Non-fictional Writings Research Articles

The New Angels in the House? Feminists as New Victorians

This essay takes as its point of departure the American writer Rene Denfeld’s book The New Victorians (1995). At the time of its publication it was hailed by Right-leaning critics as a common-sense corrective to the lunacy of feminism’s extremist fringe, regarded as creeping dangerously into the mainstream. Denham is not read widely in academic circles and, as a journalist and non-fiction writer, has since turned her attention to other subjects, but her book is representative of a cluster of trade publications which appeared in the mid to late 1990s and has a significance which continues to be felt in popular reactions to feminism. I have chosen to focus most specifically on Denfeld because she most clearly articulates a link between academic feminism and the Victorians, suggesting that contemporary political feminists seek to anchor women in a past of repression and self-denial; however, I shall also make brief reference to other popular feminist detractors, such as Katie Roiphe and Christina Hoff Sommers, with whom Denfeld shares ideological and thematic concerns.

From High Modernism to Middlebrow Culture

From High Modernism to Middlebrow Culture Warner Berthoff (bio) Edmund Wilson, Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s. Library of America, 2007. xiv + 958 pages. $40; Edmund Wilson, Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s. Library of America, 2007. xiv + 980 pages. $40. Both volumes were edited by Lewis M. Dabney. On August 18, 1962, Edmund Wilson wrote to a friend, the publisher and editor Jason Epstein, expressing satisfaction with the latter’s proposal to the Bollingen Foundation “of bringing out in a complete and compact form the principal American [literary] classics.” This was a project, Wilson said, that he had “been trying for years to interest some publisher in.” His model was the famous Éditions de la Pléiade, “beautifully produced and admirably printed thin-paper volumes, ranging from 800 to 1500 pages.” [End Page 125] It took nearly two decades for Wilson’s idea to be realized; in the interim he continued to campaign for it, most notably (notoriously?) in his scandalous (to academicians) attack on the cumbersome editions of Emerson, Hawthorne, and others sponsored by the Modern Language Association in a pamphlet entitled The Fruits of the MLA (1968). Continuing resistance to the project was based as much as anything on fears of its marketability. Was there still a well-informed reading public large enough to make it pay? But, when the first “beautifully produced and admirably printed thin-paper volumes” of the Library of America appeared in the early 1980s, they were an immediate publishing success. Works by Melville, Hawthorne, Whitman, and Mark Twain sold well as expected; but perhaps nothing better proved the existence of a ready and waiting readership than the brisk sales of two volumes of Francis Parkman’s history of France and England in North America (nos. 11 and 12 in the Library’s series). Some later volumes have languished, such as certain lesser novels of William Dean Howells, but in the main the Library of America has justified Wilson’s early championing. There is, then, a fine appropriateness, roughly a quarter of a century since the Library’s inception, in the publication in two volumes (nos. 176 and 177) of Edmund Wilson’s literary essays and reviews of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, containing in full the writings collected in Axel’s Castle (1932), The Triple Thinkers (1938), The Wound and the Bow (1941), Classics and Commercials (1950), and The Shores of Light (1952), with a handful of previously uncollected reviews. At least two more collections of Wilson’s nonfictional writings are conceivable, if not at the moment certain, covering his voluminous work on subjects—beginning with The American Jitters (1932)—not specifically literary. He did, after 1950, continue to write on current work he particularly admired, like Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1958), or on figures, Edward Gorey for one, to whom he felt nobody else had paid proper attention. And there is, of course, his massive compilation, Patriotic Gore (1962), on the literature of the Civil War. We may be sure, if these collections do come, that they will have the same attractive physical shape and design that after 1950, publishing with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Wilson insisted on for each new book. Looked at in the round, we see a chief interest in these first two collections is the distinct shift in critical temper and tone from the 1920s into the 1940s—a shift that corresponds to and effectively traces an unmistakable change, a falling off and wearing away, from the confident creative achievements of “high modernism” celebrated in Axel’s Castle to a drabber, palpably dispirited time. In part this shift involved tribulations in Wilson’s personal affairs, perhaps even a midlife crisis of sorts, as well as a noticeable decline from the Joyce-Yeats-early-Hemingway era. An evident nostalgia for the time of his own coming-of-age comes into much of his 1940s reviewing, as when—commenting on the Viking Portable Dorothy Parker—he recalled a time when the behavior of literary people was in every way “freer”; they [End Page 126] could love, travel, stay up late “as extravagantly as they pleased,” and risk any irresponsibility in order to write “whatever seemed to...

