Letters to Barbara: a Novel by Glenn Meeter. 263 pages, 1981. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. $12.95. Reviewed by John Vander Ploeg.

Once again to spend a few hours in the town of Lansing (Illinois), to visit once more in the home of Glenn Meeter’s grandparents, and also once again to be at the church where I served as the author’s pastor in his boyhood days, now more than thirty years ago—all of which the reading of this his novel made possible—was for me decidedly not an unpleasant task.

Glenn Meeter is now a professor of English at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, Illinois. Although Letters to Barbara is his first novel, he has previously written short stories published in Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, and other magazines.

In our days in Lansing the Meeters had an extensive onion-set business there as well as a canning factory in Wisconsin. They generously supplied our family with sauerkraut and graciously kept on doing so even though, as they one day informed us, our ungrateful young son bad told Glenn at school, “Don’t let your Dad send us any more of that stuff.” For anyone familiar with the scene and the author’s background, memories multiply in the reading of his absorbing story from start to finish.

While he may not receive the acclaim accorded to a Peter De Vries or a Fred Manfred (Feike Feikema), (for whom Calvin College, to put it mildly, should certainly not roll out the red carpet when they appear there) Glenn Meeter does reveal a literary ability that may well warrant the appearance of other books to come.

However, with all due appreciation for the good in Letters to Barbara, this reviewer cannot escape the conviction that Glenn Meeter hardly does full justice to the sturdy stock with its Reformed heritage that produced him. After all, notwithstanding their follies and foibles, these were the folk who also produced such worthies as Dr. H. Henry Meeter and Dr. Cornelius Van Til (the latter from neighboring Highland, Indiana). Letters to Barbara could be received with better grace if it accentuated the positive instead of or as well as the opposite.

Unfortunately, Meeter”s story is not altogether free from a tinge of profanity, a concession to realism now being justified by the avant-garde as being inescapable in literary art, but fortunately still taboo for a choice minority of good writers.

Adrian Vanden Vaarten, chief character in Letters to Barbara, gives a graphic account of his growing infatuation with the attractive black girl, Barbara Robinson, with whom be worked for a summer as a fellow supervisor at Hoover Park in the neighboring city, Calumet (Calumet City, Illinois). For some reason, the plus factors in the story are obviously weighted on the side of Adrian’s black summer co-worker, Barbara, and her father, a Pentecostal minister, with the negative factors on the side of Orangetown (Lansing, Ill.). It may be observed also that the racial tension and the incidence of real or possible miscegenation covered only a narrow segment of the life of Glenn Meeter’s early years in the area of which be writes.

With his literary standing now fairly well assured by this appearance of his first novel, Glenn Meeter might do well to write a sequel, also with his Orangetown roots in mind, covering a broader spectrum of life there in which he probably could find far more to appreciate than what comes to the surface in Letters to Barbara. A suggested title for what could be an outstanding novel (for whatever the suggestion may be worth): Orangetown, U.S.A.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF THE PROFESSORS OF CALVIN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, compiled and edited by Peter DeKlerk, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1980, paper. Reviewed by the editor.

This almost two-inch thick paperback which required almost eight years to compile lists all of the writings of all of the professors who were appointed to teach at Calvin Theological Seminary in its over 100-year history through 1979. This incredibly large labor will continue to be very useful to anyone who is trying to find the writings of any of these men. The list of each author’s writings is preceded by a photograph and brief biography and the writings are listed year by year. Although many of the writings are brief articles or book reviews, a number of books also appear in the lists. Especially impressive is the remarkable amount of literary production of some who taught over the past century. Readers may be interested in the length or some of the longer lists in pages:

L. Berkhof, 52; G.E. Boer (the first professor), 43; C. Bouma, 34; G.D. DeJong, 98; P.Y. DeJong, 59; G.K. Hemkes, 28; W. Hendriksen, 36; D.H. Kromminga, 53; J .H. Kromminga, 25; B.K. Kuip er, 27; Monsma, 35; L. Praamsma, 57; H. Schultze, 43; M.H. W oudstra, 31.