3,744 research outputs found
Muir-Torre syndrome - Treatment with isotretinoin and interferon alpha-2a can prevent tumour development
No full textMuir-Torre syndrome is a genodermatosis in which multiple internal malignancies are associated with cutaneous sebaceous tumours and kerato-acanthomas. A 57-year-old man presented with multiple sebaceous tumours, kerato-acanthomas, verrucous carcinoma of the nose, renal cell and transitional cell carcinomas of the left kidney, adenoma of the colon and a positive family history of colon carcinoma. He was treated with interferon (IFN-alpha Pa) s.c. 3 x 10(6) U three times a week along with 50 mg isotretinoin daily as well as topical isotretinoin gel. During a follow-up of 29 months, only 1 sebaceous skin tumour developed and was removed, whereas more than 30 such skin tumours had been surgically removed during the last 3 years. No evidence of internal tumour development or recurrence was found. The combination of IFN with retinoids seems to be of promise to prevent tumour development in Muir-Torre syndrome. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel
Genetics of schizophrenia and affective psychoses
No full textPART 1 - THE GENETICS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA AND AFFECTIVE PSYCHOSES (pages 4-
69)This comprises an overview and critique of the work that led to the publications
that form the thesis.PART 2 - THE REFERENCE LISTS OF THE PUBLICATIONS DISCUSSED, (pages 70-124)1987Kutcher, S.P., Blackwood, D.H.R., St. Clair, D.M., Gaskell, D.F., and Muir, W.J.
(1987) Major author
"Auditory P300 in borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia"
Archives of General Psychiatry, 44: 645-6501988Blackwood, D.H.R., St. Clair, D.M., Muir, W.J., Oliver, C.J., and Dickens, P.
(1988) Minor author
"The development of Alzheimer's diseases in Down's syndrome assessed by
auditory event-related potentials"
Journal of Mental Deficiency Research, 32: 439-453
Muir, W.J., Squire, I., Blackwood, D.H.R., Speight, M.D., St. Clair, D.M., Oliver,
C., and Dickens, P. (1988)
"Auditory P300 response in the assessment of Alzheimer's disease in Down's
syndrome: a two year follow-up study" Major author
Journal of Mental Deficiency Research, 32: 455-4631989Blackwood, D.H.R., Muir, W.J., St. Clair, D.M., and Evans, H.J. (1989) Major
author
"Schizophrenia and chromosomes" (Letter)
Lancet, ii: 1459
Kutcher, S.P., Blackwood, D.H.R., Gaskell, D.F., Muir, W.J., and St. Clair, D.M.
(1989) Major author
"Auditory P300 does not differentiate borderline personality disorder from
schizotypal personality disorder"
Biological Psychiatry, 26: 766-774
St. Clair, D.M., Blackwood, D.H.R., and Muir, W.J. (1989a) Major author
"P300 abnormality in schizophrenic subtypes"
Journal of Psychiatric Research, 23: 49-551990Blackburn, I.M., Roxborough, H.M., Muir, W.J., Glabus, M., and Blackwood,
D.H.R. (1990) Minor author
"Perceptual and physiological dysfunction in depression"
Psychological. Medicine, 20: 95-103
St. Clair, D., Blackwood, D., Muir, W., Carothers, A., Walker, M., Spowart, G.,
Gosden, C., and Evans, H.J. (1990) Major author
"Association within a family of a balanced autosomal translocation with major
mental illness"
Lancet, 336: 13-161991Blackwood, D., St. Clair, D., and Muir, W. (1991a) Major author
"DNA markers and biological vulnerability markers in families multiply affected
with schizophrenia"
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 240: 191-196
Blackwood, D.H.R., St. Clair, D.M., Muir, W.J., and Duffy, J. (1991b) Major
author
"Auditory P300 and eye tracking dysfunction in schizophrenic pedigrees"
Archives of General Psychiatry, 48: 899-909
Blackwood, D.H.R., Young, A.H., McQueen, J.K., Martin, M.J., Roxborough,
H.M., Muir, W.J., St Clair, D.M., and Kean, D.M. (1991) Major author
"Magnetic resonance imaging in schizophrenia: altered brain morphology
associated with P300 abnormalities and eye tracking dysfunction"
Biological Psychiatry, 30: 753-769
Morris, S.W., Muir, W., and St. Clair, D. (1991) Major author
"Dinucleotide repeat polymorphism at the human tyrosinase gene"
Nucleic Acids Research, 19: 69681993Evans, K.L., Fantes, J., Simpson, C., Arvelier, B., Muir, W., Fletcher, J., Van
Heyningen, V., Steel, K.P., Brown, K.A., Brown, S.D.M., St. Clair, D., and
Porteous, D. (1993) Minor author
"Fluman olfactory marker protein maps close to tyrosinase and is a candidate
gene for Usher syndrome type I"
Human Molecular Genetics, 2: 115-118
Fletcher, J.M., Evans, K., Baillie, D., Byrd, P., Hanratty, D., Leach, S., Julier, C.,
Gosden, J.R., Muir, W., Porteous, D.J., St. Clair, D., and Van Heyningen, V.
(1993) Minor author
"Schizophrenia-associated chromosome 11 q21 translocation: identification of
flanking markers and development of chromosome 11 q fragment hybrids as
cloning and mapping resources"
American Journal of Human Genetics, 52: 478-490
Roxborough, H.M., Muir, W.J., Blackwood, D.H.R., Walker, M.T. and Blackburn,
I.M. (1993) Major author
"Neuropsychological and P300 abnormalities in schizophrenics and their
relatives"
Psychological Medicine, 23: 305-3141994Blackwood, D.H.R., Ebmeier, K.P., Muir, W.J., Sharp, C.W., Glabus, M., Walker,
M., Souza, V., Dunan, J.R., Murray, C., Dougall, N., and Goodwin, G.M. (1994)
Major author
"Correlation of regional cerebral blood flow measured by single photon emission
tomography with P300 latency and eye movement abnormalities in
schizophrenia"
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 90: 157-166
Blackwood D.H.R., Muir, W.J., Roxborough, H.M., Walker, M.T., Townshend, R.,
Glabus, M., and Wolff, S. (1994) Major author
"Schizoid personality in childhood: auditory P300 and eye tracking responses at
follow up in adult life"
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24: 487-500
Dr Walter J Muir, Doctor of Science Thesis, the University of Edinburgh 75
Glabus, M.F., Blackwood, D.H.R., Ebmeier, K.P., Walker, M.T., Souza, V.,
Dunan, J.R., Sharp, C.W. and Muir, W.J. (1994) Major author
"Methodological considerations in measurement of the P300 component of the
auditory ERP in schizophrenia"
Electroencephalography Clinical Neurophysiology, 90: 123-134
Morris, S., Leung, J., Sharp, C., Blackwood, D., Muir, W., and St. Clair, D. (1994)
Major author
"Screening schizophrenic patients for mutations in the amyloid precursor protein
gene"
Psychiatric Genetics, 4: 23-27
Sham, P.C., Morton, N.E., Muir, W.J., Walker, M., Collins, A., Shields, D.C., St.
