LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Page 3
"SO I GAVE HIM BACK HIS OLE FRATERNITY FIN."
the took world
By Martha Eissenstat Assistant Instructor of English
HOSPITAL, by Kenneth Fearing. Ballantine Books, 35 cents. Those who delight in reading about the antiseptic and ether of a hospital might be drawn to read Kenneth Fearing's "The Hospital." The book would be a disappointment, for the hospital atmosphere seems forced, merely a place where the soap opera characters can operate (pun intentional). The plot is thin and melodramatic with only one character, Helen Russell, attaining any degree of humanness and showing any emotion which might be called real—in her case, relief.
THE BOOK IS WORTH SOME TIME as a study in just how poorly a book can be written and still get published, much less reprinted. Written in 1939, it seems to be a parody on Hemingway and Dos Passos. Covering a period of about three to four hours, it is divided into sections headed by the character's name in which this character thinks, talks, and acts—patterned after Dos Passos.
Instead of giving us a series of good character sketches, this device merely confuses because of the poor writing. Each character sounds exactly like the character who appeared before him. One character gains some individuality by interspersing "my God" every other line. Also mimicking Dos Passos, the author has interwoven the "Annual Report: Hudson General Hospital" between the characters. Attempts to capture Hemingway's barren but nevertheless effective style results in such sparkling writing as—
"The nurse wheels the patient in from our anesthesia room, and we get her up on the operating table. I sit down by the patient's head, bring the big stand into place and adjust the mask."
or Miss Marmon:
"I notice, then, that the switchboard fan is slowing. Now it stops. Maybe there's something the matter with the hourse (sic, typical of the poor proofreading) current everywhere."
THE ATTEMPT AT IMMEDIACY by the present tense completely fails because the author apparently forgot what he was doing and occasionally writes a section in the past. This serves to completely confuse the reader, who is having enough trouble trying to keep track of the characters.
One aspect is somewhat interesting. Written in the thirties, the book does capture some of the atmosphere of the depression: the object poverty—the indignity of burial in potter's field, the impersonality of the clinic care, the antiseptic indifference of the nurse to the body she prepares for the morgue and the allusions to the Red Scare and to the violence of strikes (one longshoreman has acid thrown in his eyes). Otherwise the book is a waste of time. Kenneth Fearing has written much better works.
Worth Repeating
College faculties should be shaken up a little. Intramural warfare notwithstanding, life is too easy for many. There are the ineluctable corruptions of teaching; the too-quick dominion over students' minds, the sleazy omniscience, the sacerdotal aura of the lectern. It would be wise to have more faculty seminars, and teams of teachers handling the same class in active opposition to each other. All too often it is considered bad taste for professors to discuss ideas—they are inherently monologists—and some faculty dining rooms have the starchy chattiness of a British officers' mess.—David Boroff
Fallout Is Topic Of Special Meeting
Thursday, November 30,1961 University Daily Kansan
Edward A. Martell, from the office of aerospace research, will be featured speaker at a special session of Kansas chapter of Sigma Xi, honorary scientific research society, at 7:30 p.m. today.
Mr. Martell will speak on "The Influence of the Atmosphere on World Wide Fallout."
Mr. Martell is determining world wide fallout from radioactive samples taken during high altitude flights of balloons, rockets and aircraft. He has recently observed the distribution of Rhodium 102 which was formed as a radioactive tracer in a hydrogen bomb explosion in 1958.
Greek Monastery Lecture Subject
St. Catherine's, the oldest Greek orthodox monastery, is the subject of a lecture to be given here tomorrow at 4 p.m.
Fred Anderegk, head of photographic services at the University of Michigan and official photographer for an expedition which explored the Mt. Sinai monastery, will speak in the Forum Room of the Kansas Union on "The Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai."
Mr. Anderegg helped photograph parts of the monastery with a group of professors from the Universities of Michigan, Princeton and Alexandria, Egypt, during the summer of 1958. One of the principal results of Mr. Anderegg's photography was a complete record of the huge mosaic of the Transfiguration of Christ above the monastery's altar. Many documents and manuscripts were found in the monastery. Entrance to St. Catherine's is limited by pass from the Greek Archbishop of Cairo.
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.—Sir Winston Churchill
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