On Justice and Liberty in Natalia Ginzburg's Non-Fictional Writings

Natalia Ginzburg's value system impacted her poetics and her artistic production over her entire career as a writer. After the publication of Lessico famigliare (1963) through her death (1991) her youthful belief in the ideals of justice and liberty evolved to reflect the growing importance, for her, of social and economic equality: once liberty from fascist dictatorship had been achieved, justice became more prevalent in her thoughts and writings. Concomitant with the evolution of her belief system was an increasing pessimism concerning the development of Italian society, specifically the loss of what she called a "senso sociale": the ability and desire to put egoistic interests aside in the name of a greater good, engage one's fellow humans in a fecund, dialectical way, and transform reality. In her non-fictions of this later period, the focus of this essay, Ginzburg ponders the Italians' disengagement or retreat from the present, a situation that in turn was responsible for what she called our "broken relationship with the future" while advocating the interdependence of literature and world.

James Baldwin’s Philosophical Critique of Sexuality

When mentioned in the context of American philosophy, James is most often utilized as a resource for extending the tradition beyond the predominant influence of the Big Three (Peirce, James, Dewey) and/or to emphasize the contributions of African Americans to the history of American thought. As examples of this trend we find, for instance, Richard Rorty's praise for as a melioristic public intellectual.1 Cornel West has also routinely mentioned as a thinker who was willing and able to confront the tragic dimension of American life head-on in the face of challenges such as death, apathy, ignorance, and white supremacy.2 And more recently, Eddie Glaude has advocated a return to James Baldwin as a means of tempering this country's overly facile optimism.3 While I do not dispute that these uses of have been admirable and worthwhile, it is nevertheless important to note that many of the philosophical works that endeavor to treat Baldwin's thought have focused almost exclusively upon the 1963 book-length essay The Fire Next Time. Certainly a remarkable document by any estimation, Fire has been rightfully described as one of the great achievements of twentieth-century essay writing, but it makes up not even one-tenth of Baldwin's significant nonfiction output, which is to say nothing of his achievements as a fiction writer (his main ambition, lest we forget). In any event, to this day there is no thorough consideration of the philosophical contribution that has made throughout his career as playwright, novelist, essayist, and public intellectual. While the wholesale remedy of this oversight is beyond the scope of this essay, I would like to draw attention to one aspect of Baldwin's thought that has received remarkably little philosophical commentary: his writing on issues of sexuality. While it is certainly true that in his nonfiction writings and public appearances, focused his analysis more regularly upon the problems of racism, themes of sexuality run throughout his body of work. Already in 1956, well before his involvement with the civil rights movement, which would provide his most enduring legacy, published a novel centering upon a homosexual love affair between an Italian and a white American living in Paris entitled Giovanni's Room. The work would eventually come to be published by Dial after being rejected by Knopf, the publisher of Baldwin's largely autobio graphical first novel (Go Tell It on the Mountain) that centered upon a black boy's

Editor’s Commentary

Editor’s Commentary James Riding In (bio) This edition marks the beginning of an important new series entitled “The State of Indigenous America.” The idea behind this series is to increase understanding of the complex economic, social, and political issues facing American Indian nations and peoples. It is also designed for the contributors to offer solutions for addressing the problems under discussion. The first installment is Dr. Donald Warne’s discussion concerning health issues that American Indians face in the twenty-first century. Warne points out that although the U.S. government through its numerous treaties with Indian nations promised to provide health care to Indian peoples, this pledge is far from being fulfilled. The Indian Health Service, the U.S. agency designated to provide health care to Indians, is underfunded by approximately 40 percent, leaving many Indians without adequate health coverage. Consequently, large portions of the Indian population in Arizona and elsewhere suffer the effects of preventable diseases including diabetes, alcoholism, accidents, and suicide. Warne’s solutions call for the U.S. government to live up to its trust responsibilities for innovative funding such as tribal self-insurance programs and other actions. Subsequent installments of the series take on a variety of vital issues affecting Indian Country, such as sovereignty, land, religious freedom, sacred sites protection, repatriation, sustainable communities, decolonization, nation building, and collective historical trauma. Please contact the editor of Wicazo Sa Review if you want to contribute to this series. [End Page 5] This edition also contains four articles with issues important to American Indians and American Indian studies. Susan Miller’s work concerning the small but growing body of American Indian scholars, mostly historians, who are breaking new ground by writing from an Indigenous paradigm is an extension of her seminal piece published in the spring 2008 issue of Wicazo Sa Review. In this current issue, Miller provides examples of how Vine Deloria Jr., Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Steven Crum, Jennifer Denetdale, Waziyatawin, and other Indigenous scholars have rejected the problem-ridden tropes of the Euroamerican historical paradigm, which is heavily influenced by a Euroamerican sense of superiority, in favor of exploring knowledge constructed from Indian thoughts and experiences. To Miller, this intellectual development is an important process that will have meaning for future generations of Indians. Rosemary White Shield’s study provides an understanding of how cultural factors contributed to the persistence rates among a small number of Indian women who earned higher education degrees in mainstream institutions situated in the north central part of the country. Based on information gathered from oral and written interviews, she points out that spiritual and cultural factors, important variables in these women’s lives, enabled them to succeed in the face of such barriers as collective historical trauma and institutional and societal racism. Lawrence Gross’s probing examination reveals aspects of the life and nonfiction writings of Jim Northrup, an Anishinaabe humorist, storyteller, and Vietnam veteran from the Fond du Lac Reservation in northern Minnesota. Gross asserts that Northrup is striving not only to heal the wounds that impact Anishinaabe life but also to preserve his peoples’ language and culture. Justin Richland points out that during a century of contact with Euroamericans, Hopis have been extremely protective regarding the distribution of traditional knowledge, especially when it comes to sharing information of this sort with the newcomers. He also argues that these same dynamics of controlling access to knowledge occurs among the Hopis themselves because not everyone has a right to know certain types of sacred information. [End Page 6] James Riding In James Riding In (Pawnee) is the editor of Wicazo Sa Review, associate professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State University, and the chair of the board of trustees of Pawnee Nation College. His publications appear in various books and journals. Copyright © 2009 Association for American Indian Research