Clair, D.M., and Blackwood, D.H.R. (1994) Major author
"Segregation analysis of complex phenotypes: an application to schizophrenia
and auditory P300 latency"
Psychiatric Genetics, 4: 29-38
Sharp, C.W., Muir, W.J., Blackwood, D.H.R., Walker, M., Gosden, C., St. Clair,
D.M. (1994) Major author
"Schizophrenia and mental retardation associated in a pedigree with retinitis
pigmentosa and sensorineural deafness"
American Journal of Medical Genetics, (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 54: 354-3601995Brookes, A.J., Slorach, E.M., Evans, K.L., Thomson, M.L., Gosden, C.M., Muir,
W.J., and Porteous DJ. (1995) Major author
"Identifying genes within microdissected genomic DNA: Isolation of brain
expressed genes from a translocation region associated with inherited mental
illness"
Mammalian Genome, 6: 257-262
de Souza, V.B.N., Muir, W.J., Walker, M.T., Glabus, M., Roxborough, H.M.,
Sharp, C.W., Dunan, J.R., and Blackwood, D.H.R. (1995) Major author
"Auditory P300 event-related potentials and neuropsychological performance in
schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder"
Biological Psychiatry, 37: 300-310
Evans, K.L., Brown, J., Shibasaki, Y., Devon, R.S., Arvelier, B., Christie, S.,
Maule, J.C., Baillie, D., Slorach, E.M., Anderson, S.M., Gosden, J.R., He, L.,
Petit, J., Weith, A., Gosden, C.M., Blackwood, D.H.R., St. Clair, D.M., Muir, W.J.,
Brookes, A.J., and Porteous, D.J. (1995) Minor author
"A three megabase contiguous clone map on the long arm of chromosome 11
across a balanced translocation associated with schizophrenia"
Genomics, 28: 420-428
He, L., Mansfield, D.C., Brown, A.F., Green, D.K., St. Clair, D.M., Muir, W.J.,
Morris, S.W., Wright, A.F., and Blackwood, D.H.R. (1995) Minor author
"Automated linkage analysis in psychiatric disorders"
American Journal of Medical Genetics, (Neuropsychiatric Genetics) 60: 192-198
Petit, J., Bosseau, P., Evans, K., Gosden, C., Muir, W., St. Clair, D., Porteous,
D., and Arvelier, B. (1995) Minor author
Seeding of YAC's over regions 1 q41 -42,3 and 11 q14.3-q23 with microdissection
clones"
European Journal of Human Genetics, 3: 351-3561996Battersby, S., Ogilvie, A.D., Smith, C.A.D., Blackwood, D.H.R., Muir, W.J.,
Quinn, J., Fink, G., Goodwin, G.M., and Harmar, A.J. (1996) Minor author
"Structure of a variable number tandem repeat of the serotonin transporter gene
and association with affective disorder"
Psychiatric Genetics, 6: 177-181
Blackwood, D.H.R. Muir, W.J., Stevenson, A., Wentzel, J., Ad'hiah, A., Walker,
M.T., Papiha, S.S., St. Clair, D.M., and Roberts, D.F., (1996) Major author
"Reduced expression of HLA B35 in schizophrenia"
Psychiatric Genetics, 6: 51-59
Harmar A.J., Ogilvie, A.D., Battersby S., Smith, C.A.D., Blackwood, D.H.R, Muir,
W.J., Fink, G., and Goodwin, F.M. (1996) Minor author
"The serotonin transporter gene and affective disorder"
Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, LXI: 791-795
He, L., Carothers, A., Blackwood, D.H.R., Teague, P., Maclean, A.W., Brown, J.,
Wright, A.W., Muir, W.J., Porteous, D.J., and St. Clair, D.M. (1996) Minor author
"Recombination patterns around the breakpoint of a balanced 1:11 autosomal
translocation associated with major mental illness"
Psychiatric Genetics, 6: 201-208
He, L., Morris, S., Lennon, A., St. Clair, D.M., Porteous, D.J., Wright, A.F., Muir,
W.J., and Blackwood, D.H.R. (1996) Major author
"A genome-wide search for linkage in a large bipolar family: comparison of
genotyping accuracy using di- and tetra-nucleotide repeat microsatellite markers"
Psychiatric Genetics, 6: 123-129
Schizophrenia Linkage Collaborative Group For Chromosomes 3, 6, and 8:
Levinson, D.F., Wildenauer, D.B., Schwab, S.G., Albus, M., Hallmayer, J., Lerer,
B., Maier, W., Blackwood, D., Muir, W., StClair, D., Morris, S., Moises, H.W.,
Yang, L., Kristbjarnarson, H., Helgason, T., Wiese, C., Collier, D.A., Holmans, P.,
Daniels, J., Rees, M., Asherson, P., Roberts, Q., Cardno, A., Arranz, M.J.,
Vallada, H., McGuffin, D., Owen, M.J., Pulver, A.E., Antonarakis, S.E., Babb, R.,
Blouin, J.L., Demarchi, N., Dombroski, B., Housman, D., Karayiorgou, M., Ott, J.,
Kasch, L., Kazazian, H., Lasseter, V.K., Loetscher, E., Luebbert, H., Nestadt, G.,
Ton, C., Wolyniec, P.S., Laurent, C., Dechaldee, M., Thibaut, F., Jay, M.,
Samolyk, D., Petit, M., Campion, D., Mallet, J., Straub, R.E., Maclean, C.J.,
Easter, S.M., Oneill, F.A., Walsh, D., Kendler, K.S., Gejman, P.V., Cao, Q.H.,
Gershon, E., Badner, J., Beshah, E., Zhang, J., Riley, B.P., Rajagopalan, S.,
Mogudicarter, M., Jenkins, T., Williamson, R., DeLisi, L.E., Garner, C., Kelly, M.,
Leduc, C., Cardon, L., Lichter, J., Harris, T., Loftus, J., Shields, G., Comasi, M.,
Vita, A., Smith, A., Dann, J., Joslyn, G., Gurling, H., Kalsi, G., Brynjolfsson, J.,
Curtis, D., Sigmundsson, T., Butler, R., Read, T., Murphy, P., Chen, A.C.H.,
Petursson, H., Byerley, B., Hoff, M., Holik, J., Coon, H., Nancarrow, D.J., Crowe,
R.R., Andreasen, N., Silverman, J.M., Mohs, R.C., Siever, L.J., Endicott, J.,
Sharpe, L., Walters, M.K., Lennon, D.P., Hayward, N.K., Sandkuijl, L.A., Mowry,
B.J., Aschauer, H.N., Meszaros, K., Lenzinger, E., Fuchs, K., Heiden, A.M.,
Kruglyak, L., Daly, M.J., and Matise, T.C. (1996) Minor author
"Additional support for schizophrenia linkage on chromosomes 6 and 8: a
multicenter study"
American Journal of Medical Genetics 67: 580-594
Schizophrenia Collaborative Linkage Group for Chromosome 22 (1996) - Gill, M.,
Vallada, H., Collier, D., Sham, P., Holmans, P., Murray, R., McGuffin, P., Nanko,
S., Owen, M., Lasseter, V.K., Pulver, A.E., Meyers, D., Nestadt, G., Antonarkis,
S., Housman, D, Childs, B., Straub, R., Su, Y., MacLean, C., Murphy, B., Wang,
S., Walsh, D., Kendler, K., Polymeropoulos, M., Coon, H., Byerley, W., Gershon,
E., Golden, L., Crow, T., DeLisi, L., Freedman, R., Reimherr, F., Wnder, P.,
Larent, C., Dumas, J-B., D'Amato, T., Jay, M., Martinez, M., Campion, D., Mallet,
J., Wildenauer, D., Flallmayer, J., Lerer, B., Maier, W., Schwab, S., Ebstein, R.,
Gurling, H, Curtis, D., Blackwood, D., Muir, W., St. Clair, D., Fie, L., Maguire, S.,
Moises, Ft., Yang, L., Wiese, C., Kristbjarnson, Ft., Levinson, D., and Mowry, B.
