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tery of Herman Melville as Melville
himself pursued Ishmael, who pur-
sued Ahab, who pursued....
  Not until we come to see the pur-
suit of authors, artists, and their works
as we can sometimes see the pursuit
of white whales and what they may
signify, will this book be of more than
passing interest or significance to
anyone other than the small coterie
who sail or wish to sail on the ship of
Melvillean scholarship. When and if
we do come to appreciate and com-
prehend the personal and communal
effort to strike through the masks of
Herman Melville (or others of his
kind)-however mottled their sur-
faces, however unlike the blazing, re-
poseful whiteness of the whale-when
and if we do come to understand the
human and historic significance of
literary, biographical, and biblio-
graphic study-then perhaps this
book will sell. Until that time, those
in the know will have to take crew-
like solace in their appreciation of the
analogies between Ahab's quest to
strike through the masks of fate, real-
ity, and time-or Melville's to
"plumb" the depths of the human
self-and the too-often less self-con-
scious quests of literary critics, biog-
raphers, and their readers to plumb
the depths of Melville's plumbings or
to strike through Ahab's strikings.
Published literary critic and histo-
rian, Peter A. Fritzell is an associate
professor of English at Lawrence
University and, coincidentally, heir
to the position Merton M. Sealts, Jr.
held before he became professor of
English at UW-Madison.
THE JENS JENSEN I KNEW by
Sid Telfer, Sr.; Driftwood Farms
Press, P.O. Box 74, Ellison Bay, 1982.
86 pp. $11.95 cloth; $7.95 paper.
By Richard Boudreau
Born in 1860 in Denmark, Jens Jen-
sen came to this country at the age
of 24, eventually settling in Chicago.
Determination and hard work soon
gave him wide responsibilities with
the Chicago Park Department. Over
the years he renovated old parks, laid
out new ones, created neighborhood
playgrounds, and finally pushed for
the creation of the Forest Reserves of
Cook County. With a growing rep-
utation as a genius in the developing
field of landscape architecture, he
went into private practice in 1908.
Among other projects he laid out the
grounds for Greenfield Village at
Dearborn, Michigan, designed the
Ford Pavilion and surrounding
grounds for the Chicago's World Fair
in 1933, and planned the Lincoln
Memorial Gardens in Springfield, Il-
linois.
  After successes in his field that ri-
valed those of his contemporary Frank
Lloyd Wright, he began to look about
for a location of a school through
which to perpetuate his theories about
landscaping, about nature, and about
living. That purpose led him to Door
County for the first time in 1919. But
not until the death of his wife in 1935
did he move permanently to the El-
lison Bay area. He spent the remain-
der of his life there, developing his
unusual school and laying out its
acreage, the combination of which he
called The Clearing.
  Though many people know some-
thing of The Clearing, perhaps even
have visited it, most know very little
about the man who founded it. Now
thanks to this modest (both in size
and in tone) book, we can know him
as well as our next-door neighbor. Sid
Telfer, Sr., a Door County orchard-
man most of his long life-he's 88-
was next-door neighbor to Jensen for
many years, from 1935 to Jensen's
death in 1951. And this book is rich
in Telfer's own recollections-not
other people's-of their enduring
friendship.
  It is the man, not his accomplish-
ments, that we come to know in the
pages of this book. His great love for
unspoiled nature delayed getting
electricity to his school for some time
because he would allow no trees to
be cut to accomplish it. The new
school building was constructed of
native fieldstone taken up from the
immediate vicinity, and when weath-
ered stones were needed, they were
pried loose, but Jensen insisted on the
holes being covered with nearby veg-
etation to hide the scar as nature
would eventually do on its own.
  This same love of the natural
caused him to leave undisturbed a
large fox snake that often sunned it-
self in an ivy near his woodshed door,
much to the discomfort of some of his
many visitors. When he learned the
renters of his farmhouse had killed a
deer, he had them leave, not wanting
anyone on the property who de-
stroyed wildlife. And during his last
illness he received as a gift from his
long-time friend, Emma Toft, a small
skunk, which, after his initial sur-
prise, he accepted gladly.
  "I want to be honest and factual,"
Telfer says in the introduction. He is
that and more-absolutely straight-
forward, unembellished, weighty per
word. It is the author's integrity and
honesty and humility that solidly
mortars it all together.
ADVENTURES IN AN AMERI-
CAN'S LITERATURE by Norbert
Blei; The Ellis Press, P.O. Box 1443,
Peoria, Illinois, 1982. 183 pp., paper,
$5.95.
By Richard Boudreau
The actual composition of this book
predates Blei's Door Way, 1981, a
sparkling collection of interviews with
Door County locals; refers to some of
the short stories in The Hour of the
Sunshine Now, 1976, a solid collec-
tion, half set in his native Chicago,
half in his adopted Wisconsin, the ti-
tle story haunting, haunting; and
helps explain the mix of language and
watercolor of his whimsical first book,
The Watercolored Word, 1969.
  But Adventures in an American's
Literature (a play on the title of that
ubiquitous high school text, Adven-
tures in American Literature) is most
closely connected to Blei's The Sec-
ond Novel, 1979; it is, in fact, the
missing first novel, though second
printed, as he acknowledges in the
"Introductory Notes." If the previous
novel was about writing, then, ac-
cording to Blei, this one is about
teaching.      I
  The "adventures" are those of a
character called Miroslav Blazen, who
becomes Hassock, who becomes
Tewa, who becomes-whatever-for,
the narrator says, we name ourselves,
"it's the American way." And these
are all guises of the novel's voice. "At
times I think I'm the main charac-
ter," the narrator says to a friend of
44/Wisconsin Academy Review/June 1983