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University Daily Kansan
Friday, Dec. 14, 1962
Fallout Shelters
The National Civil Defense headquarters damned KU by making the University a fallout shelter for 11,000 persons. It has saddled KU with the most terrible of burdens.
A Civil Defense spokesman put it into words recently. He said the 18 campus shelters are public "but mostly available to KU students." He urged everybody in Douglas County to make their own provisions for fallout protection.
THIS MAN MUST REALIZE the futility and incredibility of what he said. He had to "solve" an enormous problem simply by making that remark to the local citizenry. He must be fully aware that half-measures, such as his statement, are meaningless.
He knows what will happen the minute a missile leaves Anadyr Peninsula and the United States and Russia start their devastating ping-pong game.
He knows what Lawrence citizens will do when they see nuclear flashes from Kansas City and Topeka and when the deadly flakes start falling.
HE KNOWS THOSE TERRIFIED townsfolk will stream onto the hill racing for shelter already taken by 10,000 terrified students.
Then thousands of irradiated suburban Kansas City and Topeka residents will flood the turnpike coming to Lawrence.
The population here will soar overnight. We will find out what war means when 5,000 people jam themselves into Strong Hall-a shelter for 1,695.
When the frantic mob tramples people to death right on Jayhawk Boulevard.
WHEN PEOPLE FESTOONED with raw tatters of flesh stumble into Lawrence screaming for help that isn't here.
When the mad press of bodies rip the ponderous Strong Hall door from the hinges.
This is the final test that will show the futility of our plans in the face of nuclear horror.
THE CIVIL DEFENSE SPIKESMAN said the fallout shelters would be needed only for two weeks. After that, he said, radioactivity would decline below the fatality level. Then everyone can leave the shelters, blink in the bright sunlight and go about their business just as though it had all been a thunderstorm.
Let's get serious. The talk about two weeks and radioactivity is meaningless. If we leave the shelters alive we presumably will begin to rebuild.
With our first peeks into the bright sunlight we will see what is left to rebuild—clumps of rotting humanity.
WE ARE LEFT TWO ALTERNATIVES. First, we can construct underground shelter systems in which we can stockpile food and drugs sufficient to support the area for years.
Secondly, we can forget the farce and all die at once rather than bit-by-bit.
One other possibility exists, but it seems to be out of vogue—three guesses.
—Scott Payne
Book Quantity Up for Past Year
By Richard Bonett
Publishing house presses spewed out material in an ever-increasing volume during 1962. Whatever the wares lacked in quality was more than balanced by quantity and sheer diversity of subject.
Receiving early critical support was Katherine Anne Porter's "Ship of Fools," a penetrating personality study. An author who took a proven formula and milked it for all its worth is Allen Drury, whose 1962 entry, "A Shade of Difference," produced sales as a sequel to "Adwise and Consent" but was noticeably duller.
FROM THE PEN of the late William Faulkner, and widely received, came a last novel, "The Reivers," a warmly comic Odyssey of youth, laid over grim happenings with sociologic overtones.
Still a lively topic in book circles is whether Negro author James Baldwin can rise to his earlier promise. Baldwin made an attempt last year with "Another Country." Most critics tagged it authentic but not prime Baldwin.
On the non-fiction side appear two controversial late-comers, Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," a study of man's meddling with his natural environment, and the long-awaited "Letters from Earth," a collection of Mark Twain's less than compassate utterances on God and religion.
ON THE HAPPY side was Robert Frost's first collection of poems to be compiled in 15 years, "In the Clearing," and John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley."
Considerable attention during the summer went to Richard Nixon's tale of his years of political strife, "My Six Crises."
Two excellent biographies showed up on the list. "Scott Fitzgerald" by Andrew Turnbull has been called a work to sunplant all others, while Frederic Morton's "The Rothschilds" is an excellent dramatization of the historically famous world banking family.
BLOOD AND THUNDER echo through Alan Moorehead's "The Blue Nile," a historical account of British exploits in Egypt.
War in the modern age is less glamorous than ever, if it was ever glamorous; and Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler gave food for much thought in "Fail-Safe," a novel and essay on the end of man by his own infernal machines.
Healthy sellers in the past year included "The Thin Red Line," a James Jones comeback, centering on the military operations at Guadalcanal.
The power inherent in the Pentagon with its control over multibillion dollar defense contracts was the subject of Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II into "Seven Days in May," which attracted more than passing attention.
FOR A CHANGE OF PACE,
Herman Weuk turned his attention
to fictionalizing the tumultuous life
of Thomas Wolfe in his latest
contribution to popular literature,
"Youngblood Hawks."
There was "John Foster Dulles; A Reappraisal," by Richard Goodl, balanced by "The Man from Missouri The Life and Times of Harry S. Truman," by Alfred Steinberg, each ending in a favorable conclusion.
Barry Goldwater continued to push his foreign policy views in a new book "Why Not Victory?" while Chester Bowles answered the senator's earlier work with an entry titled "The Conscience of a Liberal."
