Final Harvest and Other Convictions & Opinions by C. L. Sonnichsen, and: Arizona Humoresque: A Century of Arizona Humor ed. by C. L. Sonnichsen (review)

Essay Reviews 125 avant-garde in painting, music, poetry and fiction to gnosticism, Buddhism, and classic Greek literature, little seemed to be beyond his reach. Rexroth wrote an entire book on the history of utopia, translated classic and modern Japanese and Chinese poetry, brought crucial French and Spanish modernists into English, and promoted dozens ofyounger poets. Rexroth’srelevance for under­ standing art in ourfin desiecleshould continue to grow. JOHN TRITICA Albuquerque, New Mexico FinalHarvestand OtherConvictions & Opinions. ByC. L. Sonnichsen. Foreword by Max Evans, Introduction by Nancy Hamilton. (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1991. 118 pages, $12.00.) Arizona Humoresque: A Century ofArizona Humor. Edited by C. L. Sonnichsen. (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 1992. 272 pages, $15.95/$9.95.) Matt Pearce, the University of New Mexico folklorist, linguist, and scholar of southwestern literature, introduced me to C. L. Sonnichsen—not to the man himself, but to his book, The Southwest in Life and Literature. I had been assigned to teach Matt’s course, after his retirement, in “Literature of the Southwest,” and, since Matt’s book was out of print, was searching for a text. Having taught little but freshman composition and technical writing, I was eager to teach any literature course, unlike Sonnichsen, who reported in “UTEP: Harvard on the Border” (Final Harvest), that the president of Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy, now the University ofTexas at El Paso, “told me I was going to teach a course in Southwestern Literature. ... I told him I was not going to do any such thing.... I was an eighteenth century man ... but he leaned on me so hard I had to give in.” Later, Sonnichsen was happy he’d been forced into regional literature. Iwas happy about it, too. He’d produced a good textbook. And I, too, have been happy to have worked in southwestern literature and the literature of the American West. Later, I again met C. L. Sonnichsen in a different medium—letters. He was the first president of the Western Literature Association, in charge of the details and program for the firstjoint meeting with the RM/MLA in Salt Lake City. We corresponded frequently, and sometimes desperately. Some of the background of that meeting is described in another Final Harvestessay, originally published inJohn R. Milton’s SouthDakota Review, “Vardis Fisher and the WLA: A Reminis­ cence,” in which he calls J. Golden Taylor, “the legitimate father of the WLA. 126 WesternAmerican Literature . . .”If that is accurate, then C. L. Sonnichsen was the doctor who brought that child safely into the world. It was not an easy task; a breech birth, I believe, but he managed to get the little one turned around, though there was a great deal ofkicking and screaming, and all the mess that goeswith such a delivery. He did it with tact, patience, sensitivity, intelligence, and even wisdom that calmed the tempers of other participants from Fort Collins to Hagerman, Idaho, to Taos, New Mexico, to Boulder, Colorado. It was a marvelous performance, and I was tremendously impressed. I met him in person, finally, at that meeting in Salt Lake City, and nothing about his actions or his demeanor led me to lower my opinion of him, though I saw little of him except during the meeting. As he reports, the Wylders and the Taylors stayed in a different motel from the Sonnichsens and the Vardis Fishers. But his was a commanding presence, and he was in quiet but complete control. You must read that essay. I never saw him again, and our correspondence dwindled away quite quickly. It wasn’t until 1990, I think, that I heard from him through John R. Milton.John and C. L. Sonnichsen were trying to reconstruct the events of that meeting, and having great difficulties.John wrote to me, checking his memories against mine and Sonnichsen’s, hoping that we could arrive at some agreement on what had happened when and why. Sonnichsen and I didn’t correspond; we did all our talking throughjohn. I’m sorry about that. He was a fine man, one of the gentlemen of the old school, and he will be missed by even those of us who knew...