benjamin A Stolz- Garrity $69,958 OK, $45,000 FM To conduct To translate selected stories from the Shahname, 520,000 OR; $10,000 FM To fund an interna- faculty seminars on humanities texts for both hu- the Persian national epic, that traces the history of tional, interdisciplinary conference to assess the manities and nonhumanities faculty EH the Persian nation from the first shah to the Islamic progress of knowledge in the past 25 years of the conquest in the 7th century RI. Southwestern U., Georgetown, TX, Jeanie Wat- linguistic prehistory of man, and to plan further 5200,000 To support faculty and curriculum research RX Donald H. Reiman: $25,080 To fund a facsimile velopment to enhance and expand the academ- edition, with transcription, of the Shelley manu- ic programs on Asia EH scripts in the Bodleian Library and manuscripts of U. of Alaska, Fairbanks, Edna A MacLean the younger romantic poets held in other reposi- S36,831. To transcribe and translate "What Our Literature tories RE Elders Tell Us," a collection of legends and stories Society of Biblical Literature, Denver, CO, Burke of the Inupiat people of rorthern Alaska RL 0. Long $74,150 OR, $5,000 FM To translate American Library Association, Chicago, IL, Peggy four volumes in a series of writings from the an- U. of California, Los Angeles, Robert M Mani- Barber $358,000 To support a series of programs cient Near East "Prs from Ancient Egypt, Sume- quis $150,903 OR, $125,000 FM. to conduct about the work and lives of 13 American poets GL two lecture series, three symposia, and a touring rian Letters, Correspondence from Ugarit, and film series on the French Revolution and its inter- Arizona State U., Tempe, Jeanie RBrink Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phonecian Letters RL pretations in historiogr?phy, literature, and film 3144,215 To conduct a six-week summer insti- Southern Connecticut Library Council, Hamden; GP tute on Cervantes' Don Quixote at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies for Susan E Davidson. $155,839. To explore chang- U. of California, Jos Angeles, Robert AHill 24 teachers ot history, literature, and art history ing American values, using biographies and auto- Si 30,000 OR, '',,o5,000 FM To prepare an edition EH biographies in 120 scholar-led reading and dis- of the papr..rs ,if Marcus Garvey and the Universal cussion programs. GI. Negro Improvement Association RE Brooklyn Academy of Music, Inc., NYC, Barbara S Miller. $150,762 OR; $250,000 FM To pro- Maria M. Tatar: $30,500 To translate the first U. of Chicago, IL, James Nye $57,000 OR, duce a six-hour dramatic film for television based scholarly edition of Grimms' Nursery and House- $15,000 FM To support additions to Indological on the Sanskrit epic, The Mahabharata GN hold Tales, which was originally aim -d at a ma- Books in Series, a guide to texts published in all ture audience. RL South Asian monographic series in Sanskrit, Pali, Brown U., Providence, RI, Arnold L Weinstein and the Prakrits, and to translations and studies in $140,000 OR, $40,000 FM To condu( t a three- U. of Arkansas, Pine Bluff, Viralene JColeman series published between 1849 and 1984 RC year project designed to expand the teaching ot $54,193 To conduct a three-week workshop for Great Books to include works from Asia, Africa, the English faculty who will teach a required U. of Kentucky, Lexington, LOWS JSwift and Latin America, and to examine changing in- course on world literature. EH $90,954 To conduct two three-week faculty sem- terpretations and the concept of the canonical EH inars, "Western Traditions" and "American Histo- U. of California, Berkeley, Robert H Hirst: ry and Literature," in preparation for a new cross- CUNY Research Foundation/Lehman Zollege, $17(1,000 OR, 5235,000 FM To prepare a com- disciplinary requirement in the curriculum EH Bronx, NY, W Speed Hill. $45,000 To complete prehensive scholarly edition of the works and pa- a six-volume edition of the works ot Richard pers of Mark Twain RE U. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Austin J McLean Hooker, a late Elizabethan English theologian RE $15,589 To plan a traveling exhibition, an inter- U. of California, Santa Cruz, Joseph it Silverman: pretive catalogue, and print and media material Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Laurence $93,902 OR, 522,000 FM To prepare an edition about the emergence of a new Afro-American Davies $120,000 OR, $12,000 FM To complete of Judea Spanish traditional bal:ads. RE U. of Massachusetts, Boston, Eric H Robinson $70,000 10 complete an eight-volume edition of Religion the collected poems of John Clare, 1793-1864 mil hi RE Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, Mark 401 A U. of Mississippi, University, IA illiam R Ferris K luergensmeyer $109,643 To prepare a slide $12,000 To revise a script for a 90-minute film library and catalogue as a national resource for adaptation of William Faulkner's As 1 Lal, Dying departments of religious studies EH GN Karen C. Lang: $38,967 To prepare the edition O. U. of New Hampshire, Durham, Nancy Lukens and translation of Candrakini's commentary on $46,349 To prepare the first English-language the Four Huralied Stanzas, 6th to 7th century, anthology of short prose by the current generation which gives practical advice to lay practitioners A of East German women writers RL on the cultivation of etical behavior and medita- tion techniques. RL U. of Texas, Austin, William W Kibler $10,188 To translate the medieval French romances of Trinity College, Hartford, CT, Milla C Riggio. Chretien de Troyes RL $21.064. To conduct a symposium for the general NEH Drops Waiting Rule for publicto examine the culturallegacy of Second-Time Challenge Grants Lawrence M. Venuti: $4,000. To translate Fan- "Ta'Ziya," Persian passion drama, and