Several titles tell their own story: "Young People and Drinking" by Dr. Arthur H. Cain, "The Trouble-makers" by T. R. Fyvel and "Kids, Crime and Chaos" by Roul Tunley.
FOUR OF THE BETTER contributions about civil rights were "Let My People Go" by African leader and Nobel Peace Prizewinner Albert Luthulh; "Diary of a Sit-In" by Merrill Proudfoot; "Freedom Ride" by James Peck, and "Fight for Freedom:" The story of the NAACP by Langston Hughes.
Aside from the world within that man keeps trying to conquer there is still the mystery of the unexplored world without. "I Am Eagle" and "Gherman Titov: First Man to Spend a Day in Space" marked Soviet advances into the cosmos while Capt. Edward L. Beach, commander of the nuclear sub Triton, wrote "Around the World Submerged."
Alexander Metaxas tried an analysis of the Communist ideological split in "Moscow versus Peking."
Daily Hansan
Telephone Vlking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
University of Kaasas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Zibler
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
Clayton Keller and Bill Sheldon ... Co-Editorial Editors
THE DEATH OF Ernest Hemingway found younger brother Leicester writing "My Brother Ernest Hemingway" and older sister Marcellina Hemingway Sanford contributing "At the Hemingways." The current Ecumenical Council in Rome brought a flood of literature, including "The Papal Council and the Gospel," written by prominent Protestant theologians.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache Business Manager
The search to find out what America is continued with one book under the revealing title "Beer Can by the Highway," a collection of essays.
The "how to" craze of a few years back is all but dead. But the corps writhed a little and in a final gasp sent forth a real gem. "How To Find a Husband After 40."
And for those worried, pressurized, or tightly bound bundles of anxiety who are about to come apart at the seams, publishers offered an option: "Health and Happiness" by Dr. Sara M. Jordan, or "International Cocktail Specialties: From Madison Avenue to Malaya."
"— AND, SIR, IN JUNE I EXPECT TO BE GRA...G·R·A
HEY, ED, HOW DO YOU SPELL GRADUATED?"
THE GENIUS OF THE EARLY ENGLISH THEATER, and THE GENIUS OF THE LATER ENGLISH THEATER, each edited by Sylvan Barnet, Morton Berman and William Burton (Mentor, two volumes, 95 cents each).
It is good to report that famous and important plays are herein made available, plays not generally known to the public. One of them, in the second volume, is William Golding's "The Brass Butterfly," and students who have paid so much attention to Golding's "Lord of the Flies" should welcome this.
As for the others, there is good variety here. The first volume covers medieval and Renaissance writings—the anonymous plays "Abraham and Isaac," "The Second Shepherd's Play" and "Everyman," and Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," Shakespeare's "Macbeth." Jonson's "Volpone" and Milton's "Samson Agonistes." There also are critical essays.
Contents of the second volume are a bit more obvious—the Golding play, Congreve's "Way of the World." Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer," Byron's "Cain," Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," and Shaw's "Major Barbara." These paperbacks are a good buy for students of both theater and literature.
* *
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, by Lawrence Durrell, a boxed set including JUSTINE, BALTHAZAR, MOUNTOLIVE and CLEA (Dutton, $5.95 a set, or $1.55 each).
In some of the most glittering prose of modern times, Lawrence Durrell has given us an adventure in erotica and a loving portrait of Alexandria, Egypt. The first two and the last volumes are retrospective ramblings by the Englishman, Darley; the third is straight narrative, written from a viewpoint that is unknown to Darley.
This is a lush, fragrant, brilliantly conceived drama. At times it reeks of the native quarter, at times it burns of the desert, at times it brings in the breeze from the sea. The portraits are incredible; each is finely etched. Darley, as could be expected, comes off worst; this is not an uncommon fate for a narrator. But in "Mountolive" we suddenly see this man, so interesting to himself, so quiet and obscure and ineffectual to others.
There are a series of beautiful women—Justine, Clea and Melissa. There is the magnificent Pursewarden, a writer whose words have such bite and whose life is so disturbed. There is the British career servant, Mountolive. And there are fine episodes—the beautifully conceived scenes of love, a swimming episode in the Mediterranean, an assassination on the desert, a masked ball, and many more.
All readers will not care for these four novels. Those who do will likely find them among the finest writing of our time.-CMP
SPIRIT LAKE, by MacKinlay Kantor (Signet, 95 cents)
We'll start with the small type. No book should be printed in type that small, even though it is a big long one like "Spirit Lake." Next we'll move into Kantor's style, which has not improved over the bogginess of "Andersonville." Next the story. One hesitates to recommend this book to anyone. It is a compound of all the bloody, gory sagas of the old West, with Indian raids and all the violence one can bear. True, it is a big best-seller. But why?
SEE IT AND SAY IT FRENCH, by Margarita Madrigal and Colette Dulac (Signet, 50 cents)—a guide to learning French the picture way. "La rose," that is, means "the rose." "Le piano" equals "the piano." Very helpful.