Motherless

Motherless Betty Ruddy (bio) My mother’s small book collection, mostly college textbooks and drugstore paperbacks, included a 1943 Random House edition of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. In my childish imagination, it was the most significant book in the world. These days, the volume sits on my own bookshelf, and recently, far from home and relying on memory, I thought back to its green and ivory hard cover and matching slipcase, its red bookmark cord and its dark, brooding Fritz Eichenberg wood engravings. I envisioned some writing inside. My mother’s name? Words of congratulations? As a child, I remembered, I would slip the heavy volume from its box and page through it, simultaneously inquisitive and frightened by Eichenberg’s pictures. Jane Eyre is the early nineteenth-century story of a young woman who spends her orphaned childhood at the home of a cruel aunt and at an austere boarding school. As a young woman, she becomes a school teacher, then governess to the daughter of Edward Rochester, an older man whose mad wife lives in the attic of his mansion. Jane and Rochester fall in love and, after many tribulations, marry. Reading Jane Eyre for the first time at age ten, I had seen parallels between its heroine and my mother. My mother, too, had been orphaned at an early age, once worked as a mother’s helper—a kind of modern-day governess, I imagined—and then taught school. Her middle name was Jane. She was petite and dark-haired like her fictional counterpart. And like the Victorians in the story, my mother considered standards and decorum to be what counted most. There was another interesting book on my mother’s bookshelves, the Standard Book of British and American Verse (1932), and when I was thinking about my early notions of Jane Eyre, I happened to have it with me. It is bound in soft black leather and has its own blue slipcase and red silk [End Page 39] bookmark cord. Its pages are edged in gold, and on the flyleaf is inscribed, “From the Sophomore Class in Appreciation of Your Services and Friendship,” followed by the signatures of other class officers, including the angular hand of the young man who would become my father. But I have conflated these two books in my memory. My daughter, standing in front of my bookshelves at home, informs me over the telephone that my mother’s edition of Jane Eyre sits in no pull-out box, is adorned with no silk bookmark, and on its flyleaf is a sticker that reads, “A Book of the Month Club Selection Donated to the Armed Forces.” At a library near here, I find a copy of the 1943 edition and check it out, eager to revisit the images that so alarmed me as a child, to rummage around in a book I apparently don’t remember as well as I thought. Does it contain clues to my mother, a woman I am wont to see, even now at 58, through a child’s eyes? When I read a Modern Library paperback edition of Jane Eyre a couple of years ago, I read, as well, other female-authored nineteenth-century novels: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Middlemarch, the latter for the first time. I buried myself in each story of a heroine struggling to find her way in life. Elizabeth Bennett, the spirited daughter of a silly and ineffectual mother. Emma Woodhouse, the young mistress of a household headed by a doting father. Dorothea Brooke, a bright, independent-minded young woman raised by a foolish bachelor uncle. All motherless. I was struck by the fact that it is the lack of a caring mother, a circumstance that would be tragic in real life, that enables these fictional women of marriageable age to assert themselves in a society with strict expectations for behavior. They have no mothers who caution against bad matches, no mothers to chafe against, no mothers in opposition to whom their independent behavior would appear unfeeling, overly competitive, or disloyal. As a nonfiction writer, bound to real people—alive or dead—about whom I care, I envy a fiction writer’s...

