Monday, Dec. 18, 1961 University Daily Kansan Page 3
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. by Finis Farr. Scribner's, $ 5.95.
There is some doubt that this is the definitive biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. But it is a good one. In size it may seem sketchy, but for the general reader almost all of the important details about Wright are present.
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
And besides the story, there is the bonus that is almost necessary in anything about Wright—excellent photographs of the most important Wright buildings. It is unfortunate that the picture of "Falling Water" had to be spread over two pages, and the picture of the Robie house doesn't convey why this was an important monument in the "Prairie school." These are minor criticisms; the photographs otherwise are highly satisfactory.
IT IS NOT ALWAYS THE HAPPIEST KIND OF READING. One may admire eccentric individualists, and if one happens to be an Any Rand he even builds books about them. But Wright didn't have to be that much of a nonconformist. One can't help feeling that most of the criticism leveled against Wright for his extramarital affairs and his arrogant egotism had some justification.
So is the biography, though Farr is a bit of a name-dropper, throwing in allusions from everybody from Kenneth Grahame of "The Wind in the Willows" to Sir Christopher Wren.
Farr does not give us the artistic throes of creation, as Irving Stone did—fictionally—with Michelangelo in "The Agony and the Ecestasy." We don't quite get from this book just how Wright became—or was—a genius. Was it the Froebel building blocks, or the Welsh heritage of individualism, or the nonconformist father? Was it the highly Emersonian approach to living? Was it the excitement of the times, the temper of American industrialism in post-Civil War America? Was it the inspiration of H. H. Richardson or of the great Louis Sullivan, Wright's teacher?
He deserved the trouble he got from his second wife, the wild and irresponsible Miriam. But he didn't deserve the horrible tragedy of Taliesin East, when a butler ran amok, burned up the beautiful Wisconsin home of Wright and bludgeoned to death seven persons with an ax.
WHATEVER IT WAS, IT WAS FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. Many of us revere Wright because he both resisted the worst aspects of the modern world and learned to use them? His homes, especially, utilized what Sullivan called "form follows function." But functionalism, to both Sullivan and Wright, was more than the use to which something is put. Both men used it to describe how a building or any other creation best fulfills the creator and the persons who live in it or know it, how it realizes them and their potential.
This, then, is a good book. The whole story, from early days in Wisconsin, down through the work in exciting Chicago of the eighties and nineties, the beautiful prairie homes of the first decade of this century, the fabulous but long torn down Midway Gardens, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that was "floating" on a mud base, the dream house of southern California, Falling Water at Bear Run, the buildings for the Johnson family, and finally the Guggenheim Museum—this is what Finis Farr offers us.
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, by Carson McCullers. Bantam Classics, 75 cents.
This was a first novel, and it revealed the interesting talent of Carson McCullers that still seems, to me, an interesting talent only. Mrs. McCullers has great compassion for her characters and she so well relates the problems of her characters to problems of man, and she is extremely perceptive, no matter what her limitations might be.
You might call her novels tone poems. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," like the others, is a story of the small-town South. Its central character is John Singer, a deaf mute who finds it necessary to transfer his interests to others when a deaf mute friend is sent to an asylum.
This is a pitiful story, one with warm humanity. The characters seem an odd set, but they are in a mold made familiar to us by later novels from the southern school.
DODSWORTH, by Sinclair Lewis. Dell Laurel, 50 cents.
The Los Angeles Times literary critic recently asked, "Will there be a Sinclair Lewis revival?" The question was based on the appearance of Mark Schorer's biography of Lewis and the hardback reprint of three Lewis novels—"Main Street," "Babbitt" and "Arrowsmith."
If there is a revival, there seems to be little chance that "Dodsworth" will be part of it. The book doesn't have the reputation of the others, but many consider it a better book. It is one of the few books that has a character Lewis obviously likes; one would gather that Lewis liked few people or few characters in his novels.
SAM DODSWORTH IS NO GEORGE BABBITT. HE IS A really nice guy, a wealthy motorcar manufacturer seeing Europe at 50, and not really liking or understanding what he sees. He prefers to see what European manufacturers are doing with their cars, and he is bored and looking for other Americans. Not so his wife, Fran. She is looking for other men, and she finds them.
"Dodsworth" is marital tragedy, in a sense, but there is a triumphant feeling for the reader when Sam, tricked and trapped long enough, decides he's had it. and chooses the American widow, Edith Cortright, over Fran. On the way it is a novel that makes sharp commentaries on the differences between American and European civilizations, being sympathetic—for Lewis—to both.