its relation tastic Tales, a selection of short stories by Italian to Western culture. GP writer Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, 1839-69 RL The Endowment has changed the rules U. of Massachusetts, Amherst; Yvonne Y Had- for an institution wishing to apply for Viewfinder Films, Inc., San Anselmo, CA, Jean M dad. $15,000 OR, $5,000 FM To conduct an its second challenge grant: Institutions Mudge: $6,000 To support the revision of a script international conference on Muslims in the fora one-hourdocumentary film about the life and United States. RX no longer need to wait two years be- work of Edgar Allan Poe. GN tween the successful completion of the VOICES, NYC, Everett C. Frost $20,000 To plan first challenge and application for the a 13-part radio series of one- and two-hour pro- second. Up to now,, grant recipients grams presenting English-language productions of radio dramas written by 20th-century German au Social Science had been required to complete their ihors. GN fund-raising activities (usually a five- Yale U., New Haven, CT, Marshall Waingrow Georgetown U., Washington, DC, Kathleen M year process) and then wait an addi- $110,000 OR, $55,000 FM. To prepare an edition Lesko $60,000 OR; $15,000 FM To conduct two tional two years before reapplying. of the correspondence and literary manuscripts of conferences, with lectures and media programs, James Boswell RE on the American judiciary and on religion and the This change reflects the experience of U S Constitution GP recent competition in the program, ..Iiich suggests that institutions might enhance their fund-raising abilities by Capital 'etters following each grant amount have the following meanings FM (Federal Match); beginning their second challenge cam- Philosophy OR (Outright Funds). Capital letters following paign as soon as the first ends. each grant show the division and the program The next deadline in the Challenge through which the grant was made. American Council of Learned Societies, New Grants Program is May 1, 1989. Appli- York City; John JMcDermott $160,000 OR, DIVISION OF EDUCATION PROGRAMS cations for second-time awards will $20,000 FM. To prepare a complete edition of.e correspondence of American philosopher Wil- continue to be given lower priority EB Central Disciplines in Undergraduate liam lames. RE Education than applications for first-time awards. Saint Bonaventure U., St Bonaventure, NY, Fran- EK Improving Introductory Courses All highly meritorious applica::ons for cis E. Kelley. $14,122. To translate William of EL Promoting Excellence in a Field a first-time challenge grant will be Ockham's Quodlibeta Septem, quaestiones 1-4, EM Fostering Coherence Throughout an written between 1321 and 1324 and containing Institution selected for awards before any appli- several key elements of Ockham's moral philwo- ES Humanities Instruction in Elementary and cations for a second-time grant are phy metaphysics, and epistemology RL Secondary Schools considered for selection. Recipients of EH Exemplary Projects in Undergraduate and U. of Chi-ago, IL, Russell Hardin. $15,000 OR, Graduate Education second-time awards are required to $5,000 FM To prepare an international, interdis- EG Humanities Programs for Nontraditional raise from nonfederal donors four ciplinary conference to examine theories regard- Learners ing the development and operation of moral times the amount of federal funds norms in the social order. RX offered. DIVISION OF GENERAL PROGRAMS U. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, C Anthony An- derson: $15,988 OR, $8,000 FM To conduct an GNHumanities Projects in Media Moving? international, interdisciplinary conference that GMHumanities Projects in Museums and will bring together logicians, philosophers of lan- Historicel Organizations To receive Humanities at your new ad- guage, and philosophers of mind to assess the GP '.'ublic Humanities Projects dress, send your mailing label (or a current state of problems concerning proposi- GL Humanities Programs in Libraries and facsimile), along with your new ad- tional attitudes RX Archives dress, to Superintendent of Docu- U. of Notre Dame, IN, Karl P Amenks. $34,024 OFFICE OF PRESERVATION ments,, Attn: Chief,, Mail List Branch, To translate Kant's "Lectures on Metaphysics," as Mail Stop SSOM, Washington,, D.C. transcribed by his students, to be included in the PS Preservation forthcoming Cambridge Edition of the Works of PS U.S Newspaper Program 20402-9373. Immanuel Kant. RL U. of Notre Dame, IN, Alfred JFreddoso. DIVISION OF RESEARCH PROGRAMS Credit for photograph on page 12 Pur- $36,169. To translate William of Ockham's chased with funds from the Burroughs Well- Quodhbeta Septem, quaestiones 5-7, written be- RO Interpretive Research Projects come Purchase Fund, Leo Castel'', the tween 1321 and 1324 and containing several key RX Conferences Wilfred P and Rose I. Cohen Purchase Fand, elements of Ockham's moral philosophy, meta- RH Humanities, Science and Technology the Julia B Engel Purchase Fund, the Equita physics,, and epistemology. RL RP Publication Subvention ble Life Assurance Society of the United RA Centers for Advanced Study States Purchase Fund; the Sondra and Robert M. Wallace: $8,000. To translate the first RI Regrants for International Research Charles Gilman, Ir.,, Four.z.1.Z.,-A, 1r.c., S. work of philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, in RT Tools Sidney Kahn; the Lauder Foundation; which the historical interpretation of Plato and RE Editions Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund, the Sara Socrates contributes to the development of mod- RL Translations Roby Foundation; and the Painting and ern hermeneutics. RL RC Access Sculpture Committee. 4/ & EADLINES 7,1 project Area code for all telephone numbers is 202. Deadline beginning

