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INDIANA MAGAZINE
OF
HISTORY
Dictionary of Midwestern Literature
Volume One: T h e Authors
Philip A. Greasley, general editor
(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 666.
Illustrations,suggestions for further reading, appendix, index. $59.95.)
This volume presents, in alphabetical
order, approximately four hundred entries on individual authors. Each entry
begins with name, birth and death dates,
and major pseudonyms, and continues
with sections on biography, literary significance,identification of major works,
and suggestions for further secondary
reading. The entries are signed and include the institutionalaffiliationsof some
one hundred contributors,all members
of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature,the project’ssponsor. This
volume is the first of a proposed three
for the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature.Volume two, in encyclopedia-entry
format, will cover important historical
and research sites, movements, themes,
and genres; volume three will be a discursive, chapter-organized, literary history of the Midwest.
The author entries are prefaced by
general editor Philip A. Greasley’s introduction, outlining the definitions and
organization of the content, and by an
overview essay, “TheOrigins and Development of the Literature of the Midwest,”
by David D. Anderson, a founder of the
society and a prolific contributor to its
enterprises.Both essays attempt to define
the geographical and intellectualboundaries of the project, to fixthe term “Midwest” and so to clarify the principles of
inclusion and exclusion. Neither piece,
however, successfully identifies the difference between “Midwestern authors”
(that is, persons with their origins and/
or most lasting affiliationswith the area)
and “Midwesternliterature.”This ambiguity has implications for the usefulness
of the volume. Who is represented here,
and on what basis?
Anderson’s essay, for instance, concludes with the intriguingnote that four
of the eight American winners of the
Nobel Prize in literature are midwesterners: Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison. By
geographicaland cultural affiliation and
by attitude these four belong in this volume. The situation is less clear for other
figures who also appear: Black Elk, born
in Wyoming, raised in the northern
plains, and oblivious to the white man’s
culturalconstruct of “region”;Joyce Carol
Oates, whose connections to the region
are a master’s degree in English at the
University of Wisconsin and five years
of teaching in Detroit; James Norman
Hall, co-author with Charles Nordhoff
of The Mutiny on the Bounty (1932>,born
in Iowa but educated in Boston, a British soldier, and an English citizen; and
Upton Sinclair, whose only connection
is that his muckrakingexpod TheJungle
(1906)involves Chcago. “Midwest,”that
is to say, is as uncertain a term for the
dictionary’s editors and authors as it is
for the rest of us.
The individual entries are generally
competent and nicely proportioned.The
discussionsof major works by an author
REVIEWS
and the notes on further reading are especially helpful in directing the reader
to the author’s writings and from there
to an acquaintance with the secondary
scholarship. The chosen authors comprise an effective selection,from historically significant figures like Booth Tarlungton, Carl Sandburg, Kurt Vonnegut,
and Aldo Leopold, to promising newcomers like poet Jonis Agee and novelist Nettie Jones, and to more broadly
popular and influential people like William McGuffey (of the Readers), chldren’s
author Robert McCloskey,and Gary Edward (Garrison) Keillor. Readers might
dispute some of the choices, but the volume as a whole suggests the vitality of
the midwestem contribution to literature.
DAVID
J. NORDLOH
is professor of English
at Indiana University Bloomington, coeditor of American Literary Scholarship:
An Annual (Duke University Press), and
general editor of A Selected Edition of W
D. Howells (Indiana University Press).
Karl BodrnerS Studio Art
By W. Raymond Wood, Joseph C. Porter, and David C. Hunt
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Pp. x, 164.
Maps, illustrations, notes, references, index. $45.00.)
The publication of Karl Bodmerk Studio
Art coincideswith the 200th anniversary
celebration of Lewis and Clark‘s expedition. Although thirty years lapsed before
Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied and
his hired Swiss artist, Karl Bodmer, arrived in America to document flora,
fauna, and Indian cultures, data from
Lewis and Clark’sjourney still provided
guidance and inspiration. At the Peale
Museum in Philadelphia, the prince
viewed natural and ethnographic objects
gathered during the 1803 expedition.
He later met with William Clark in St.
Louis and received a gift of Clarks “Special Map of the Missouri River in the
years 1804, 1805 and 1806.”
The book is divided into three sections. “The Eyes of Strangers:‘Fact’and
Art on the EthnographicFrontier, 183234,”by Joseph C. Porter, describes Maximilian and Bodmer’svoyage up the Mis-
souri Rver from St. Louis to Fort McKenzie, Montana, and assesses the scientific
significance of their work, placing it
within the context of the ethnographic
philosophiesof the time. Porter also details the pair’s unexpected delay in New
Harmony In&, the winter before 1833
and the effect the long stopover had on
both men. Maximilian’sinteractions with
resident naturalists Charles-Alexandre
Lesueur and Thomas Say turned New
Harmony into the prince’s “finishing
school”for North American exploration,
whde Bodmer spent h time drawingwatercolors and sketches of the settlement
and its vicinity
“A Publication History of Karl Bodmer’s North American Atlas,” by David
C. Hunt, traces where and when the lithographs were published and also includes
research into the artist’s complex printing processes and methods of sales, and
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