NEARING, Homer Jr

(1915-)

   US writer and professor of English at Pennsylvania Military College. His series of stories about Professor Cleanth Penn Ransom and Professor Archibald MacTate, mathematician and philosopher respectively, appeared in FSF from "The Poetry Machine" in 1950 up to 1963. 7 of these stories were assembled with 4 unconnected tales (and very thinly "novelized") as The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom (coll 1954); theyconcern the two professors' attempts to formalize a union between science and the arts. Their efforts, though doomed, are told without malice. Uncollected stories are "The Embarrassing Dimension" (1951), "TheMaladjusted Classroom" (1953), "The Cerebrative Psittacoid" (1953), "The Gastronomical Error" (1953) and "The Hermeneutical Doughnut" (1956 Fantastic Universe). The professors' names disconnectedly represent several US poets and critics associated with the New Criticism: Cleanth Brooks, Archibald MacLeish, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert PennWarren.

   JC/PN

   See also: DIMENSIONS; HUMOUR.