Gender, Sexuality and the Poetics of Identification

If the volume of writing about lesbians is any indication, nineteenth-century France was profoundly interested in female homosexuality, Both non-fiction and creative writers alike diagnosed symptoms, detailed traits, described milieus, devised plots, and imagined couples and couplings of women. The authors who lent their time, their analyses and their imaginations to the contemplation of lesbians came from a broad array of disciplines, including medicine, criminology, journalism, and fiction writing. They were also nearly exclusively men. l During the first half of the century, notable literary works included Diderot (La Religieuse, published 1796), Balzac (La Fille aux yeux d 'or, 1835) and Gautier (Mademoiselle de Maupin, 1835). Following the mid-century and the medicalization of sexual pathology, this literary vogue flourished and attracted authors whose works on female homosexuality ranged across the genres and registers: the popular, pornographic, naturalist, and decadent novel; and poetry high and low. The phenomenon of male interest in female homosexuality, which Naomi Schor, among others, has referred to as male lesbianism,2 was (and, to judge from contemporary pornography, still is) an overwhelmingly voyeuristic obsession motivated by a libidinous curiosity about sexual activity between women. Male fantasies about lesbian sexuality clearly inspired some explicitly erotic texts (Mus set's Gamiani, 1833; Henry Monnier's 'Deux Gougnottes', 1864; among others) and undoubtedly motivated more mainstream portraits as well, from Adolphe Belot's popular novel, Mile Giraud, ma femme (1870) to Catulle Mendes's Mephistophela (1890). Voyeuristic representations oflesbians, however, frequently did doubfe duty: they served to warn readers as well as to excite them. Lesbian sexuality represented excess and menace, dangerous not only to other women (seduction, corruption), but also to men (unrequited fatal attraction, unbridled jealousy). Consequently, literary texts from the period often punished the lesbian characters-whether sympathetic victims or predatory seductresses-

In Search of Subaltern Consciousness

“In Search of Subaltern Consciousness” starts from the undeniable truth that the representation of society's Other (often now referred to as “subaltern”) is always a mediated, partial, and imaginative construction, especially by writers who, by the very fact of their literacy, belong to an elite. Focusing on the central example of the revisionary Indian historical project of subaltern studies, the essay argues for the value to historical study of the more dramatic, speculative, and open-ended ways of representing subaltern consciousness that literature can contribute, even to revisionary history. A broad context comes from consideration of a wide range of fiction and non-fiction writers, including Orwell, Nehru, Gandhi, E. P. Thompson, Premchand, and Chekhov. The diverse examples demonstrate that the search for subaltern consciousness remains a continuing, if always elusive and complex concern of the humane imagination in many diverse prose genres, only artificially separable from each other.

Against the ‘decay

Throughout Waugh’s non-fictional writings, the reader becomes acquainted with the literary, artistic and philosophic views of the British writer and his contemporaries. The focus of this paper will be on the dual nature of the author’s admiration for everything modern in the early non-fiction (he considered himself ‘the creature of the Zeitgeist’, ‘Felix Culpa?’, Commonweal, 16 July 1948), and at the same time, the use of tradition in his post-war writings as a standard against which modern civilization might be measured. For Waugh, the rise of totalitarianism, the development of atheism and the dissolution of the sacred were consecutive to the destruction of the founding values of British and Western culture and society after the wars, and entailed the decadence of literary or aesthetic standards. This study will show how non-fictional writings become the means through which Waugh’s anxieties and doubts about the meaning of existence are expressed, and where the literary and aesthetic values that he deems indispensable to the survival of the modern world are theorized.

Making Qualitative Research Reports Less Boring

In general, like Laurel Richardson, the author finds qualitative research reports boring to read. This article shows how the use of creative nonfiction techniques can make such reports less boring. Creative nonfiction involves writing nonfiction using fiction techniques. Creative nonfiction arose in the 1960s when it was called “The New Journalism.” The word creative in creative nonfiction might imply that it does not keep to the facts, but the aim of creative nonfiction is to tell the truth, and this certainly applies in its application to writing qualitative research reports. The article describes a number of fiction techniques and illustrates them with examples drawn from creative nonfiction writings.