(1996) Minor author
"A combined analysis of D22S278 marker alleles in affected sib-pairs: support for
a susceptibility locus for schizophrenia at 22q12"
American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics) 67: 40-451997Lindholm, E., Cavelier, L., Ffowell, M., Eriksson, I., Jalonen, P., Adolfsson, R.,
Blackwood, D.FI.R., Muir, W.J., Brookes, A.J., Gyllensten, U., and Jazin, E.E.
(1997) Minor author
"Mitochondrial sequence variants in patients with schizophrenia"
European Journal of Fluman Genetics, 5: 406-412
Mors, O., Ewald, FL, Blackwood, D., and Muir, W. (1997) Major author
"Cytogenetic abnormalities on chromosome 18 associated with bipolar affective
disorder or schizophrenia"
British Journal of Psychiatry, 170: 278-280
Wilson-Annan, J.C., Blackwood, D.FI.R., Muir, W., Millar, J.K., and Porteous, D.J.
(1997) Major author
"An allelic association study of two polymorphic markers in close proximity to a
balanced translocation breakpoint t(1 ;11) which co-segregates with mental
illness"
Psychiatric Genetics 7: 171-1741998Asherson, P., Mant, R., Williams, N., Cardno, A., Jones, L., Murphy, K., Collier,
D.A., Nanko, S., Craddock, N., Morris, S., Muir, W., Blackwood, D., McGuffin, P.,
and Owen, M.J. (1998) Minor author
"A study of chromosome 4p markers and dopamine D5 receptor gene in
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder"
Molecular Psychiatry, 3: 310-320
Doris, A.B., Wahle, K., MacDonald, A., Morris, S., Coffey, I., Muir, W., and
Blackwood, D. (1998) Major author
"Red cell membrane fatty acids, cytosolic phospholipase-A2 and schizophrenia"
Schizophrenia Research, 31: 185-196
Millar, J.K., Brown, J., Maule, J.C., Shibasaki, Y., Christie, S., Lawson, D.,
Anderson, S., Wilson-Annan, J.C., Devon, R.S., St. Clair, D.M., Blackwood,
D.H.R., Muir, W.J., and Porteous, D.J. (1998) Major author
"A long-range restriction map across 3 Mb of the chromosome 11 breakpoint of a
translocation linked to schizophrenia: Localisation of the breakpoint and the
search for neighbouring genes."
Psychiatric Genetics, 8: 175-182
Souery, D., Lipp, O., Serretti, A., Mahieu, B., Rivelli, S.K., Cavallini, C.,
Ackenheil, M., Adolfsson, R., Aschauer, H., Blackwood, D., Dam, H., Delcoigne,
B., Demartelaer, V., Dikeos, D., Fuchshuber, S., Heiden, M., Jablensky, A.,
Jakovljevic, M., Kessing, L., Lerer B., Macedo, A., Mellerup, T., Milanova, V.,
Muir, W., Nylander, P.O., Oruc, L., Papadimitriou, G.N., Pekkarinen, P.,
Peltonen, L., Pinto De Azevedo, M.H., Pull, C., Shapira, R., Smeraldi, E., Staner,
L., Stefanis, C., and Verga, M. (1998) Minor author
"European collaborative project on affective disorders: interactions between
genetic and psychosocial vulnerability factors" Minor author
Psychiatric Genetics, 8: 197-205
Williams, J., Spurlock, G., Holmans, P., Mant, R., Murphy, K., Jones, L., Cardno,
A., Asherson, P., Blackwood, D., Muir, W., Meszaros, K., Aschauer, H., Mallet,
J., Laurent, C., Pekkarinen, P., Seppala, J., Stefanis, C.N., Papadimitriou, G.N.,
Macciardi, F., Verga, M., Pato, C., Azevedo, H., Crocq, M-A., Gurling, H., Kalsi,
G., Curtis, D., McGuffin, P., and Owen, M.J. (1998) Minor author
"A meta-analysis and transmission disequilibrium study of association between
the dopamine D3 receptor gene and schizophrenia"
Molecular Psychiatry, 3: 141-149
Vallada, H., Curtis, D., Sham, P., Kunugi, H., Zhao, J.H., Murray, R., McGuffin,
P., Nanko, S., Owen, M., Gill, M., Collier, D.A., Antonarakis, S., Housman, D.,
Kazazian, H., Nestadt, G., Pulver, A.E., Straub, R.E., MacLean, C.J., Walsh, D.,
Kendler, K.S., DeLisi, L., Polymeropoulos, M., Coon, H., Byerley, W., Lofthouse,
R., Gershon, E., Goldin, L., Freedman, R., Laurent, C., Bodeau-Pean, S.,
d'Amato, T., Jay, M., Campion, D., Mallet, J., Wildenauer, D.B., Lerer, B., Albus,
M., Ackenheil, M., Ebstein, R.P., Hallmayer, J., Maier, W., Gurling, H., Curtis, D.,
Kalsi, G., Brynjolfsson, J., Sigmundson, T., Petursson, H., Blackwood D., Muir,
W., St Clair, D., He, L., Maguire, S., Moises, H.W., Hwu, H.G., Yang, L., Wiese,
C., Kristbjarnarson, H., Levinson, D.F., Mowry, B.J., Donis-Keller, H., Hayward,
N.K., Crowe, R.R., Silverman, J.M., Nancarrow, D.J., Read, C.M. (1998) Minor
author
"A transmission disequilibrium and linkage analysis of D22S278 marker alleles in
574 families: further support for a susceptibility locus for schizophrenia at 22q12"
Schizophrenia Research 32: 115-1211999Battersby, S., Ogilvie, A.D., Blackwood, D.H., Shen, S., Muqit, M.M., Muir, W.J.,
Teague P., Goodwin, G.M., and Harmar, A.J. (1999) Minor author
"Presence of multiple functional polyadenylation signals and a single nucleotide
polymorphism in the 3' untranslated region of the human serotonin transporter
gene"
Journal of Neurochemistry, 72: 1384-1388
Blackwood, D.H.R., Glabus, M.F., Dunan, J., O'Carroll, R.E., Muir, W.J., and
Ebmeier, K.P. (1999)
"Altered cerebral perfusion measured by SPET in relatives of schizophrenic
patients: correlations with memory and P300" Major author
British Journal of Psychiatry, 175: 357-366
Craddock, N., Lendon, C., Cichon, S., Culverhouse, R., Detera-Wadleigh, S.,
Devon, R., Faraone, S., Foroud, T., Gejman, P., Leonard, S., Mclnnis, M., Owen,
M.J., Riley, B., Armstrong, C., Barden, N., van Broeckhoven, C., Ewald, H.,
Folstein, S., Gerhard, D., Goldman, D., Gurling, H., Kelsoe, J., Levinson, D.,
Muir, W., Philippe, A., Pulver, A., Wildenauer, D. (1999) Minor author
"Chromosome Workshop: Chromosomes 11, 14, and 15"
American Journal of Medical Genetics; Neuropsychiatric Genetics 88:244-254
Furlong, R.A., Rubinsztein, J.S., Ho L, Walsh, C., Coleman, T.A., Muir, W.J.,
Paykel, E.S., Blackwood, D.H.R., and Rubinsztein, D.C. (1999) Minor author
"Analysis and meta-analysis of two polymorphisms within the tyrosine
hydroxylase gene in bipolar and unipolar affective disorders"
American Journal of Medical Genetics: Neuropsychiatric Genetics 88: 88-94
Hampson, R.M., Malloy, M.P., Mors, O., Ewald, H., Flannery, A.V., Morten, J.,
Porteous, D.J., Muir, W.J., and Blackwood, D.H.R. (1999) Major author
"Mapping studies on a pericentric inversion (18) (p11.31 q21.1) in a family with
both schizophrenia and learning disability"
Psychiatric Genetics, 9: 161-163
Souery, D., Lipp, O, Mahieu, B., Rivelli, S.K., Massat, I., Seretti, A., Cavallini, C.,
Ackenheil, M., Adolfsson, R., Aschauer, H., Blackwood, D., Dam, H., Dikeos, D.,
Fuchshuber, S., Heiden, M., Jakovljevic, M., Kaneva, R., Kessing, L., Lerer, B.,
Lonnqvist, J., Mellerup, T., Milanova, V., Muir, W., Nylander, P.O., Oruc, L.,
Papadimitriou, G.N., Pekkarinen, P., Peltonen, L., Pull, C., Raeymaekers, P.,
Shapira, B., Smeraldi, E., Staner, L., Stefanis, C., Verga, M., Verheyen, G.,
Macciardi, F., Van Broeckhoven, C., and Mendelwicz, J. (1999) Minor author
"Tyrosine hydroxylase polymorphism and phenotypic heterogeneity in bipolar
affective disorder: a multicenter association study"
American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 88: 527-532
Visscher, P.M., Haley, C.S., Heath, S.C., Muir, W.J., and Blackwood, D.FI.R.
