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Friday, March 8, 1974
University Daily Kansan
Philip Roth Mocks Modern America in Baseball Farce
By ALISON GWINN
Kansas Reviewer
Philip Roth (382 pages; Holt, Rinehart and Winston; 1973; $8.95)
"The Great American Novel" is just that, Philip Roth couldn't have chosen a more appropriate title for his book, whose subtitle is "An underfated fiction for adulterated Americans.
Our premise is American; Word Smith ("Call me Smity") is out to write the greatest American novel since "Moby Dick." A decade later, he wrote "And Two Years Before the Mast."
Its subject is baseball, traditionally and indisputably as American as apple pie, hot dogs and General Motors combined. And under the pseudonym of Smith, Roth, with tongue in cheek, paints an elaborately realistic realistic picture of modern America.
Baseball, as General Oakhart, president of the league, would say, is a game of people, and being an American game to the elite is something of a privilege in all of whom Roth caricatures in great depth.
There is Nickname Damur, batting second for the Mundys baseball team, who spends his entire career searching for a name ("How about Happy? Or Twinkletes?" Or Lightning? Or Flash?) he can make for himself.
And there's his teammate, Bud Parsuna,
batting seventh for the Munyaf and born
in 1920.
develop a rather unorthodox maneuver for
returning the ball to the infield after a
There is Roland Agni, high school baseball prodigy who plays by all major leagues and an athletic from 40 colleges only to be signed up by his father to play for the Ruppert Mundys, the only team that dadn't bothered to scout him. He'd been doing that being to drastically Rubin's curd pride.
The visual relationships between the human form and its environment are explored in a photographic exhibit by two University of Kansas students in the exhibit in the Spooner Museum of Art's photography gallery.
People in Environment Theme of Photo Exhibit
Emyert said the two photographers were 'always showing their works as students but also as teachers'.
Trust. One merely feels as if he, too, is a victim of them and their kind.
THE TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS choose different methods to portray the human form, and each selects different environments in which to place that form. The human form is captured intrinsic relationships between the human form and its environment.
Russian, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
By JAY GLICK
Kansan Reviewer
"The Great American Novel" is pure force, unrelenting in its pursuit of the American dream, the American hero, the manicual American fetishes. One receives a sense of completeness upon finishing this novel. Roth has left no institution unburned from the March of Dimes to Starkist Tum (Sorry, Charlie') commercials.
Scharwarm works with the more idyllic human form of a female nude. This nude is placed in various pastoral and wooded landscapes. Scharwarm then attempts to blend the human form with a natural object or to show striking similarities.
Larry Schwarm, Greenburg graduate student, and Tory Kakfa, Brooklyn senior, will be the featured photographers to exhibit their works. According to James Enyear, curator of photography for the museum, their works were chosen for exhibition because they were part of the collection.
"The being students doesn't have a oedipnum to do with it," he said.
The posture the nude assumes and human anatomical features serve to convey similarities between the human form and forms found in nature. A nude in a rigid posture, seated on one foot, represents trees or tree trunks jutped against are examples of such blending of forms.
SCHWARM SAID he deliberately avoided
Even his ending hits home, when Word Snitty's baseball novel faces 27 rejection letters from various New York publishers with charges of being vicious and sadistic and unauthentic, defying the institution of the great American novel itself and placing "Snitty" among the ranks of yet another rebellious and misunderstood author: the
And then there is "Welcome Bud Pursah Day." product of the Barrum of baseball, Frank Mazuma, when Nichauce Damur wrote about his mother, Graham Cracker, pet polo pony and second cousin to the great Seabaucit, ridden by Mazuma's voluptuous daughter, whose name is Eve.
Roth has written a novel that defies any fictional categories. It is epic prose; it is dense parody; it is maliciously humorous, only because one can read it and say to himself, "Yeah, I guess all other Americans are like that."
employ the services of a professional mother, who hires herself out at $13 a night
"The Great American Novel" is the story of the demise of the Ruppert Mundys, perennial holders of last place in the Patriot League, third (after the National and American) of the major leagues of baseball. The Mundys decline from the days of their past leadership three consecutive World Series titles, to the years of their becoming the first home team in baseball history. "To help save the world for democracy" their stadium is turned into a barracks for soldiers in transit to Europe—and on to the day when the Mundy House-Un-American appearance before the Disaster follows disaster as Roth mocks every American hypocrisy, dream, ideal and tradition.
All are undeniably real, but somehow sarcastically so. They are the very embodiment of the American dream, the sense of individual flashing and nonsensical doubletalk, which, thanks to Rod's unrelenting use of familiar anecdotes, come across terrifically fresh and interesting.
using the face to the nude because he didn't want the human form to take on a personality. Instead, he uses sections of the nude and also takes an effort to introduce the form.
Kafka, on the other hand, works with raw,
everyday urban street scenes.
One doesn't relate himself with Gil Garnes or Roland Aglian or Whaithling
Kafka was raised in New York City. He said he hoped to communicate his perceptions of the way in which the city shared with its inhabitants through his photographs.
Henri Cartier Bresson, 20th century photographer, developed what is called the scene and he did so with great detail. He said the decisive moment involved viewing a scene and seeing the uniqueness of the situation in the scene. Kafka said it was "the moment that he tried to capture in his photographs."
Kafka communicates a resignation to, and indeed an appreciation of, the lonely, still, human moments by setting them within the backdrop of a decaying urban streetspace.
"By seeing people in relation to their environment, 'Kakka said,' you gain an understanding of how people are lived."
Four young boys yarmilkers stroll down a sidewalk past old shops, pickles are piled on a Hebrew newspaper, a vender of cutery exhibits his wares on the sidewalk. Through such scenes Kafka isolates moments of life within the city.
And there is Angela Whitting Trust, wealthy middle-aged owner of the Tri-City Tycoons, whose amorous triumphs extend from Babe Ruth to Gil Gamesh, greatest rookie pitcher of all time and attempted umpire murderer.
The photographs on exhibit represent Kafka's work from 171 to the present.
Scenes that seem too ridiculous to ever happen in America suddenly seem to be too ridiculous not to happen in America. Two women with gun holsters are walking down Kakolau, a Patriot League town, where one
This is the first formal showing for both Kafka and Schwarm's works, though both have exhibited some works in the Kansas Union Gallery.
Their work will be on display in Spooner Museum of Art until March 27.
The responsibilities of the Free University director includes compiling course offerings, recruiting teachers, arranging meeting places,and helping students of all ages to find the classes they want. Come in and talk about it with us.
Help Wanted Free University Board Member
Interviews: 10 a.m., Saturday, March 23 Applications & Information now available at SUR Office
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