MIDAMERICA XIV The Y em·book of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature Edited by DAVID D. ANDERSON The Midwestern Press The Center for the Study of Midwestern Literature and Culture Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 1987 To the memory of William B. Thomas (1906-1987) Copyright 1987 By the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America PREFACE M idAmerica XIV breaks with tradition to publish for the first time an original work of Midwestern literature: Sylvia Wheeler's "A Whole Bible," winner of the Midwest Poetry Award for 1987, founded by Gwendolyn Brooks and awarded at the Society's Midwest Poetry Festival, May 14-16, 1987. Also included is Bruce P. Baker's "Nebraska's Cultural Desert: Willa Cather's Early Short Stories," the essay awarded the Midwestern Heritage Award for 1987. The award was also founded by Gwendolyn Brooks and presented at the symposium "The Cultural Heritage of the Midwest," held concurrently with the Festival. Distinguished honorees of the Conference were Andrew Greeley, novelist, of Chicago, winner of the Mark Twain Award for distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature, and Ray Lewis White, of Illinois State University, winner of the MidAmerica Award for distinguished contributions to the study of Midwestern literature. The wide variety of other essays included in MidAmerica XIV is not only indicative of the breadth and depth of interests of the Society's members, but the essays reflect the many interests of the late William B. Thomas, to whom this volume is inscribed. Bill, who died on November 10, 1987, was a novelist, essayist, man of letters, and a founding member of the Society; he encouraged and supported the Society from the beginning, and even after his death he remains a Society benefactor in his bequest of his personal library to the Society. December, 1987 DAVID D. ANDERSON Contents Preface 5 A Whole Bible The Midwest Poetry Festival Prize Poem Sylvia Wheeler 9 Nebraska's Cultural Desert: Willa Cather's Early Short Stories The Midwestern Heritage Prize Essay Bruce P. Baker 12 The Safe Middle West: Escape to and Escape from Home an Honorable Mention essay Margaret D. Stuhr 18 Learning the Land: The Development of A Sense of Place in the Prairie Midwest Elizabeth Raymond 28 Edith Thomas and Hamlin Garland: Canaan and Rome Bernard F. Engel 41 "Naturalization" and Bonding in Dreiser's "Naturalistic" Representations of Sister Carrie's Women Laura Niesen de Abruiia 51 The Ethnic Neighborhood in Chicago Fiction: Maitland to Motley Guy Szuberla 58 "As His Home Town Knew Him:" Sherwood Anderson's Last Trip Home Ray Lewis White 74 Sherwood Anderson's Poor White and the Grotesques Become Myth David D. Anderson 89 William Maxwell's Lincoln, Illinois an Honorable Mention essay Richard Shereikis 101 Sam Shepard's Child is Buried Somewhere in Illinois an Honorable Mention essay Park Dixon Goist 113 Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon: The Contemporary Oral Tale Philip Greasley 126 Images of Detroit in The Dollmaker James Seaton 137 The Annual Bibliography of Midwestern Literature: 1985 Editors: Robert Beasecker Donald Pady 146 Recipients of the Mark Twain Award Back Cover Recipients of the MidAmerica Award Back Cover A WHOLE BIBLE SYLVIA WHEELER Both grandfathers came from the old county in the 1840's. They had free claims and houses made of mud. -Dave Bucholz: Wagner, South Dakota Mud, mud, mud, wasn't a damn board above it. If they wanted doors they had to cut them out with a knife; no saws then. Man, oh man, oh man, what an awful life! That's all I have to say. No one out here but the squaws and you could smell them for miles from the skunks they'd eat. Never changed their clothes 'till they wore out. Lived in those goddamned tepees, and how the hell they kept from freezing to death, I don't know. No game whatever in the world, just fowl. Nothing grew for the deer to eat. What meat there was was salted so bad, they had to soak the salt out first. Then they smoked it too much. 1871, we moved out here from west of Tyndall. No covered wagons in those days - the only thing I remember was Custer used to travel with covered wagons. No such a thing as a house in those days - call it a corn crib. It was built of fence boards, just rough fence, a double wall with dirt in between boards, see, to keep the cold out when we could. And we had nothing to burn whatever in the world. I tell you, I tell you, I tell you. 9 MID