(1999) Major author
"Detecting QTLs for uni and bipolar disorder using a variance component
method"
Psychiatric Genetics, 9: 75-84.2000Serretti, A., Macciardi, F., Cusin, C., Lattuada, E., Souery, D., Lipp, O., Mahieu,
B., Van Broeckhoven, C., Blackwood, D., Muir, W„, Aschauer, H.N., Heiden,
A.M., Ackenheil, M., Fuchshuber, S., Raeymaekers, P., Verheyen, G., Kaneva,
R., Jablensky, A., Papadimitriou, G.N., Dikeos, D.G., Stefanis, C.N., Smeraldi, E.,
and Mendlewicz, J. (2000) Minor author
"Linkage of mood disorders with D2, D3 and TH genes: a multicenter study"
Journal of Affective Disorders 58: 51-612001Borglum, A.D., Hampson, M., Kjeldsen, T.E., Muir, W., Murray, V., Ewald, H.,
Mors, O., Blackwood, D., and Kruse, T.A. (2001) Minor author
"Dopa decarboxylase genotypes may influence age at onset in schizophrenia"
Molecular Psychiatry, 6: 712-717
Devon, R.S., Anderson, S., Teague, P.W., Muir, W.J., Murray, V., Pelosi A.J.,
Blackwood, D.H.R and Porteous, D.J. (2001a) Minor author
"The genomic organisation of the metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 5
gene and its association with schizophrenia"
Molecular Psychiatry 6: 311-314
Devon, R.S., Anderson, S., Teague, P.W., Burgess, P., Kipari, T.M.J., Semple,
C.A.M., Millar, J.K., Muir, W.J., Murray, V., Pelosi, A.J., Blackwood, D.H.R., and
Porteous, D.J. (2001b) Minor author
"Identification of polymorphisms within disrupted in schizophrenia 1 and disrupted
in schizophrenia 2, and an investigation of their association with schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder"
Psychiatric Genetics, 11: 71-78
Evans, K.L., Le Hellard, S., Morris, S.W., Lawson, D., Whitton, C., Semple,
C.A.M., Fantes, J.A., Malloy, M.P., Maule, J.C., Humphray, S.J., Ross, M.T.,
Bentley, D.R., Muir, W.J., Blackwood, D.H.R., and Porteous, D.J. (2001) Major
author
"A 6Mb high-resolution BAC/PAC contig of human 4p15.3-16.1, a candidate
region for bipolar affective disorder"
Genomics 71: 315-323
Millar, J.K., Christie, S., Anderson, S., Lawson, D., Loh, D. H-W., Devon, R.S.,
Arveiler, B., Muir, W.J., Blackwood, D.H.R., and Porteous, D.J. (2001) Minor
author
"Genomic structure and localisation within a linkage hotspot of Disrupted in
Schizophrenia 1, a gene disrupted by a translocation segregating with
schizophrenia"
Molecular Psychiatry 6: 173-178
Muir, W.J., Thomson, M.L., McKeon P, Mynett-Johnson L, Evans, K.L., Porteous
DJ and Blackwood, D.H.R. (2001) Major author
"Markers close to the dopamine D5 receptor gene (DRD5) show significant
association with schizophrenia but not bipolar disorder."
American Journal of Medical Genetics 105:152-158
Lerer, B., Macciardi, F., Segman, R.H., Adolfsson, R., Blackwood, D., Blairy, S.,
Del Favero, J., Dikeos, D.G., Kaneva, R., Lilli, R., Massat, I., Milanova, V., Muir,
W., Noethen, M., Oruc, L., Petrova, T., Papadimitriou, G.N., Rietschel, M.,
Serretti, A., Souery, D., Van Gestel, S., Van Broeckhoven, C., and Menlewicz, J.
(2001) Minor author
"Variability of 5-FIT2C receptor cys23ser polymorphism among European
populations and vulnerability to affective disorder"
Molecular Psychiatry, 6: 579-585
Souery, D., Van Gestel, S., Massa
Letter from L. Walter Brown to [John Muir & Louie Strentzel Muir], 1885 Jul 15.
No full text[letterhead]July 15# , 1885Dear Brother and Sister Muir:oour little darling Minnie died this a.m. at 6.30 oclock of cholera in[auturn?], she was sick first a week, [illegible] came at once but could not save her.We go home in the morning and shall bury her then.Hoping that you are all well we are affectionately [J.?] Walter Brownhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/34900/thumbnail.jp
The John Muir Newsletter, Winter 2000
No full textvolume 10, Number 1 ^%4Km§-Winter 2000 NEWSLETTER Some Writings and Words of John Muir Compared with Writings of Henry David Thoreau by Stan Hutchinson, Sierra Madre, California ohn Muir\u27s earliest exposure to the writings of Henry D. Thoreau probably occurred in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Ezra S. Carr while he was a student it the Wisconsin State University, Madison, from ■ [lebruary, 1861, to June, 1863. The Carrs were keenly interested in the works of Emerson and Thoreau, and had (granted Muir access to their library. It is reasonable to presume his reading matter included Thoreau\u27s Walden published some eight years earlier. Had Muir not read Walden during his college days, it seems probable that he jjtould have mentioned his later reading of this unique book somewhere in his extensive correspondence with Mrs. Carr which began in 1865; such a letter has not come to light. It is also likely that he had opportunities to read §ne or more of Thoreau\u27s essays, particularly those published posthumously in the Atlantic Monthly beginning in June, 1862. H A copy of Walden was sent to Muir in Yosemite in 1872, and his receipt of the book is documented in a surviving letter.1 There is no confirmation that he first read it lit that time, but this gift would have allowed him to per- Wse and study Walden from a new perspective after a decade of personal wilderness experiences far removed §§om Madison. The earliest reference to Muir\u27s reading of ffhoreau is found in his letter to Jeanne Carr written from Yosemite, May 29, 1870, advising her that he had been reading Thoreau\u27s \u27Maine Woods\u27 a short time ago. 2 fjjhe first mention of Thoreau by Muir in his published writings was apparently in his article, Hetch-Hetchy Valley, published in the March 25, 1873 issue of the Boston Weekly Transcript; therein he praised the pure ibul of Thoreau. 3 Houghton Mifflin published The Writings of Henry I J. Thoreau in 1906 in a twenty volume edition, fourteen volumes of which were Thoreau\u27s Journal. Muir acquired his set in December of the following year.4 Assuming Muir delved into the various books, Thoreau\u27s personality, philosophy and creative genius were more fully revealed to Muir, greatly increasing his admiration for the individual and his work.5 There can be little doubt that Thoreau\u27s nature- oriented writings invigorated and inspired Muir in his own efforts. Similarities in Muir\u27s writings and philosophy to those of Thoreau are not rare and are occasionally encountered when reading one or the other, suggesting Thoreau\u27s subtle influence on Muir. Thoreau would have been pleased. The following examples of Muir\u27s affinity to Thoreau range from those which are perhaps more imagined than real to deliberate paraphrasing. The majority of Thoreau\u27s quotations are from Walden.6 Of the Muir quotations cited, only the first was ever intended by him for publication. Without reservation, Henry David Thoreau proclaimed the purpose of his second book on the title page of Walden, first published in 1854 by Ticknor and Fields, Boston. I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. A sentence of John Muir\u27s journal entry for July 12, 1869, written while en route to the Tuolumne Meadows with Pat Delaney\u27s sheep, appears to be a paraphrase of Thoreau\u27s statement quoted above. One must keep in mind that Muir\u27s 1869 Sierra journal was rewritten several times before it was published in 1911 as My First Summer in the Sierra. His paraphrase of Thoreau may have appeared in the original 1869 journal proving he had read (continued on page 3) T V OR page 1 F» A. C I F I C
News & Notes A great deal of John Muir-related activity is happening these days, proof once again of the worldwide impact of Muir\u27s life on our time. A new CD has been issued called the John Muir Tribute; proceeds from sales will go to support a planned new education and visitors center at the John Muir National Site in Martinez. To order, send your check, payable to John Muir Memorial Association for 25.00 donation plus 29.95 plus shipping and handling. Please contact Pearl Piper to order your copy. NEWSLETTER Volume 10, Number 1 Winter 2000 Published quarterly by The John Muir Center for Regional Studies University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 ♦ Staff ♦ Editor Sally M. Miller Production Assistants ... Marilyn Norton, Pearl Piper All photographic reproductions are courtesy of the John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific Libraries. Copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust. This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. page 2