Sound and Fury
Rude Speaks Out
Because of requests that I continue my comments on the University (actually my roommate told me I ought to keep giving people hell), I am bowing to this demand and am sending you another epistle.
Editor:
I have heard that certain forces of darkness on this campus intend to look into the fraternity and sorority groups here to see if there is discrimination as to race, creed or color. This is typical of these people who want to keep pushing, prying and noseying around. Why can't they let well enough alone? I understand from a guy who's in my English Lit class that the fraternities have been the big guns on the People-to-People program.
(YEAH, I KNOW THAT THE ONLY People they seem to accept are west European Aryans and some foreigners from Canada, but don't confuse the issue with a side issue.)
OK, now. The point is that parents and alumni groups will begin to wonder what goes here. I mean if we keep pushing things like integration, where will it all end? Let's keep the fraternities and sororites the way they are. Those people have a right to choose their roommates, just as I do. And what would happen, anyway, if some fraternities decided to buy this "I am my brother's keeper" jazz? They'd be read out of their nationals sure as heck, and then where would they be with those big white mansions and no kids anxious to join? After all, why join just a local eating house?
George Hart will probably be the Democratic candidate for governor. He's from Wichita and the people there are mostly Democrats, despite the efforts of the local Birch Society to have the FBI send them to jail. So we have Hart the Democrat versus Anderson the Republican. Now Wichita has a lot of votes, and you can't win an election without votes, so both Hart and Anderson will be courting the Wichita voters. And what better bait to dangle before them than the promise to take that costly institution, Wichita U, off their necks by putting it into the state system?
NOW THAT I HAVE DISPOSED OF THIS, I want to turn my attention to George Hart and Wichita University. Well, you might ask, how are these linked? Very simple.
AND NOW ENTERS a complicating factor in the Hart-Wichita situation. In fact, if my memory serves me well, on my last visit to Wichita I saw a news story which said certain people at KU were the big guns against Wichita joining the state system. Seems they had this pie with slices out for all the existing state institutions. Then they put another greedy big mouth at the table and had to cut the same pie into smaller pieces. (These administration types seem to like pies an awful lot. I wonder if there is anything Freudian in that. I'll have to ask my psych teacher, if I can tear her away from her thesis long enough to spend a few minutes with me.)
S. F. Rude (a pen name)
****
I just finished reading a couple of Christmas letters. One was from a fellow named H. M. Hefner, the other from Carolyn Gordon. I don't know either of these people, but these days you get a lot of mail from people you don't know. Usually they want something from you, but Mr. Hefner and Miss Gordon are exceptions.
Mr. Hefner asked for $25, not for himself, mind you. It is really for me. The $25 is for a Lifetime Key to the Playboy Club. Man, I have arrived . . . because the regular fee is $50, and here I'm being offered a "charter application" for $25. And the brochures that came with Mr. Hefner's friendly application blank. . . Look at what your $25 gets you: First we see "a bevy of beautiful bunnies" opening the door to "the posh Playboy Club in your area."
AND DIG THESE BUNNIES, man. We zoom in on one of them bending over a gent in the bar. For all that guy knows, he may be getting milk on the rocks because he hasn't got his eyes on the glass, and neither have I. You also get good food, private TV rooms, music, dancing and other cultural refinements. But every one of the pictures in the Playboy Club News they sent me has a Bunny, so while I wouldn't be so crude as to say that they're selling women—White Slave Act and all that sort of thing, man—I'm pretty clear on what that $25 (special price to me) is for.
The other letter has a brochure with pictures, too. One of the pictures is of some kids sitting in front of a table on which there is a package of powdered milk. There's a letter from a nurse in Guatemala: "In this township about 85 per cent of the Indian children are given coffee with sometimes a little flour added for nourishment. Yesterday I cared for an unbelievably tiny infant of 8 months who weighed only 7 pounds with all its blankets. The parents cannot afford powdered milk at $1 a pound..."
Miss Gordon would like money, too. For the Guatemalan kids and others like them around the world. You send it to them through CARE, 660 First Avenue, New York 16, N.Y.
SORRY, BUNNY BABY, but I've only got a little lettuce this month, and I can hear those kids crying with hunger. My roomie tells me I'm a sentimental ape, and I guess he's right. But he's tossing in five and says if he has any luck tomorrow at the weekly poker game he'll split his wins... half for the kids and half toward our $25 application fee. You see, we got this plan. Once we get a key, we have duplicates made and peddle them, discreetly, at a few of the choice fraternities.
S. F. Rude
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