Ben M. Vorpahl

Bio: Ben M. Vorpahl is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 26 citations.

Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature

Abstract: W hat London seems to be suggesting, then, in “T o Build a Fire,” is not any kind of animalistic return for man to a presymbolic state of existence in order to survive; on the contrary, he seems to strongly imply that animals survive through instinct; men of limited mental capacity fail; and that human beings who exercise good judgment, tempered with emotional insights are the human beings who win out over a hostile environment. J a m e s K . B o w e n , Southern Oregon College

"Very Much Like A Fire-Cracker": Owen Wister on Mark Twain

Abstract: In October, 1935, Harper’s Magazine, the same journal that printed Owen Wister’s first Western sketches in 1892, carried an essay by the seventy-five year old novelist characterizing Mark Twain as “among all our writers . . . not only the most interesting . . . but also the best beloved.”1 There was nothing unusual about the designation—especially in 1935,, when such widely different ad­ mirers of Mark Twain as Samuel Gompers and Nicholas Murray Butler were getting ready to celebrate the one hundreth anniver­ sary of Sam Clemens’ birth. Three motion pictures were made about subjects related to the famous Missouri novelist, President Roosevelt memorialized him in a speech from the White House, a special U. S. postage stamp was planned in his honor, and, in England, appropriate ceremonies were held at Oxford University. By characterizing Mark Twain as he did, Wister merely echoed the burden of what everybody was saying. Yet the Harper’s essay was interesting and in some degree unique because of the peculiar relationship between Mark Twain and Wister which it at once defined and completed. On the surface it looked like simply an­ other of many memorial essays, polished, erudite and somewhat bookish. But closer examination shows that it was different. Wister’s essay grew out of and expressed a series of interesting confusions which defined qualities of Mark Twain’s art and Wister’s mind more clearly than would have been possible for the factual account the essay was supposed to be.

The Land before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860.

Abstract: To discover how women constructed their own mythology of the West, Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of women's writing about the frontier. She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodny's study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land .

The Indian Man: A Biography of James Mooney

Abstract: The Indian Man examines the life of James Mooney (1861-1921), the son of poor Irish immigrants who became a champion of Native peoples and one of the most influential anthropology fieldworkers of all time. As a staff member of the Smithsonian Institution for over three decades, Mooney conducted fieldwork and gathered invaluable information on rapidly changing Native American cultures across the continent. His fieldwork among the Eastern Cherokees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas provides priceless snapshots of their traditional ways of life, and his sophisticated and sympathetic analysis of the 1890 Ghost Dance and the consequent tragedy at Wounded Knee has not been surpassed a century later. L. G. Moses is a professor of history at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1833-1933.

The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: The West of Frederick Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister.

Abstract: Preface Preface to the Paperback Edition Introduction Part I: The East 1. The Formation of an Eastern Establishment 2. Easterners and the Western Experience, 1835-1885 3. Remington, Roosevelt, Wister: The East and Adolescence Part II: The West 4. Roosevelt's West: The Beat of Hardy Life 5. Remington's West: Men with the Bark On 6. Wister's West: The Cowboy as Cultural Hero Part III: East and West in the Decade of Consensus 7. The Rough Riders: Regiment of True Americans 8. Technocracy and Arcadia: Conservation under Roosevelt 9. Remington, Roosevelt, Wister: Consensus and the West References Index

Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American Literature

Abstract: W hat London seems to be suggesting, then, in “T o Build a Fire,” is not any kind of animalistic return for man to a presymbolic state of existence in order to survive; on the contrary, he seems to strongly imply that animals survive through instinct; men of limited mental capacity fail; and that human beings who exercise good judgment, tempered with emotional insights are the human beings who win out over a hostile environment. J a m e s K . B o w e n , Southern Oregon College