Some Writings and Words of John Muir Compared with Writings of Thoreau, by Stan Hutchinson Walden prior to that date. Alas, that journal no longer exists. Eating, walking, resting, seem alike delightful, and one feels inclined to shout lustily on rising in the morning like a crowing cock.\u27 In the opening pages of Economy, the first chapter Valden, Thoreau presents his readers with a basic tenet he book, noting the I, or first person.. .will be retained. . . throughout the text. And it was. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else in I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the iirowness of my experience.8 On July 31, 1875, Muir wrote Jeanne Carr from ick\u27s Hotel in Yosemite Valley. In this mostly light- ■ .rted letter, the similarity of his comment about himself SmXh that of Thoreau may be purely coincidental. Then ftlgain, he may have been very deliberately paraphrasing Walden. All this letter is about myself, and why not when I\u27m the only . on in all the wide world that I know anything about - Keith . . . not excepted.5 Both Thoreau and Muir listened to owls during solitary excursions through dark or dimly lit woods and commented on their call. From the Sounds chapter of \u27 Iden comes Thoreau\u27s unusual and somewhat puzzling reflection on owls. I rejoice that there arc owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men.10 Muir very briefly mentioned owls three times in his Sequoia journals of 1875, describing their call as beery, the bird as broad voiced and, in a manner U miniscent of Thoreau, their sanity as questionable. An owl, prince of lunatics. Health in his soft, anglelcss too- whoo-hoo-hoo. Thoreau\u27s essay Walking was first published in the • - \u27antic Monthly for June, 1862, a month after his death. He created the final form of this essay from two of his . \u3est popular lectures of the 1850s, Walking and The Wild. 12 The final version of Walking contains one of \u3ereau\u27s most famous and well-known passages. The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and it I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preserva- H of the World.13 Various journal fragments from Muir\u27s 1890 Alaska trip were later utilized in chapters XVII and XVIII of Travels in Alaska, 1915. The journal entry for July 11, ■■ 90, which contained one of his now most oft-quoted itements was not included. Muir apparently confined the phrase to his private journal, never intending it for publication perhaps because of the similarity to Thoreau. I vas first published, posthumously, in 1938. In God\u27s wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and the wounds heal ere we are aware.14 Thoreau related his views on hunting and fishing in the Higher Laws chapter of Walden. He was hopeful that youths inclined to hunt would soon outgrow it. This was rather unrealistic on Thoreau\u27s part, for in mid-nineteenth century America the bison and passenger pigeon still awaited their respective decimation or extinction by maturing hunters. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.\u275 In mid-May, 1903, John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt spent three days together in Yosemite. During the evening of May 16, they were in camp near Glacier Point apparently enjoying every aspect of roughing it. Muir\u27s opinions on hunting mirrored those of Thoreau, and when Roosevelt turned the conversation to his own hunting exploits the unpolitic Muir proceeded to chastise him. A portion of that conversation was related by Muir to William Colby and Robert Underwood Johnson. Mr. Roosevelt, when are you going to get beyond the boyishness of killing things. . .are you not far enough along to leave that off? [To which the President supposedly responded, perhaps biting his tongue with those formidable teeth.] Muir, I guess you are right. [Of course, six years later TR blasted his way across Africa, ignoring Muir\u27s admonition.]16 Thoreau\u27s dissertation of the history of sauntering, also from Walking, 1862, reflects his typically thorough research on a subject. The excerpt quoted here also illustrates his remarkable and possible unequaled virtuosity with the comma. I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understands the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, - who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, There goes a Sainte-Terrer, a Saunterer, a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks. . . are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. An interesting small book, The Mountain Trail and Its Message, was prepared by Albert W. Palmer from his mountaineering journals and diaries and was published in 1911 by The Pilgrim Press. Palmer was an early member of the Sierra Club and participated in several club outings. The most memorable for him may have been that of July, page 3
Some Writings and Words of John Muir Compared with Writings of Thoreau, by Stan Hutchinson 1908, to the Kern River Canyon when on July 1 he shared a campsite near John Muir. Palmer noted in his diary that the famous naturalist has spread his blankets just below mine under this great old yellow pine. All in all it is a jolly crowd.. . \u278 Several days later while resting along the trail, Palmer was overtaken by Muir. He stopped, they began to talk, and a portion of their ensuing conversation was recorded by Palmer in his diary. He later questioned whether the derivation of saunter Muir gave me is scientific or fanciful, suggesting he was not familiar with Thoreau\u27s commentary on the word. Muir apparently was.19 Mr. Muir, someone told me you did not approve of the word hike. Is that so? His blue eyes flashed, and with his Scotch accent he replied: I don\u27t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not \u27hike!\u27 Do you know the origin of that word \u27saunter?\u27 It\u27s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, \u27A la saint terre,\u27 \u27To the Holy Land.\u27 And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not \u27hike\u27 through them.20 In another well-known quotation from the Economy chapter of Walden, Thoreau described some of the more important duties he had performed in the service of his fellow man. For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.2\u27 Late in life Muir deliberately paraphrased Thoreau\u27s inspector statement. Perhaps while rereading Walden, Thoreau\u27s Journal, or just reflecting on his own years of solitude and discovery, he scribbled out these brief and meaningful words (conjectural within brackets). [For many years I was a] self appointed inspector of gorges, gulches, and glaciers.22 Edward Abbey, a student of both Thoreau and Muir, brought these latter thoughts of the two writer-naturalists into the fourth quarter of the twentieth century and continued something of a tradition with them when he wrote, Saving the world was merely a hobby. My vocation has been that of inspector of desert waterholes. 23 ENDNOTES 1. Abba G. Woolson letter to John Muir, March 21, 1872, Boston, Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California. Cited in J. Parker Huber, John Muir and Thoreau\u27s Maine, The Concord Saunterer, New Series, 3 (Fall 1995): 111. 2. William Frederick Bade, The Life and Letters of John Muir (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1924), Vol I, p. 223. 3. Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981), p. 83 and note, p. 395. Fox\u27s date for this issue of the Boston Weekly Transcript, March 21, 1873, is at variance with Kimes, which dates the issue as March 25, 1873. See William F. Kimes and Maymie B. Kimes, John Muir: A Reading Bibliography (Palo Alto, California, William P. Wreden 1977), p. 7. 4. J. Parker Huber, The Concord Saunterer ( Fall, 1995): p. 113, and note 37, p. 118. 5. For a discussion of Muir\u27s annotation in his set of Thoreau\u27s Journals and Thoreau\u27s influence on Muir\u27s later writings, see Richard F. Fleck, John Muir\u27s Homage to Henry David Thoreau. The Pacific Historian, 29, (Summer/Fall 1985), special double issue, John Muir: Life and Legacy, pp. 55-64. 6. For this and all subsequent quotations from Walden, I have utilized Walden, An Annotated Edition, with foreword and notes by Walter Harding (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston), 1995. 7. John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1911), p. 106. 8. Walden, p. 1. 9. Bade, The Life and Letters of John Muir, 1925, Vol. II, p. 55. Keith is William Keith, artist and friend of Muir. 10. Walden, p. 122. 11. John Muir, John of the Mountains, the Unpublished Journals of John Muir, edited by Linnie Marsh Wolfe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938), p. 215. 12 Great Short Works of Henry Thoreau, edited by Wendell Glick (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982), p. 294. 13. Henry David Thoreau, The Natural History Essays, introduction and notes by Robert Sattelmeyer (Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith Publisher, Peregrine Smith Books, 1980), p. 112. 