Proof of Life: Memoir, Truth, and Documentary Evidence

Proof of Life:Memoir, Truth, and Documentary Evidence Carolyn Kraus (bio) "Does it matter if it's true?" a young woman in the audience raised her hand to ask. I hesitated. I was in Los Angeles, speaking at an academic conference on literary nonfiction. The subject had veered from the general case of nonfiction to memoir, the nonfiction subgenre in which I'd been working. My current project was the resurrection of a long-neglected book-length manuscript initially based on the life of my father, whom I'd scarcely known—though ultimately the book would encompass as well the fate of my grandmother, who had died before I was born in an obscure Holocaust death camp in a shrouded corner of the world. The story was peculiar, contradictory, and based more on impressions than on concrete information, observation, or even memory. In its early stages, I'd lacked even the reassurance of legal documents—like birth or death or marriage records—that might have lent my story credibility and anchored it in the physical world. Yet at the memoir's core was an illegitimate child's heartfelt yearning to establish material connections to her past, "true" connections that could not be repudiated, dreamed up, or eradicated. To me, it mattered immensely that my story be true. Just a week before the conference I had hauled out a fragment of my neglected memoir and re-read my reconstruction of an encounter with my father, whom I'd met only twice since I was a toddler. He was "a slight, bent man wearing enormous purple-striped running shoes and walking through an alley in the rain," I'd written. "With one hand he pushed a grocery cart heaped high with old clothes. In his other hand, he held a copy of Tolstoy's On the Meaning of Life, and he studied it, his head bent low." The big feet are clear in my memory, but I can't swear it was raining, or that my father wore running shoes, or that the book was Tolstoy, though I know he was fond of Tolstoy. It had been depressing to discover my eighty-six-year-old father scavenging among the dumpsters of Los Angeles. Maybe that's why the sky is overcast in [End Page 245] my memory, and it might as well have been raining. My manuscript included memory-filtered accounts of long-vanished events. It was crammed with recollected and invented dialogue. Many details were based on impressions. For all that, the memoir was decidedly not fiction. This point mattered to me. I glanced around the conference room. Most of my audience was older than the earnest young woman who'd asked me whether truth mattered. Perhaps her question could only be answered definitively by those who'd never slogged through the muddy realities of memoir writing. Some of my listeners must have considered this question and arrived at answers of their own, which made it still harder to answer. I might have cited the realities that qualify memoir's truth: the spotty, evolutionary nature of memory, the near-impossibility of retrieving more than scraps of dialogue, and the failure of most lives to serve up a narrative line. I might have mentioned the inevitable refining and coloring in of the line drawings that memory provides. But now wasn't the moment to step into the confessional. The conference was taking place in 2006, mere months after documents posted on an Internet website had exposed James Frey's fraudulent memoir, A Million Little Pieces, and amidst the subsequent flurry of public indignation and defensive posturing by nonfiction writers and journalists, some of whom, undoubtedly, were now sitting in my audience. Despite the seemingly obvious dissimilarity between Frey's fabrications and the kind of difficulties that arise from faulty memory, at that awkward moment I was certain that a definitive "yes" answer to the young woman's question was called for. By passing off deliberate lies as nonfiction, Mr. Frey had poisoned the air for all memoir writers. If I answered the question frankly, I might be misinterpreted as defending Frey, who in writers' circles was now tagged "the F word." So...

Editor's Notes

Editor's Notes David D. Cooper This issue brings to the bustling marketplace of contemporary literary nonfiction what we feel Fourth Genre does best. As you peruse the contents you'll find that variety, range, and experiment trump editorial agenda and genre politics. Here, young or previously unpublished writers mingle with seasoned practitioners—if anything this issue tilts the balance in favor of new voices. We mix short and long work with subject-driven, argumentative essays and others that resist the urge to organize, argue, prove a point, or synthesize. Some writers travel to foreign places while others occupy familiar spaces closer to home. We pay thoughtful homage to influences and inspirations of the past, but don't shy away from present literary controversies that risk the wrath of powerful arbiters of the status quo. We also offer nearly a dozen studied reports on what writers of literary nonfiction have been reading. An observation by Michael Danko in the Roundtable on "Teaching the Classical Essay" about the way some classical essayists can circle around a topic applies as well to this business of editorial diversity. "[W]e can see the writer of a good essay," Danko remarks, "circling around a given topic, coming up with a variety of meanings, not one single 'yes' or one single 'no,' not necessarily a 'pro' or a 'con,' as if there were only two sides of any given 'argument.' In many situations, this yea-nay polarization closes off conversation, dialogue, veers us very far away from the 'middle' toward which I think we generally attempt to direct our voices." As we enter into a political season in which so much public discourse is marked by "yea-nay polarization," maybe the conversations and ruminations taking place in the following pages can serve as a counterpoint, even a corrective. Or at least a respite. —DDC [End Page vii] Copyright © 2008 Michigan State University