Division of Education Programs Jerry L Martin, Director 786-0373

Higher Education in the Humanities--Lyn Maxwell White 786-0380 October 1, 1988 April 1989

Elementary and Secondary Education in the HumanitiesLinda Spoerl 786-0377 January 8, 1989 July 1989

Teacher-Scholar Program for Zlementary and Secondary School Teachers Linda Spoerl 786-0377 May 1, 1989 December 1989

Division of Fellowships and Seminars Guinevere L Guest, Director 786-0458

Fellowships for University TeachersMaben D. Herring 786-0466 June 1, 1989 January 1, 1990

Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent ScholarsKaren Fuglie 786-0466 June 1, 1989 January 1 1990

Fellowships on the Foundations of American SocietyMaben D. Herring, 786-0466 June 1, 1989 January 1, 1990

Summer StipendsJoseph B. Neville 786-0466 October 1, 1988 May 1, 1989

Travel to CollectionsKathleen Mitchell 786-0463 January 15, 1989 June 1, 1989

Faculty Graduate Study Program for Historically Black Colleges and Universities Mahen D. Herring 786-0466 March 15, 1989 September 1, 1990

Younger ScholarsLeon Bramson 786-0463 November 1, 1988 June 1, 1989

Summer Seminars for College Teachers--Stephen Roc!, 786-0463

Participants March 1, 1989 Summer 1989

Directors March 1, 1989 Summer 1990

Summer Seminars for School TeachersMichael Hall 786-0463

Participants March 1, 1989 Summer 1989

Directors April 1, 1989 Summer 1990

Division of General ProgramsDonald Gibson, Director 786-0267

Humanities Projects in Medialames Dougherty 786-0278 March 17, 19r: October 1, 1989

Humanities Projects in Museums and Flistoncal OrganizationsMarsha Senimel 786-0284 December 9, 1988 July 1, 1989

Public Humanities ProjectsWilsonia Cherry 786-0.'71 March 17, 1989 October 1 1989

Humanities Projects in Libraries--1 homas Phelps 786 -027;

Planning November 4, 1988 April 1, 1989

Implementation March 17, 1989 October 1, 1989

447 For project Area code for all telephone numbers is 202 Deadline beginning

Division of Research Programs--RichardEkman, Director 786-0200

TextsMargot Backas 786-0207

EditionsDavid Nichols 786.0207 June 1, 1989 April 1, 1990

TranslationsMartha Chomiak 786-0207 June 1, 1989 April 1, 1990

Publication SubventionMargot Backas 786-0207 April 1, 1989 October 1 1989

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Humanities 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. N. W. Advisory Washington. D. C. 20506 202/786-0435

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LITERATURE IN AMERICA: WHAT MAKES WRITERS WRITE?

How have changes in publishing and in bookmarketing affected the writing of serious fiction?

What is the role of the critic and the editor inthe tradition of American letters?

Has contemporary literature consciously driftedaway from narrative?

These were some of the issues addressed byCleanth Brooks, father of the New Criticism, and Willie Morris,writer and former editor of Harper's magazine, ina wide-ranging conversation for Humanities about writers,editors, critics, writing, and publishing in America. Humanities also invited Brooks and writer Eudora Welty to discuss thesame questions, particularly as they affect the writing ofshort stories and the future of the southern novel. The September/October issue of Humanities features both of these conversationabout literature, which were moderated by editor CarolineTaylor.

In his search for the distinctive features ofAmerican literature, literary scholar Stephen 3. Donadiodiscovered in the works of some of America's earlywriters--Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville--a "declaration ofliterary

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indeper lence" from the literary norms of the past. The importance of place in American fiction is examined by writer and scholar Ellen Pifer, who points to novelist Saul Bellow's vision of the urban metropolis as a temple for America's worship of material expansion.

Other articles in this issue describe Edmund Wilson's contribution to American letters and trace the literary history of the American West from Garci Rodriguez Ordonez de Montalvo in 1510 to Joan Didion in 1984. Also featured are essays about forging an academic discipline to study the literature of America, publishing the works andpapers of Mark Twain and the correspondence of Jack London, and adaptinga Katherine Anne Porter short story for children's television.

You may reprint any of the articles published in Humanities, except those that are already copyrighted. Please credit

Humanities and the bylined author as the source, and senda copy of the reprint to the editor.

The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency that supports research, scholarship, education, and humanities programs for the general public.

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