14. Muir, John of the Mountains, p. 317. 15. Walden, p. 207. 16. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1945), p. 292. 17. Thoreau, The Natural History Essays, p. [93J-94. For the first occurrence of the sauntering passages see The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, [Reprint edition, introduction by Walter Harding. Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, 1984], Vol. 2, Jan. 10, 1851), pp. 140-141. 18. Albert W. Palmer, The Mountain Trail and Its Message (The Pilgrim Press, [no place], 1911. Second edition with introduction and commentary by Charles Palmer Fisk. Sixth Street Press, Fresno, California, 1997), p. 14. 19. Ibid., p. 42. 20. Ibid., pp. 41-42. 21. Walden, p. 16. For the first occurrence of the inspector passages, see Thoreau\u27s Journal, Peregrine Smith reprint edition, 1984, Vol. I [1845-1847], p. 434. 22. Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California. Cited in Michael P. Cohen, The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness (Madison, Wl, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), p. 350. 23. Edward Abbey, Vox Clamantis in Deserto (Rydal Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Clark Kimball, Publisher, 1989 [Second edition, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, Notes from a Secret Journal. St. Martin\u27s Press, New York, no date, p. 46]). page 4
Book Reviews Environmental Ethics: Duties To And Values In The Natural World By Holmes Rolston III Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988 Reviewed by Steven C. Anderson Stockton, CA To state the obvious, environmental concerns have been growing for the past several decades. This has dted from, in large part, the perception that human- luced changes in the environment have had direct • pacts on everyone. This concern has been bolstered by ncreased scientific understanding of nature in an ilutionary and ecological context. The impact has been to a combination of rapid population growth, increased irations, expectations, and demands on resources tered by contemporary economic systems and doctrines that result in ever more growth and consumption, all of fueled by the growth of an enabling technology. Perhaps the most influential plea to extend traditional lies to the environment itself was the call for a land !;.etliic in the widely read Sand County Almanac of Aldo ipold, first published in 1949: A thing is right when it Is to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the Abiotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. thing, Leopold meant human action, and subsequent owledge of the nature of communities has persuaded ecologists that integrity and stability have to be considered n the context of the dynamic of change that is part of the ^history of every ecosystem. Leopold\u27s simple, elegant iement has since generated an academic cottage indus- Ihe subdiscipline of environmental ethics, seeking to . • onalize and explain what many have intuited since their . i recognition of environmental degradation. Rolston has n an important contributor to this burgeoning literature. Although Rolston does not lay out his assumptions in llteipreface or an introductory chapter, the reader soon infers that they are the standard humanistic assumptions rights and ethics are secular constructs and that we are ffo proceed rationally from this precept. There are no . rills present in the wild before human assignment. But les (interests, desires, needs satisfied; welfare at stake) / be there apart from human presence (p. 52). But
Letter from Walter Brown to John Muir, 1891 May 27.
No full text01504[letterhead]2 J. Muirsoon as he is home which he stated would be in about a week. Why he is so anxious to attend to this by July first is so he can go back to New-Mexico at that time where he is building a Quartz Mill. It would be very hard to make a loan now to take up the whole $5000. with interest so if you possibly can I think you had better try to do it the way he requests. Will write again soon as I hear again from Cory. Very Truly Walter Brownhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/39553/thumbnail.jp
Letter from Walter H. Page to John Muir, 1910 May 25.
No full textTHE WORLD\u27sWORKTHE NATURELIBRARYDOUBLEDAY PAGE & CO.133-135-137 EAST16W STREET, NEW YORKCOUNTRY LIFEIN AMERICATHE GARDENMAGAZINEMay 25, 1910.My dear Mr. Muir:Heartily hoping that the world is going well with you this pleasant Spring, let me inquire how the autobiography gets on? Or, to drive towards a book by you in a somewhat different direction, what about putting in formal shape some of your old newspaper sketches about the Sierras which naturally belong together?Most heartily yours,[illegible]John Muir, Esq.,c/o Mr. J. D. Hooker,325 West Adams Street,Los Angeles, California.04766https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/32113/thumbnail.jp
It will not waken me, It will not waken me, Mary [first line of chorus]
No full textstrophic with choruspiano and voiceJohns Hopkins University, Levy Sheet Music Collection, Box
065, Item 046Written by Walter Scott. Composed by J. Willson.E. Riley Engrave
It will not waken me, It will not waken me, Mary [first line of chorus]
No full textstrophic with choruspiano and voiceJohns Hopkins University, Levy Sheet Music Collection, Box
065, Item 046Written by Walter Scott. Composed by J. Willson.E. Riley Engrave
The John Muir Newsletter, Winter 1998
No full textmm IWinter 1998 NEWSLETTER Writing or Living? John Muir\u27s Writerly Identity and Ambivalence by Randall Roorda, University of Missouri, Kansas City (Editor\u27s note: As many fans of John Muir realize, Muir was not comfortable with writing for publication. This analysis of that ■\u27issue is a revision of a paper presented earlier to the Western Literature Association. We wish to thank the State University of lew York Press for permission to print this excerpt from the forthcoming book, Dramas of Solitude: Narratives of Retreat in American Nature Writing, by Randall Roorda.) lite aspect of John Muir\u27s lite I offer is that of a person who wrote voluminously for apparently private purposes yet disrespected !§id abhorred writing for public ones, even though increasingly he seemed marked for that work. It seems clear that Muir struggled against assuming the identity of a writer, and appeared to accept most any pretense to avoid writing in the later sense. !J§ven his compiling of a fortune in agriculture can be interpreted, argues author Stephen Fox, as an excuse to evade the making of books.\u27 Yet for private purposes he required no pretense or even ffiuch of a procedure to wield his pen. That writing, by all ounts, was integral to his way of being in a place, part and |§arcel of the living he made. If, as Robert Engberg and Donald \u27. sling maintain, Muir\u27s story continues to fascinate us because there is something profoundly representative about it,2 this devotion to living and ambivalence toward print may be irl of what makes it so. Since I am concerned with Muir as a writer who is widely read, I will begin with the question of to what degree we should |ti ibute to him the identity of a writer. Those who write the iutioductions to books have a particular need to establish such identity. Yet both Edward Hoagland and Gretel Ehrlich, in introducing reprints of works of Muir, have seen fit to disclaim jjr qualify Muir\u27s writerly identity. Hoagland especially wants to excuse Muir for not being a more proficient or versatile literary fttist than he was. His essay opens with this disclaimer: We must go halfway with John Muir. He was more of an Explorer than a writer, more confident of his abilities in botany and geology than of what he could do with the eagle-quill pens he liked to use, while encouraging a friend\u27s year-old baby to UN I V E R S I T Y OF page 1 scramble about the floor, lending liveliness to the tedium of a writer\u27s room. 3 To go halfway suggests to give the benefit of doubts to a not-quite-writer whose lack of confidence redeems his lack of competence. What business do we have reading this half-competent writer, then? He has other abilities, clearly, but more than that, he has an eagle-quill pen and a baby on the floor - natural talismans and new life as counterweights to the tacit artificiality and death of the study. This opposition of liveliness to tedium is one version of a tacit split between living and writing in general, one that Stephen Trimble makes much of in his introductory essay to Words From the Land, and overview of the work habits and attitudes of nature writers at