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Thursday, October 26.1961 University Daily Kansan
By Safynaz Kazem
THE IMPORTANT THING, by Robert Granat, Random House,
$3.95
"When are you going to wake up, Jim?"
'Wake up?' James said automatically, momentarily dumfounded.
'What do you mean, wake up?'
"I mean wake up, come alive!"
This was the problem of young Yale student James Warsaw. He was always carrying the feeling of boredom and shallowness. He could discover no cause worth fighting for. He used to read that quotation Leonard—his college roommate—had tacked over his desk: "The important thing is to desire to desire what one should desire."
JAMES HAD BEEN AT ODDS WITH HIS FAMILY, his religion and himself. His upper-middle class Jewish background, his experience at school and at Yale University did not help him. He could project no goal, no ideal or image into the future. Yet 19-year-old James thought he had to feel alive, to do something important. It was 1943. America was at war. James accepted his induction with excitement. World War II seemed to offer a chance to participate and maybe even to find a meaning in life.
Walking into the house, almost floating without the heavy pack and weapons, he felt his being centered in his triceps, biceps, deltoid and pectoralis major. He felt big and brawny, ready for furious violence of some kind, any kind. It wasn't actually a thought as he stood in the little living room in little Valley Glenn surrounded by the little members of his family, but every word and gesture flowed from one realization that he could defend them against enemies or, for that matter, beat them all. Here he was on the very bottom of the pyramid of military rank, below ground practically, and he felt like a hero.
YET JAMES FOUND THE BATTLE DIFFERENT from what he had expected. Nothing was distilled except fatigue, hopelessness and an even stronger disbelief in what other men held sacred.
It was not until he came to understand and open his heart to "Trinidad Sanchez," his New Mexican buddy, that he began to recognize the pieces of his world which had been blown apart—and it was not until he came to know and love "Beate," a German girl, that he saw a way to put them together again. Was this The Important Thing?
Mr. Granat (36 years old) was born in Havana, Cuba, and lives in New Mexico. Though his novel is written in English, the reader will find many Spanish, French and German lines.
THIS REVIEWER WOULD SUGGEST that if Mr. Granat were rewriting his 343-page novel, it might be well to employ the foreign language phrases some other way, since the popular reader will not understand them. Also, the author of this promising first novel might balance his two different styles: the deep philosophical tone and the slangy, even vulgar language.
THE EDUCATION OF A POKER PLAYER, by Herbert O. Yardley, Giant Cardinal Edition, 50 cents.
About three years ago I was sitting in a pot limit poker game in St. Louis. I had been dealt cold hands for half the night, but towards one in the morning I began to get hot, aces back to back in stud, three kings in five card draw, and so on. But it didn't matter. The fellow two hands to my left kept winning. I'd be betting my two pair hard, and he'd come up with three tens. I began to get conservative, and he started to bluff. In short, it was a bad night. At about four, I'd had it, and by mutual consent we wrapped up the game.
"Friend." I asked the winner. "How did you do it."
Now I've heard of leg men, shoulder blade men and the like. But a Yardley man?
"I M A YARDLEY MAN," he replied as he snapped a rubber band over a sheaf of bills.
"Herbert O. Yardley," he explained, and seeing the still raised eyebrows, he continued:
"Yardley is the author of 'The Education of a Poker Player,' the best investment since the Dutch bought Manhattan for 24 bucks worth of beads."
Now for four bits the secrets of the trade are available in this paperback. Yardley plays percentage poker, the only kind that consistently wins.
Letters
If you share Yardley's belief that poker is more intellectually challenging (and a helluva lot more fun) than bridge, then you will trot to the nearest bookstore and lay down the change. There are plenty of typical hands for the man who has to have things spelled out for him.—N.R.
Student Apathy Attacked Editor:
As an aware and concerned student and citizen. I wish to express my disappointment that there is really more apathy than I had thought. The students are less apathetic towards their own immediate interest groups (the even the important NSA question received little comment from the student body), yet lack interest and reject a plea for the expression of aware and concern over the world state of affairs.
Today, Oct. 24, it was determined that Russia had positively tested one of their huge bombs. And there were demonstrations all over the world by high school and college students, regrets expressed by individuals and governments, but nary a word on the KU campus. If this is not apathy, what is? Are you aware of the danger, concerned over the consequences, of not only this bomb, but Russia; the fate and determination of Berlin, encroaching imperialism, Communism, which defies all that we in a democracy stand for; love of a free and united western world and whole world?
If you are not, then let us sink under all that we disbelieve in; if you are, then say something. We are the voice of the people. We must show those in power what we think and how we feel. And not only those in power, but the world. What good is an apathetic America to a struggling Berlin? No good. Stand up and be counted — as one of the ones who care.
Patsy Coutts
El Dorado junior
* * *
CIGARETTEIQUETTE
America may have given the world tobacco, but we haven't exactly stinted on ourselves. Over 1,396,000,000 pounds were consumed in 1957 by well over 60,000,000 Americans.
Averaging the sometime smoker with the chain gang, those trying to taper off with those going full steam ahead, the mild-filter-tippers with the puffers of pungent cigars, it still adds up to an awful lot of smoke.
MUCH OF IT IS BLOWING the wrong way. It's surprising how many people who consider themselves the epitome of politeness are guilty of bad smoking manners.
You'll burn people up while failing to set your world on fire if you're persistently guilty of these smoking sins:
Showing a disregard for the nonsmoker. Unforgivable. Don't blow smoke in his direction—or anyone else's.
