Thomas J. Lyon

Bio: Thomas J. Lyon is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Wilderness & Arapaho. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 11 publications receiving 77 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

The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology by Joseph Meeker (review)

Abstract: “Ese sol tan alto, esta eterna tierra.” “West, a low shelf of burning light, clouds, the last like an orange-hot anvil; east, the first stars showing, and night rising like water to douse the anvil.” The locale is a land of scorpions and rattlesnakes, “country of the thousand thorns . . . Agarita, catclaw, mesquite, Spanish bayonet, tasajillo, prickly pear.” The narrative is both lyric and brutal, a conflict of spirit and flesh. The treatment of rape avoids all pornographic detail: “Jensie had begged the two men, cried for them to cut her throat for her, and let her grief free. They only cut her with softer knives.” But style is sometimes a problem. Writing in the third person but through Jensie’s point of view, Vliet blends lyric eloquence and pioneer illiteracy in a not altogether successful combination. For instance, “Her hair flew in threads of bright. That was when she seen the three Mexicans. She didn’t waste no time. . . . A flush of stonesuck jugged her chest. Sudden somewhere a high wind creaked. Then her whole flesh snapped.” Though rich in imagery and striking metaphors, the style is sometimes too obstrusive and self-conscious. At first the Mexicans’ dialogue is all in Spanish. Then as Jensie absorbs their language, the dialogue gradually shifts more and more to English, though until the homeward trek, when Jensie and Bernardino open them­ selves to each other, there is very little dialogue. Her thinking in Spanish “changed the look of everything,” and her first reaction, “O never never see her people more! Never hear a sound of English! Lost! Gone barren as those canyon places she was headed for. The colorless country,” changes to an awareness of having found a new Jensie. First printed in T h e H u d so n R e v ie w , R ockspr in g is not a Western for Zane Grey fans, but the discriminating reader will find it rewarding.

An Ignored Meaning of the West

Abstract: It has become a critical commonplace, and a valid one, that much of American literature draws meaning from the contrast between culture and wildness. This juxtaposition of the great wild land and its original inhabitants with the recently implanted Anglo-Saxon civilization (which may be used for purposes ranging from humorous to satiric to deeply philosophical) is perhaps no­ where more fruitful than in the literature of the American West. For sensitive writers who want to say something important about the quality of life in their culture, and for writers who have fitted themselves into the patterns of western nature (instead of observing from outside), the primitive operates somewhat like the sea of Melville—a constant of absolute truth, standing behind the surfaces of new societies and available as a Thoreauvian “realometer.”

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 construct of intent in interpersonal communication

Abstract: This paper discusses three perspectives of intentionality—the encoder, decoder, and interactional—relevant to issues in interpersonal communication. Each perspective provides a different way of both conceptualizing and researching intentionality. The encoder perspective examines various ways in which intentionality manifests itself within human consciousness while the decoder perspective is primarily concerned with the way in which interactants attribute intentions to one another. Finally, the interactional perspective argues that intent manifests itself as part of a negotiated process between interactants and therefore encompasses both the individual encoder and decoder orientations.

Management science methodologies in environmental management and sustainability: discourses and applications

Abstract: This paper investigates and discusses the use of systemic methodologies (SMs) developed in management science/operational research (MS/OR), in particular, those SM that have been informing the complexity inherent in environmental management and sustainable (EM/S) practices. By surveying a sample of the top MS/OR and systems journals, we assess the extent to which systemic management science methodologies developed recently have been used in tackling EM/S problems. Titles and abstracts of EM/S applications published in MS/OR and systems journals between 1989 and 2009 were queried for the occurrence of typical keywords associated with a set of SMs (eg, complexity theory, systems dynamics, soft systems, critical systems, viable systems model). The survey identifies a set of articles representing the practice of either a particular methodology or of a mixture of various SMs in EM/S setting. By assembling and critically reviewing a sample of applications in EM/S the paper hopes to raise awareness among environmentalists, operational researchers and management scientists of the benefits of using systemic approaches developed in MS/OR and, in this way, to encourage further exchange and conversation between these fields of management.

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