large. Remarking on what he sees as the dual activity of nature writers, Trimble remarks: They write. They live. And they forge a voice by doing both. 4 This construction of writing as separate and distinct from living is echoed frequently in the comments of nature writers on their trade. Hoagland suggests its force for the nature writer Muir; even in writing, Hoagland implies, Muir veers toward living, leaving us readers halfway away. Hoagland further evokes Muir\u27s non-writerliness by conducting a running comparison with a kindred figure who was a writer: Henry David Thoreau lived to write, but Muir lived to hike. 5 Yet since Thoreau hiked constantly and Muir compiled heaps of on-site writings, in what does the distinction reside? More than anything, it must concern the resolve to publish and disseminate one\u27s writing, and to be socially defined thereby. In this regard, what each man lived to do gets less clear-cut and more bound to shifting life trajectories, with the resolve to publish initially strong, then blunted and turned under in Thoreau, and absent at first in Muir but developing under encouragement and pressure from friends and eased by the remarkable reception his efforts enjoyed from the start. Yet even his success, his immediate acceptance by the best Eastern monthlies, serves mainly to confirm Muir\u27s status as anomalous, for as Fox comments: Most young writers believe in themselves (continued on page 3) F* A C F I C
News Notes EDITOR\u27S NOTE: The editor and staff of the John Muir Newsletter owe an apology to our readers. Because of one too few reviews of copy before the printing of the Fall, 1997, Newsletter, a gremlin in the computer was not rooted out. We apologize to our readers for the fact that some annoucements of forthcoming events had already appeared in previous issues. We thank you for your indulgence and we will make every effort to prevent such duplication in future. price was 95, or 29.95 retail. The Muir Center hopes to be able to offer discounted copies to the subscribers of this newsletter. Please watch this space for announcements of exact date of publication and other details. ♦ ♦ ♦ As readers may be aware through other sources, the California Sesquicentennial is about to be celebrated through various activities throughout the state over the next two years. A kick- off event was the California Studies Conference held on February 5-7,1998, at the University of Southern California. The conference was called, California 1848-1998: 150 Years Since the Discovery of Gold and the U.S. Mexican War. This was a rich and very significant event for Californians. Among the sponsors were the California Council for the Humanities and the Southern California Studies Center of USC as well as the California Studies Association. One session of great interest to our readers was on the new California environ- mentalism after 500 years of resource use. To obtain full information on the conference, phone (800) 872-1104. ♦ ♦ ♦ Two events sponsored by the California Historical Society may be of interest to our readers. The first, on January 23, 24, and 25,1998, was a train trip from Oakland to Sacramento to the California State Historical Museum. A 7.00. A report entitled, Legislative History of the Environmental Goals and Strategies, is available, also for $7.00. These and other reports may be ordered from the Center for California Studies, California State University, Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 9581960S 1, or phone (916) 278-6906. ♦:♦ ♦:♦ ♦:♦ In spring, the California American Studies Association will sponsor an interesting conference out of state. Jointly with the Rocky Mountain American Studies Association, it will co-host a conference in Albuquerque on April 24-26,1998. The conference is called Corridors and Open Spaces: Place, Time and Texts, and will explore Americaness of the Southwest and along the Pacific Coast. Sessions will deal with topics such as technological and ecological corridors and spaces, native, mestizo and immigrant communities, and other cultural and environmental subjects. For information, write A. Gabriel Meienda, American Studies Dept., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, or e-mail address: [email protected] NEWSLETTER Volume 8, Number 1 Fall 1998 Published quarterly by The John Muir Center for Regional Studies University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 ♦ Staff ♦ Editor Sally M. Miller Center Director R.H. Limbaugh graphics consultant Beverly Duffy All photographic reproductions are courtesy of the John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific Libraries. Copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust. This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. o page 2
Writing or Living? John Muir\u27s Writerly Identity and Ambivalence (continued...) extravagantly in order to endure early rejections; Muir deprecated himself but was an immediate success. 6 Real writers don\u27t make it this way. This sense of being other than a writer is central to the appeal Muir exerts as a writer. In every sense anyone could discern, Muir was a natural. It is conventional to note that iaggarent effortlessness in writing may result from arduous irt - and Muir did work hard at making books - but it is less : iBnrarked that an effortless quality may issue, too, from the ■ .ence of effort. Or at any rate, from its irrelevance, as seems often to have been the case with Muir. Consider his writing tits in the field: Linnie Marsh Wolfe states that he carried to or more notebooks on treks, tied to his belt whichever i)i;; he happened to pick up, and :;: wrote his notes, sometimes in Um front, sometimes in the back, ■ m not dating the entries. 7 i isider the volume and iracter of his output: sixty journals in forty-four years, plus i. tass of notes scribbled upon e sheets and bits of paper of shapes and sizes. 8 Despite . habitual and prodigious ut, no one supposes, as some with Thoreau, that these \u3eials may be Muir\u27s primary • k after all, outstripping his iished works. The reason is Muir\u27s reluctance to assume identity of a writer is ifest even in his disorderly, ■ lorn, chronologically ectful - that is, the effortless tanner of his journalizing. -.re is no suspense or iplexity to the question of - it iher he hoped or presumed : writings would be read: he ars to have been oblivious to irospect. Of Thoreau, Sharon ieron claims that the wooden box he built to house his journals tees his cogent wishes for i \u27 iry posterity 9; Muir\u27s i».rnals and notes end up in piles , tch he likens to moraines on my den floor. 10 They are not boxed; like gravel, they are deposited. Given his evidently effortless and unselfconscious facility i language and the immediate success this bred, what arc we nake of Muir\u27s distaste for writing? It\u27s certainly true that . iks and their making were to Muir suspect and inadequate in • \u27xtreme. In a letter he complains of an infinite short- mug with writing, the dead bony words which rattle in • \u27s teeth when read. But as Wolfe suggests, spoken words re not similarly lifeless for Muir, and the effortless quality of hi writing must have been related to his knack for extemporan- ot & spoken address - an arguably more natural facility and one John Muir writing, copyright 1984, Muir-Hanna Trust to which Muir certainly attached greater value. And while Muir\u27s success stemmed largely from the support and exhortation of friends, the latter, in turn, issued largely from Muir\u27s powers of speech. His friends urged him to the solitary labor of writing for publication because, as Fox notes, they were so awed by the nature-struck verbiage that cascaded from his mouth in company, a torrent which they believed ought to be preserved in print. 12 Thus while several commentators reasonably attribute Muir\u27s distaste for writing to the fact that it would detract from his time spent outdoors, it just as surely took away from the time he spent holding forth in the parlor. Fox describes how Muir would monopolize conversation at social gatherings for as much as eight hours at a stretch - and how chagrined he would be if it were pointed out to him that he had done so. Whatever else might be said of it, I would observe that in this behavior - spontaneous, unconscious, extended in duration, situated in intimate yet public gatherings - Muir resembles nothing so much as rhapsode in the traditional, oral sense. The implications of this shed light on a seeming contradiction in this depiction, by Gretel Ehrlich, of Muir the writer in old age: Even at age seventy-three he struggled with the translation of experience into language. He preferred to talk, enchanting listeners with stories of his adventures until his wife, Louie, or a friend shunted him upstairs into the grim solitude of his writing room.13 Here language appears differentiated from and even opposed to talk, associated exclusively with writing. Yet this understanding of language as essentially writing is its historical sense as well, since Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders note, language, strictly speaking, is a nonentity in cultures without writing: Only the alphabet has the power to create \u27language\u27 and \u27words,\u27 for the word does not emerge until it is written down. 14 To the bardic rhapsode of nonliterate societies, even memorization is foreign, modelled as it is upon the tangible, persistent traces of written language. In his verbal fecundity and his disregard for the preservation of his emissions, Muir resembles that bard; and while he strives to fulfill the wishes of others for preservation, there remains always something grudging and equivocal in his acquiescence. Thus Muir enters his grim solitude upon the urging, even the injunction, of a community - one that values his spontaneous vatic emissions but needs them preserved in print. In this page 3