Talking with a cigarette drooping from the mouth. Appropriate only in gangster films, this habit is rude and unsightly anywhere else. The cigarette should never be between the lips except when you're actually taking a puff.
TAMPING OUT a cigarette on anything other than an ash tray—hogglish. Used tumblers, coffee cups, or plates, decorated with stubs and ashes, are a sickening sight.
Not chaperoning your cigarette—just letting it go out on its own. This highly dangerous practice can and has caused fire and death. At the very least it results in charred furniture and incensed hosts.
Scattering ashes over yourself, your chair, the carpet.
WHILE NOT ALWAYS a breach of manners, lighting one cigarette after another is never the gracious gesture. Heavy smoking is unattractive to watch.
Balancing a cigarette on the side of an ash tray, or placing it on the edge of the table. Quite dangerous.
In short; watch your smoking manners, don't smoke too much, and people will begin to notice that there's something refreshing about you. In fact, they may even tell you that you're just like a breath of fresh air!
THINK ABOUT IT John H. Ernest Junior
Short Ones
FLINT HALL FREDDIE says that those whistling lawyers must be studying Evidence and Future Interests.
From the Newsstand
JFK and the Presidency
It seems certain that for the rest of this century every government of the United States will be a crisis government, taking office during a time of emergency and dealing with enormous pressures from its earliest moments. Almost the whole brief history of the Kennedy Administration is a story of learning the ropes and finding a crisis at the end of each one. . .
KENNEDY IS A TOUGH MAN. He came to office further armored with a certain sense that he was a man of destiny, fated not only to be President of the United States but a great President in a cruel time. There was no great mystique in this; it was a self-evaluation based on knowledge of his own abilities and a study of the men who had held the office before. Bolstering his self-confidence, too, was his conviction that he had chosen the best possible men for the key jobs in the Administration, and had allowed for the freest possible play between their talents and his. Then came the test of reality.
Laos produced a strong Presidential statement in a televised news conference, an implied promise of American intervention. Cuba produced a real intervention without any strong statement. The failure of each had a sobering effect on the Administration. The former illustrated the danger of speaking without a full understanding of all the consequences, the latter pointed up the danger of acting without full consideration of all consequences.
The unfortunate Cuban disaster was most telling on the President. Officials who visit the White House regularly say they are still uncertain how deeply it has scarred him. The scars don't show; their effects do. Kennedy has returned to one of his original, basic attitudes—skepticism. He had listened to what he considered the best brains in the country. He had consulted the highest ranking experts left over from the previous Administration. He had followed their advice, and it had been wrong. Under those circumstances, he asked ruefully, where was he to turn?
The answer was: inward, to himself, to the only man holding the constitutional responsibility for making final decisions. . .
AT TIMES IT ALMOST seems that luck is owned by the Communists. The resignation of Brazilian President Janio Quadros, the unfortunate battle for Bizerte, the death of Dag Hammerskjold—it all made one aide say, "It's enough to persuade you that God is on Khrushchev's side." This must be taken as wry humor rather than as a sign of any weakening in the conviction that we are destined to come out on top in the world struggle if we can muster the will to win..
The President is aware that mustering America's will and determination is still his most urgent problem. He has often referred to this, but he has not expounded upon it and questions on the subject at his news conferences appear to embarrass him. One impediment is clear: He wants to avoid creating the image of a young President whipping up war spirit. For this could alarm not only the neutrals but the men in the Kremlin who, if sufficiently alarmed, might consider taking drastic preventive action.
Certain natural abilities serve Kennedy well: an ability to sleep quickly whenever opportunity presents itself, and an ability to feel that he and his associates have done the best they can. A study of history has taught him that soldiers and statesmen are not always in control of events: They sometimes can only do their best amid the conflicting currents of great forces and watch and wait to make the most of every opportunity or disaster.
ACTUALLY, KENNEDY himself remains determinedly cool. He relaxes with purpose, jokes about his regular weekends away from Washington and plans to continue them. He snatches time to watch the World Series, reads when possible, swims, sails at Hyannisport or Newport. His wit is as ready as ever, his temper just a trifle readier: When Republicans attack his foreign policy in public it bursts out with Irish fervor. But the temper is seldom on public view; only the sun-tanned faces, smiling and relaxed.
Events so far have demonstrated the President's capacity for standing up under the pressure of the bad news of the past months and the bad news he has said he expects for much of this decade. And he continues to be a source of what McGeorge Bundy has called that "steady flow of questions, of ideas., of executive energy which a strong President will give off like sparks."
(From "Kennedy Tightens the Reins" by George E. Herman in the October, 1961, New Leader)
Worth Repeating
So we are faced with a feeling of unfulfillment in the meaning of Excellence as it is coming from the academic world. A large segment of higher education has taken advantage of its national boom to define Excellence in the student as obedience to the call for stronger conventional preparation and more diligent study. We need to go further. Not much progress has yet been seen concerning an Excellence as it might refer to how we can produce people who show a more sympathetic awareness of society's demands upon themselves; a keener interest in tackling our hardest problems such as integration, overpopulation, farm surpluses, or world peace; more careful and impartial reasoning on public issues; creative imagination; livlier appreciation of order and beauty as preconditions for the good city; concern over national stagnation and cheapened ethics; or deeper thinking about the implications of the scientific revolution, which as C. P. Snow observes have been more fully grasped by the Soviets than by the Western peoples.—Louis T. Benezet, president of Colorado College