Exchanges & Attempts

Page 24 American Book Review Ball continued from previous page than it offers, since it includes only contemporary nonfiction by mostly US writers, who predominantly, though not exclusively, treat places in the US. But it also delivers more than it promises: Most of the essays have at least as much to say about happiness, love, self-discovery, the meaning(s) of (human and nonhuman) life, spirituality, and the art and craft of creative writing as they do about place(s) per se. Moreover, each of the thirteen authors whose texts are collected here (most of which were previously published) wrote an additional essay specifically for this volume—a commentary situating, reflecting on, or otherwise extending their earlier text. I would argue that some of these commentaries (David Gessner’s, John Hanson Mitchell’s, and Reg Saner’s come to mind) are about as rewarding as the “real” essays to which they refer, almost workable as stand-alone pieces. Therefore, I was able to imagine different readers benefiting from the book in different ways. I could imagine an environmentally-sensitive creative writing professor making it required reading for her undergraduate students in order to expose them to a wider-than-usual range of contemporary approaches to American “nature writing”—a range that even includes Gessner’s thoughts about his love-hate relationship with the whole genre and its practitioners, and Simone Poirier-Bures’s almost ethnographic account of an encounter with Kyrgyz people. I could also imagine nature writers and literary ecocritics— even those who are already familiar with the previously published essays—taking an avid interest in the new auto-commentaries. (As a big fan of Scott Russell Sanders’s Staying Put [1993] and Writing from the Center [1995]—essays from both appear here—I was excited to discover him backpedaling on his earlier use of the phrase “native ground.”) Actually, I could picture aspiring writers of creative nonfiction in general finding the book provocative for its authors’ deliberations about the challenges of striking an appropriate balance between descriptive accuracy and other elements and concerns. Elizabeth Dodd: “The challenge always was to keep from veering too far in either direction: to keep the factual information from sounding as though I had eaten a textbook and to keep the music of imagination grounded in the actual details of the literal world.” Robert Root presses the issue further, arguing that writing about the world inevitably turns into writing about “not the way the world is but the way certain filters affect the way the world appears to be to the author.” Such readers will also benefit from the many questions the authors raise about the dialectic of looking outward and looking inward. “For me, writing about place means examining the intersection of place with self.” Personally, I was most taken in by one of the collection’s many undercurrents: the question of humans ’attachments to places, especially investments in landscapes and nonhuman organisms. There is much talk of love, affection, affinity, intimate connection , and attachment—even of “having a love affair with the land.” Revealingly, the metaphor of marriage comes up repeatedly. Kim Barnes describes her attachment to western landscapes as “[a] stable and monogamous marriage of need, expectation, and fulfillment.”And Sanders says, “We marry ourselves to the creation by knowing and cherishing a particular place, just as we join ourselves to the human family by marrying a particular man or woman.” Gessner, on the other hand, takes it in a different direction: “Talk of settling and geographical marriage made me uneasy…If [Wendell] Berry had married his land and become its steward, that was fine. But I was beginning to define myself against him as a kind of polygamist of place.” Collectively, the texts in this collection transform love and attachment into a larger argument—an argument that place matters, that places like these matter, that landscapes and organisms like these matter.And, consequently, these texts comprise an argument that these kinds of love and attachment matter. Still, as someone persuaded that human psychodynamics relating to love, marriage, and family emerge in patterns which correlate with particular historical forms of social, economic, and political organization, these authors’ accounts left me...

Profiles and Perspectives: Sy Montgomery: Part Indiana Jones and Part Emily Dickinson

As important as accuracy may be to nonfiction writers, few have taken such risks as Sy Montgomery in gathering information for her articles, books, and films. In this profile article, Young recounts many of the risks and adventures Montgomery has taken for the sake of accurate and impassioned writing. Montgomery says, “I consider my books love stories and that is why I write them. I want to convey to both adults and kids the thrill of discovery. . . . I want my words to inspire people to love this Earth for its beautiful animals and intriguing mysteries and great adventures. . . . This is the world that is in our hands not only to explore, but to honor, treasure, and protect.”

Satire and Social Commitment in Tabucchi's "L'oca al passo"

Antonio Tabucchi, in "L'oca al passo" (2006), satirizes Italy's political class by arranging in non-chronological order a collection of editorials. He argues that he thereby endows these non-fictional writings with a literariness they did not possess in their original venues. In response, this article examines the nature and goals of satire. The non-linear ordering of the essays also prompts an interrogation of the act of reading; particularly the narrative representation of simultaneity through language, a medium that can exist only in time. Furthermore, Tabucchi's foray into topicality leads to a discussion of the social role of the writer and of literature.