Writing or Living? John Muir\u27s Writerly Identity and Ambivalence (continued ) situation, writing is a lonely, laborious undertaking precisely because it answers to social circumstances: it is spouse and sponsors that shunt Muir to his study and lend him a baby to enliven it. But then what of that solitude that is not grim, that writing in the wilderness which is not the writing of the room? Even this writing extends from an identifiable social milieu, in the sense that Muir\u27s journal-making habit stemmed from a habit of correspondence - in particular an exchange of thought in letters proposed by Jeanne C. Carr, his confidante and the wife of a professor of Muir\u27s - and pursued voluminously for many years.151 cannot broach here the many dimensions of Muir\u27s complex relationship with Mrs. Carr; I would note only that it was in correspondence with Carr that Muir developed not only the prose manner but also the habit of spontaneous writing that marked the journals he soon began to keep - and that of those who urged Muir to take up a public pen, it was Carr who urged longest and loudest, and indeed was primarily responsible for Muir\u27s acquaintance with the many others who echoed her exhortations. We notice by now certain complications in the picture of a Muir split between the joy of living and the toil of writing. There are gradations between the most private and most public forms of his writing, with Jeanne Carr a mediating figure between these extremes. Muir\u27s journals, his most unstudied writing, instigated upon Mrs. Carr\u27s suggestions, may be thought of as his form of talk in solitude, a sort of solo gregar- iousness. The more extended entries share manner and substance with Muir\u27s letters to Carr. And many of Muir\u27s early articles, in turn, originated in epistolary reports to Carr, dispatched upon his correspondent\u27s urging and revised upon her suggestions. These various sites and levels of inscription exemplify how a thread of textuality shuttles loom-like through Muir\u27s travels between wilderness solitude and human households. This thread is oral and rhapsodic at its source - the root of rhapsode being to stitch together.16 What Muir increasingly stitches together is an identity bearing an ethical purpose which is at once self-effacing and self-assured. His central expression of this purpose, often quoted as a single clause - I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature\u27s loveliness - itself comes not from any public pronouncement but from a letter to Jeanne Carr. The entire paragraph from which it is taken is worth examining. Muir has just mentioned his latest solitary excursion, during which he has gathered ouzel tales to tell, and has relayed his renewed conviction that he is hopelessly and forever a mountaineer. He continues: How glorious my studies seem, and how simple. I found a noble truth concerning the Merced moraines that escaped me hitherto. Civilization and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me has not dimmed my glacial eye, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature\u27s loveliness. My own special self is nothing. My feet have recovered their cunning. I feel myself again. 17 Here Muir\u27s much-vaunted mission to entice can be seen as the outgrowth of his studies, which involved the recovery of noble truths in nature not possible in civilization. By this sequence of associations, the solitary retreat from civilization\u27s oppressive, even persecutory force acquires ethical purpose. The stance is ascetic, solitude being productive of a true (unfevered) view of one\u27s special self and leading to its renunciation through ethical commitment. But note that this declaration of self-abnegation occurs in a passage the thrust of which is a celebration of the writer\u27s own rejuvenation, prowess and success. While the special self may be nothing, there is another, authentic identity that is not the product of fever and morbidness, not tethered to personality: this identity Muir does not renounce but exultantly recovers in his studies. It is not an exclusively mental entity, not a mind steering a body: it incorporates a glacial eye, feet of cunning, a self he can feel and need not merely reflect upon. It is not written. Finally, note that Muir\u27s declaration extends from a refreshed resolve over his vocation, his social role; and the role he declares is not that of writer but of mountaineer, one with ouzel tales to tell. Further, his resolution to live to entice others comes on the eve of four further years of solitary wilderness travel extending well beyond the orbit of Yosemite; the paragraph that follows announces his plans. How can Muir assert a mission to entice others even as he is planning to disappear even further from their midst? Only through his writing, we might say, but even more, through the nonhuman tales to tell he gathers, the noble truths turned up in the cunning movement of his feet. The social function of Muir\u27s mountaineer is more nearly akin to that of the storyteller, as critic Walter Benjamin describes it, than the writer as popularly figured. Whether it\u27s one who\u27s stayed at home or, like the mountaineer, come from afar, the storyteller, according to Benjamin, is one who has counsel for his readers, with counsel meaning less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding. 18 Counsel cannot be sought or used by those who do not recognize the story, though; thus the threat to storytelling, which Benjamin regards as a dying art, stems from the diminished value and communicability of direct experience in the industrial era. For storytelling relies upon oral tradition and transmission; its opposite number, the novel, depends upon the printed book and extends from the status of the writer as a solitary individual, who in isolation can neither give nor receive counsel. I am suggesting not that Muir is a storyteller in any such pure and unequivocal sense but rather that the role of the storyteller as opposed to that of the maker of books is one that figures in the formation of his occupational identity. It does so in several of the characteristics that Benjamin attributes to it. For one, Muir continually espouses the virtues of direct experience - especially of nature,
Letter from Walter Brown to John Muir, 1887 Jan 11.
No full text[letterhead]01252Jany 11# 1887John Muir Esq Martinz Cal My Dear Brother:Yours of Jany 5, came this A.M. Also the book for Ethel and the parcel for J. which I will see at noon when I go to dinner and she opens the packages, I will speak for them for today and when I thank you for remembering them I only say what they will report in letters very soon. The house is a very fine one with 10 rooms, Slate roof, soft and hard water up stairs and [letterhead] hot and cold water, markble wash bowls, close in house, grates and nice mantels, electric bells, good hot air furnace, hot air all over the house, plate glass windows, hard wood floors, hard pine and walnut finish, solid cherry stair case, three large rooms in seller, being furnace room, store room and wash rooms, also has a good Barn. the lot is 41x132, and will be wroth 200. per foot. The announcement which which I have [illegible] your equity very than balances the additional liability whichhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/36638/thumbnail.jp
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