AMERICA XIV 10 A Whole Bible-The Midwest Poetry Festival Prize Poem 11 Only what grass you could cut and wad together What did we think of it? and burn in the stove, but in 2, 3, minutes the stove would be cold and you could go to bed Why, we didn't think of it. that way. I could lay in that bed and sleep and look up imd see the stars when I was sleeping It was h,ere, we was here, and we had to stay. and goddamned nearly freeze to death laying there. Jesus Christ, cold! University of South Dakota No such town as Wagner then. No roads, nothing NOTE Based on The Oral History Tape Collection, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD. whatever in the world out here. We didn't even have a plow to dig a hole in the ground. No such thing as anyone digging a well. No tall grass of any kind. Was all buffalo grass. No such thing as hay. No machinery to put up hay. It's a wonder we lived through it, I tell you, I tell you! Dad drove cattle out here on foot from Tyndall. Man, oh man, oh man, just any kind of cattle, just as long as they had horns on them. Drove them day and night until he got through the Indian reservation. Most of the cattle died from the drought. It was so dry you could walk the Missouri river and it wouldn't even wet your shoe soles. No such thing as a railroad here those days. Later, when they laid those rails by hand, 10 or 12 men would get ahold of this rail and plunk it ahead on the rough grade then drive up the length of the rail and plunk down another one. No celebrations when the rails was in. People were too goddamned tired to celebrate. Oh, Jesus Christ, a penny was a gold piece alongside what money has got to today. We really aren't the land we homestead, I'll tell you. Nebraska's Cultural Desert: Willa Cather's Early Short Stories 13 artistic immigrant to the "dreariest part of southwestern Ne­ braska" finds himself unable to endure his new life on the plains. The piece is often very explicit; much is said, little is suggested. Cather comments: "[Peter] drank whenever he could get out of [his son]. Antone's sight long enough to pawn his hat or coat for NEBRASKA'S CULTURAL DESERT: whisky. He was a lazy, absent-minded old fellow, who liked to WILLA CATHER'S EARLY SHORT STORIES fiddle better than to plow." Peter is desperately homesick for his native Bohemia and particularly for the opportunities he had had BRUCE P. BAKER there for artistic expression. Cather uses the symbol of Peter's violin in order to enhance For many years Willa Cather's novels set in Nebraska have the story's theme and intensify the emotion: that beautiful been praised for their evocation of the era of the pioneers, a time instrument represents not only his dearest possession but also of splendid heroism and achievement symbolized by the famous those values to which Peter has always been dedicated. The first plow against the sun in My Antonia. On the plains of the great two sentences in the story point up the conflict between father Midwest, sturdy and creative men and women joined them­ and son and characterize their respective points of view: " 'No, selves with the fertile soil and brought forth a kind of new Eden Antone, I have told thee many times, no thou shalt not sell it until wherein fallen man seemed to be able once again to unite with I am gone.' [His son Antone replies,] 'But I need money; what the raw material of the earth and create something beautiful and good is that old fiddle to thee? Thy hand trembles so thou canst enduring. For example, in Cather's rhapsodic tribute to the scarce hold the bow.' " In a flashback we learn that Peter was pioneer spirit in 0 Pioneers!, Alexandra Bergson transforms once a second violinist in Prague until partial paralysis of his arm "The Wild Land" in part one into the rich, fruitful fields of part brought those days to a close. Then come the last two para­ two. It is important to note that Cather does not seem to portray graphs in which Peter "pulled off his old boot, held the gun Alexandra's success as merely an Horatio Alger rags-to-riches between his knees with the muzzle against his forehead, and exemplum. Rather, her triumph is not so much a material as. an pressed the trigger with his toe." artistic one· in a very real and significant way, Alexandra IS a Before going to the old sod stable, however, Peter had creator an ;rtist who has shaped out of often unwieldly material attempted to play his violin for the last time: "His hand shook an ord~rly and beautiful work.