Why Anne Brontë Wrote as She Did

One of the most significant recent developments in Brontë scholarship has been the renewed interest in the fiction of Anne Brontë and the awareness that she deserves more sympathetic and informed treatment from Brontë researchers. This article contributes to that debate by focusing on Anne’s second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The article argues that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an important mid-nineteenth-century text and offers a robust enquiry into middle-class female experience in mid-Victorian England. Working outwards from its central premise that ‘Matrimony is a serious thing’, the article suggests that the novel’s reformist impulse finds powerful resonance in the non-fictional writings of Florence Nightingale. Anne Brontë’s creative experimentation with different forms of first person female narrative technique is also explored in some detail.

The rediscovered writings of Rose Wilder Lane: literary journalist

Through numerous short stories, novels such as Free Land, and political writings such as Credo, Rose Wilder Lane forged a literary career that would be eclipsed by the shadow of her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose Little House books Lane edited. Lane's fifty-year career in journalism has remained largely unexplored. This book recovers journalistic work by an American icon for whom scholarly recognition is long overdue. Amy Mattson Lauters introduces readers to Lane's life through examples of her journalism and argues that her work and career help establish her not only as an author and political rhetorician but also as a literary journalist. Lauters has assembled a collection of rarely seen nonfiction articles that illustrate Lane's talent as a writer of literary nonfiction, provide on-the-spot views of key moments in American cultural history, and offer sharp commentary on historical events. Through this collection of Lane's journalism, dating from early work for Sunset magazine in 1918 to her final piece for Woman's Day set in 1965 Saigon, Lauters shows how Lane infused her writing with her particular ideology of Americanism and individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from government interference, thereby offering stark commentary on her times. Lane shares her experiences as an extra in a Douglas Fairbanks movie and interviews D.W. Griffith. She reports on average American women struggling to raise a family in wartime and hikes over the Albanian mountains between the world wars. Her own maturing conservative political views provide a lens through which readers can view debates over the draft, war, and women's citizenship during World War II, and her capstone piece brings us again into the culture torn by war in Southeast Asia. These writings have not been available to the reading public since they first appeared. They encapsulate important moments for Lane and her times, revealing the woman behind the text, the development of her signature literary style, and her progression as a writer. Lauters' introduction reveals the flow of Lane's life and career, offering key insights into women's history, the literary journalism genre, and American culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Through these works, readers will discover a writer whose cultural identity was quintessentially American, middle class, midwestern, and simplistic - and who assumed the mantle of custodian to Americanism through women's arts. The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Journalist traces the extraordinary relationship between one woman and American society over fifty pivotal years and offers readers a treasury of writings to enjoy and discuss.

Editor's Notes

Editor’s Notes Joe Mackall What I love about nonfiction writers—writers in general, really—is that the subject being written about almost never matters. What matters is the treatment of that subject. Although I wrote about addiction and depression in my memoir, people still want to hire me; they still want to be my friend. We know that no subject is taboo. Just recollect a few of the memoirs written in the last two decades and my point will be made. Subject matter is given a free pass. Not all professions are as forgiving. The diversity of subjects in this issue of River Teeth reminds us that all a nonfiction writer needs to do is cast the light of her talent and vision on a subject for that subject to come alive for a reader. Among other things, Diana Joseph writes about an unfortunate friend in her piece "It's Me. It's Him. It's Them.": "It may just be me. I worry that my friend Andrew Boyle is a pervert even if he doesn't hang fuzzy dice from the rearview mirror of a sleekly black Pontiac Trans Am." Dustin Beall Smith evokes the words of Chief Seattle spoken in 1854 in his piece "The Invisible Dead." "You are not a slut" is the sentence that opens Margaret MacInnis's essay "No," about a time in her life when she questioned her behavior and wondered how she let herself get involved with a married man: "And you struggle with the sin of it. You actually believe in God. You believe that people have souls." Tom Montgomery-Fate evokes Henry David Thoreau as these men, writer then and writer now, attempt "to box the wind," and Lisa Ohlen Harris illuminates the time when "moons shall wax and wane no more." Joanna Robinson, in a moment in history rife with border disputes, writes of the most fundamental border, that of our skin. In "Man in a Blue Shirt," Roger Sheffer tells the story of the time he was accused of murder. Steve Kistulentz believes everybody is as obsessed with punk rock and The Romantics as he is. I'm not, but I could not stop reading "Feels Like [End Page vii] Detroit." And William Giraldi regales us with his time growing up with Axl Rose as model and muse. Axl does nothing for me, but the subject, as I've said, never matters. What I cared about as a reader was Giraldi's story about the role of Rose in his life. This issue ends with an interview with Scott Russell Sanders conducted by Patrick Madden and his students at BYU. I would also like to note here that Brandon Schrand's memoir, The Enders Hotel, has won this year's River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. It will be published in spring 2008. Finally, we're announcing that River Teeth will cease accepting submissions until August 2008. At that time the journal will begin accepting electronic submissions only. We at River Teeth have always prided ourselves in giving each and every piece a thoughtful and careful read, while at the same time responding to writers in a timely manner. Lately we've been falling behind. We will use these next months to catch up on our reading and to begin the switch to electronic submissions. Please bear with us as we make this change. We value our readers and our writers above all else, and we don't want to do any less than our best. Thank you. —JM Copyright © 2007 the University of Nebraska Press

