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When I accepted the editorship of Weber Studies over a year ago, I brought to my job a clear idea of what the journal would strive to become, a commitment to the task at hand, and personal experience only with "consulting" editorship. I was confident that I would be able to meet all publication and production challenges successfully with my personal resources, a student business assistant, and a desk-top publishing facility.

Weber Studies has done exceptionally well during this first year of its expanded mission to bolster my faith in idealism and hard work; however, I have realized that there is more to managing an academic journal than reading and routing manuscripts, scheming painless revisions (or rejections), and producing a good-looking, readable journal.

The work in Weber Studies office has burgeoned bewilderingly. Like the recluse whose decision to get a cat to keep the mice away led him into nothing less than the adventure of living the full life, complete with wife and the rest of her paraphernalia, I found myself drawn inexorably into the world of academic publishing. I discovered (not unnaturally) a maze of tasks that were routine with the project but which were not connected at all with editorial work.

In meeting the challenges of this big-bang expanding world, we have had to not only learn new skills but incur previously unplanned routine expenditure. We have been constrained to raise our blanket annual dues of $5.00 to a more realistic $10.00 for insti-tutions. We are keeping our pledge of the original subscription rate of $5.00 to individuals. Weber Studies, however, is sustained almost fully through Weber State College institutional support.

During this period of phenomenal growth and attendant anxiety, I have received encouragement and financial support from Sherwin Howard, Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities. I thank him for his generosity and understanding.

I offer my heartfelt gratitude to all friends and well-wishers of Weber Studies who willingly gave donations. May they continue to grow in numbers; they should be pleased to see their donations put to the best use in this period of our growth. My special thanks go to Maria Lana Holbrook, my new Business Assistant, who worked hours through the summer to help get this issue to the printers.

The present issue of Weber Studies has much to commend itself to our readers. We have tried to make it as interdisciplinary in inter- est as possible. For instance, minimalism as a sociological phenom- enon has engaged the attention of some of our most singular and acute thinkers from Christopher Lasch to .... in contemporary society. John Barth's article expounds the aesthetic principle underlying its impressive literary manifestation in our times.

Scott P. Sanders's article focuses on three cultures--Anglo, Chi- cano, and Indian--as manifested in selected works of Shelton, Anaya, and Silko; it explores the heightened gothic strain that emerges naturally as these three cultures struggle to grow and understand the forces that bind them as the inheritors of the American Southwest.

Valentine and Palmer's article focuses on the nascent, liberal, rather than radical, feminist rhetoric that governs Kate Chopin's seemingly traditional short story.

Ron Carlson's lovely short fiction, poems by Janne Goldbeck, Keith Long, Walter McDonald and Ace G. Pilkington, together with reviews of important books by regional authors that are sure to get national attention, make up the potpourri of this issue.

Both issues of next year's volume 5 of Weber Studies will be centennial issues to mark Weber State's 100th birth year. Prepa- rations are afoot to make these issues special to all our readers.