BOOKS: Skimming surfaces
By MIKE SHEARER Arts & Reviews Editor
COLLEGE RUINED OUR DAUGHTER, by Wesley Shrader
(Harper & Row, $1.95).
Wesley Shrader, in spite of all of his sincerity, has committed a tragic blunder in this collection of letters to parents about the problems of college students.
Annoying as the book's form is (supposedly based on the assumption everyone likes reading other people's mail), Shrader's premises are even more annoying. He ends up turning his book into the college counterpart of one of those crumby how-to-bewell-adjusted phamphlets distributed so religiously by high school counselors.
The book is designed to explain away part of the generation gap, and it does just the opposite.
For instance, one correspondence is with a Mrs. Van Brock concerning her son Mel who turns out to be "like that," i.e. gay. At one letter's conclusion, Shrader says, "I know he will always be to you 'my little boy.' But he is twenty-two years old—nearly twenty three."
Precisely!
The whole idea of a correspondence between a minister and a parent about the sex life of anyone 21 going on 22 is a bit ludicrous. We have about as much to learn from such correspondences as we have to learn from Ann Landers. But poor Shrader manages to impregnate a wide range of students with a wide range of problems (some very real) and then carry on correspondences with parents who should leave these problems to the be-problemed. There comes that age.
Orgies, group pressures, dirty words . . . they are all dealt with, and those of us at college age become the caged animal being observed by minister and parent from a rather dubious viewpoint. Shrader and his parents/correspondents become barnacles on the lives of some people whose struggles are outside their grasp.
All of this brings Shrader to the level of pandering to the senseless worries and hallucinations of older persons about college people.
Writing to the Erickson's, about their militant son Larry, Shrader says, "You can see now why I have kept on insisting that your son is no hippie. The latter have 'copped out.' Hippies sneer at society's blunders ... They laugh, live, and copulate in the midst of filth and the fog of various narcotics. But, Mr. and Mrs. Erickson, that is not your son."
Garbage. Shrader is full of all of the clichés and all of the paranoia that encircles this generation.
But instead of looking for whatever lies behind this generation, he is hopelessly concerned with trying to make us look like goldfish swallowers.
We're many things, some as bad as Shrader thinks, but goldfish swallowers we're not.
Anderson's 'Snow Queen designed for 'small' audience
Hans Christian Anderson's "The Snow Queen" opened today in the Young People's Series.
Today's performance was for Douglas County school children. Shows Thursday and Friday at 1 p.m. will be for Lawrence school children. The 10 a.m. show Saturday will be for the general public.
The plot of the tile centers around Kay and Gerda. Kay lives with Gerda and her grandmother, but is seen by the Snow Queen from the north country
Nov.19 KANSAN 5
1969
who kisses him and freezes his heart. The Queen then takes him back to her frozen palace.
Brave Gerda sets out on a long and arduous journey to find Kay and bring him home. She encounters several people who, under the Snow Queen's instructions, try to stop her.
BY SHERRY ROY AND GENELLE RICHARDS Kansan Staff Writers
LIFE MAGAZINE
STOLEN KISSES' IS EASILY TRUFFAUT'S BEST, AND FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT HE MAY BE THE FINEST COMIC ARTIST NOW WORKING IN THE MOVIES. The world, when we see it through his eyes, is transformed into a garden of delights."
Students and professors of industrial design at the University of Kansas are protesting the pollution of our environment this week in the south lobby of the Kansas Union.
Artists tackle pollution
Their demonstration is in the form of an exhibit.
They are protesting visual irritations, sound pollution, air pollution and water pollution.
The purpose of the exhibit, which is divided into two rooms, is to awaken people to the various kinds of environmental pollution and offers examples of remedial industrial designs which take into consideration the aesthetic, ethical and human factors.
Peter North, assistant professor of industrial design and one of the coordinators of the exhibit, said, "Contemporary man's technological achievements have in some respects already destroyed our environment."
One room of the exhibit is designed to illustrate North's point. Aluminum foil, beer cans, plastic ice cream containers and plastic bread wrappers serve as examples of the non-destructible garbage that is polluting our environment. Daily the average American throws away $5\frac{1}{2}$ pounds of garbage, much of which is aluminum and plastic and will not decompose, said Les Schnick, Denver, Colo., senior.
"We dispose more than 50 million beer cans a day. Why do we have this for our children to build their homes on?" asked North. "We should create a better environment and not destroy our present environment."
Schnick, one of the coordinators of the exhibit, said it had originally been suggested that the entire room be filled with garbage for the exhibit.
Other examples of environmental pollution are the harsh sound of a doorbell-ringing and tape recordings of television commercials which suggest sound pollution. North said the exhibit proposes to demonstrate the adverse influence of advertisements on society. People are more aware of this kind of pollution, he said.
Slides depict the results of air and water pollution.
The exhibit confronts people with industrial design as a responsible profession. Schnick said industrial designers have a responsibility to society and future generations to design functional, ethical and visually pleasing products. The second room of the exhibit is intended to acquaint people with good design.
In the second room, two chairs, cited as examples of good design and illustrating the principle "form follows function," are contrasted with a lamp borrowed from the Union.
There is a display of toys designed for a hypothetical intelligent four-handed child. These toys eliminate restrictions and offer infinite possibilities, Schnick said.
The exhibit also includes a display of innovative ideas in medical instruments. Schnick said the students talked to doctors and nurses in the surgical wards of local hospitals to find out the kinds of new equipment needed in the field.
Patronize Kansan Advertisers
AFTER YOU HAVE THANKSGIVING DINNER WITH ALICE AND RAY TONIGHT, ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS:
Is Alice's Restaurant a ballad to the new idealism? A lament for the human frailties that make this idealism all the more precious, because it is precarious? Or a youth's eye-view—at once jaundiced and amused—of a lot of establishment lunacies?
Giles Fowler K.C. Star
University of Kansas Experimental Theatre
presents
The Hostage
by Brenden Behan
November 13 - 22
Experimental Theatre 8:20 p.m.
Murphy Hall
For Tickets Call: UN 4-3982