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Sound and Fury
A Dead Issue
When the leaves were beginning to turn red, and the nights began to be crisp, long ago last fall, the University Daily Kansan carried a story about the disciplinary committee. All through the winter the students of KU were subjected to a barrage of articles, interviews, and quotations about the problem of the disciplinary committee. With the fragrant arrival of spring, this siege shows no appreciable signs of lifting.
THOSE who maintain that there is a problem complain that students are unfamiliar with the disciplinary system and, when they get into trouble, do not know where to turn for help. The fact that this university is crawling with deans, councilors, and psychologists, all of whom are willing and eager to help a student with any conceivable problem he may have, is sufficient to point out the laughable absurdity of this complaint.
nole absurdity of this complaint.
Those who maintain that there is a problem complain that the system holds a certain fear among students, which hinders them when they get into trouble. In addition to again pointing out the manifold counselling facilities available at KU, one must mention that any student who is so submerged in fear when faced with a stressing life situation should be attending the institution in Topeka and not the one in Lawrence. Any student with intelligence enough to write his own name (a prerequisite for all entering freshmen) should be able to figure out where to get help when he gets in trouble. If he cannot, one can only conclude that he is certainly not smart enought to earn a Bachelor's Degree, and should be expelled, not because he broke university rules, but on the basis of his general intelligence alone.
BUT I digress; for the point I want to make concerns not the .01% of the students suffering on the racks of the disciplinary committee, but we $99.99\%$ of the student body who are tortured by having to read a student newspaper where, every single day, the same old campus busybodies make the same old meaningless fuss about the same old non-existant problems. I commend the UDK on its faithful reporting of every single word said on every single subject on campus; but in all seriousness. I would like to suggest to the editors that when items such as the disciplinary committee, student apathy, and so forth, drag on and on as they have this year, to the point that they become devoid of meaning and interest, that the editors start giving them less coverage, and devote more space either to new issues, or to articles on that subject for which we are supposedly in attendance at KU: liberal arts.
(Editor's note: Perhaps there is a need for more emphasis on the liberal arts — such as spelling, for instance. J.S.L. included the following words in his essay: non-existant, enought (used twice), councillors and counciling.)
Thursday, May 19. 1960 University Dalry Kensan
Bernard Malamud is one of two Jewish-American writers who have become important since the end of World War II. The other Jewish writer, Mark Harris, is the more prolific, having published five novels including the excellent "Wake Up, