The Green Room, Summer 1981

In matters of the mind, Freud undeniably was a pioneer, opening hitherto untrodden paths into the realm of the subconscious. In matters of the spirit, however, the father of psychoanalysis did not display the vision of an explorer. Rather, as Robert Coles makes clear in his essay, Freud’s attitude toward religion in general was something akin to Torquemada’s feeling about Protestantism in particular. While Mr. Coles does not agree with Freud about what the latter called “the fairy tales of religion,” he does share this in common with the great Viennese physician: he, too, is a psychiatrist— and, like Freud, a prolific author. Educated at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, Mr. Coles is both a teacher and a research psychiatrist at Harvard (where he taught a course this spring on “The Literature of Christian Reflection,” the reflectors including Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Kierkegaard). He is the author of a five-volume work, Children of Crisis, a study of children of all castes and classes in America whose many awards include the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include Farewell to the South, The Old Ones of New Mexico, and Irony in the Mind’s Eye: Essays on Novels by James Agee, Elizabeth Bowen, and George Eliot.

The ideas and ideals of Thomas Jefferson have, of course, long inspired men around the world. Nevertheless, one does not usually associate Jefferson with the People’s Republic of China. Yet, as John Israel and Steven H. Hochman recently found out, the Virginia statesman is not a complete stranger to the Chinese. John Israel is associate professor of East Asian history at the University of Virginia, where Steven Hochman serves as assistant to Pulitzer Prize-winning Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone. Having studied with Israel, Hochman knows something about China. Having spoken with Hochman, Israel knows something about Jefferson. Their essay is the latest stage in their ongoing dialogue about China and the United States. The publication of the essay coincides with the publication this month of the sixth and final volume of Malone’s monumental biography of Jefferson, the final volume being entitled The Sage of Monticello.

Drugs today are as much a part of the American landscape as freeways and jet streams, and certainly drug abuse is one of the great problems of our society. The development of these drugs, both a boon and a bane to human health, is relatively recent, and few people are better qualified to trace this development than Dr. Alfred Burger, professor emeritus of the University of Virginia’s Department of Chemistry. Dr. Burger came to this country after receiving his Ph. D. from the University of Vienna in 1928. During his long career at Virginia he worked in the development of many new drugs, including the antidepressant tranylcypromine. His many awards include the Louis Pasteur Medal at the University of Paris and the American Pharmaceutical Association’s annual Award in Medicinal Chemistry.

Appearing in the VQR for the first time, Jane Mayhall attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina. She now resides in New York City, where she has been a teacher at The New School for Social Research and Hofstra University. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Partisan Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. Her VQR story will be included in a new anthology, A Treasury of American Short Stories, to be published by Doubleday later this year.

John Ashbery is one of the nation’s most prominent poets. His latest book of poems is As We Know, published by Viking/Penguin. He is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, receiving both in the same year (1976), and directs the MFA Writing Program at Brooklyn College. In addition, he also serves as art critic for Newsweek magazine.

Jane Miller, a newcomer to the pages of VQR, lives in Vermont and has recently taught at Goddard College.

A teacher at George Washington University, David McAleavey is the author of Shrine, Shelter, Cave, published by Ithaca House.

Bonnie Gordon received the University of Virginia’s Academy of American Poets prize while attending that institution in 1970. She now works in Washington, D.C. and has a chapbook of poems coming out with Street Press.

Terese Svoboda is working as an associate producer of a film series about American poetry funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. She has poems scheduled to appear in Harper’s, The Georgia Review, and Parts Review.

Carl Dennis teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Princeton published his most recent collection of poems, Signs and Wonders.

Marvin Bell is a member of the faculty at the Writers Workshop of the University of Iowa. His VQR poems are part of a new collection, These Green-Going-to-Yellow, which Atheneum is publishing.

Ira Sadoff, a member of the faculty at Colby College, will be a visiting professor of poetry at the University of Virginia during the 1981—82 academic year. His next collection of poems will be published by David Godine.

Hilary Masters, who recently completed a year as visiting writer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is the author of three novels, The Common Pasture, An American Marriage, and Palace of Strangers. His short fiction has appeared in such magazines as the Ohio Review, the Massachusetts Review, and Sports Illustrated. He also writes non-fiction, and his latest article, one on the NEA Writing Fellowships entitled “Go Down Dignified,” has just been published by The Georgia Review.

Agnes Crawford Schuldt has devoted her career to the playing and teaching of music. Now a professor emerita of music at the University of Idaho, Mrs. Schuldt has also taught at Randolph-MaCon Woman’s College, Miami University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. It was at the latter institution that she developed her interest in the relationship between music and science, one which led to the writing and publishing of “The Voices of Time in Music,” published by The American Scholar in 1976. Mrs. Schuldt writes that she is “still a pianist, occasionally a writer, and always a gardening addict.”

Frances McFadden was the managing editor of Harper’s Bazaar. During World War II she served in London as an editor in the Magazine Division of the Office of War Information. She now resides in Cambridge, Mass., where, among other things, she writes short stories such as the one in the current issue.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, Charles Flowers has written widely in a variety of periodicals, including the Chattanooga Times, where he worked as a reporter, the Washington Post, and the Miami Herald. He has been a drama reviewer, a book reviewer, and a fiction writer. He is the author of a published novel, It Never Rains in Los Angeles, and an unpublished novel, Single Laughter, which is currently under consideration. A former English professor at the University of Rochester, Mr. Flowers adapted his VQR article from a class lecture.

Wendy Westbrook Fairey recently became associate dean of the faculty at Barnard College in New York. She has taught at the University of Hawaii and Bowdoin College in Maine, where she was also the dean of students. Mrs. Fairey is now working on a study of a group of novels by George Eliot, Henry James, and George Meredith.

Donald Pizer is the Pierce Butler Professor of English at Tulane. He is the author of The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study, published by Minnesota in 1976. His latest work, to be published by Southern Illinois later in 1981, is Twentieth-Century American Literary Naturalism: An Interpretation. Mr. Pizer is now at work on a critical study of Dos Passos’ writings of the 20’s and 30’s.

Doris L. Eder has published widely on modern American, British, and European fiction and poetry. Her travels have been equally wide, since she was born in Europe and has spent half her life in England and the other half in the U. S. She currently develops academic programs at Keene State College in New Hampshire.

A member of the faculty at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, Herbert J. Levine has written extensively on Yeats in numerous journals. He is now working on a book about Blake and Walt Whitman as inheritors of the tradition of Biblical prophecy.

Allen Douglas, formerly a Fulbright Fellow and Scholar in Residence in History at the University of Virginia, is presently visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi.

A widely published reviewer and critic, Irving Malin teaches at the City College of New York. He is the author of books on Bellow, Singer, and Faulkner.