Show and Tell

In 2006, a college professor found herself teaching freshmen composition students during the fall semester at Xavier University of Louisiana. This in itself was not unusual; what was different was that this "fall" semester was starting in January, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. Whether an out-of-towner who rode out the storm on campus or a New Orleans native who lost everything to the disaster, each student had been affected in some way, as had their still-shaken professor who was aware that, in time, not only would the shock wear off but the all-important memories and stories would fade. The students were encouraged throughout the course to write about the disaster from a variety of angles: finding out about the storm; evacuating; filling the time created when the fall semester was put on hold; and coming back to the ruined city and damaged campus. Throughout the semester Laborde, herself a creative non-fiction writer, shared her writing and her photographs (most taken in her recovery work as an Exterior Damage Assessor for the City of New Orleans) in order to encourage students to share their own observations and experiences in the form of journal entries and essays. This essay includes sections of Laborde's essays that were published in other publications, as well as passages by her students.

Introduction

Introduction Nicole Pepinster Greene Xavier University of Louisiana The English Department at Xavier University of Louisiana has had a strong relationship with the South Central Modern Language Association. It is a sustaining departmental member; several faculty have served on the board of executive officers, and it has not been unusual for at least five or six faculty from the relatively small English Department at Xavier to participate in any one SCMLA conference. Now, after Katrina, this conference will always hold bittersweet memories for many of us. It was at the Houston 2005 SCMLA conference that faculty from the Xavier English Department met for the first time since we had been scattered across the country during that last weekend of August. Coming together in Houston from places of exile, we read our papers and poetry even though Katrina had destroyed our libraries, our research, and our homes. The Saturday night we gathered for dinner was a momentous occasion: it was the first time we were briefly reunited, but it was also the weekend when we received new contracts of employment or notices of dismissal. It seemed fitting, therefore, that when the call for special topics was sent out for the post-Katrina 2006 SCMLA conference, Xavier faculty should organize a panel on our experiences of working in post-Katrina New Orleans. The panel was attended by many friends of the department including David McWhirter, who suggested we submit our work to South Central Review. None of the papers presented here focuses on the lives of the writers themselves despite the fact that one was homeless for almost a year; one was laid off for a semester; one lost the family home and all its contents; and one, by contrast, could delight in the daily routine of a new-born grandchild. On the contrary, each author reflects on the lives of others: the students and faculty in their care. Tom Bonner, our department chair, chronicles the effects of Katrina on the department and attributes its survival to the academic discipline of English, "the ability to speak and write and be understood." Of course, it was Tom himself who, amid the chaos and uncertainty, created a supportive working environment that made possible our ability to continue working productively. Bonnie Noonan and Katheryn Laborde describe teaching writing during that first post-Katrina semester when students' [End Page 53] memories were still so raw and clear. Each brings a very different perspective: Bonnie as a rhetorically and theoretically grounded writer and Katheryn as a creative non-fiction writer. My essay explores the fate of adjunct faculty the year following Katrina, questions the rationale of their employment as contingent faculty, and provides suggestions for improving their conditions of service. Together these papers present a glimpse into the life of the English Department at Xavier University, its students and faculty, as we attempted to rebuild our lives as administrators, teachers, and writers in post-Katrina New Orleans. Nicole Pepinster Greene is Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition at Xavier University of Louisiana. Her publications on Irish writers and the pedagogy of writing have appeared in Modern Irish Writers, New Hibernia Review, Working Papers in Irish Studies, and Multicultural Perspectives. She is the editor of the Journal of College Writing, and this summer Hampton Press will publish her book, co-edited with Patricia McAlexander, Basic Writing in America: A History of Nine College Programs. Her present research continues to center on the lives and writings of Edith Somerville and Martin Ross.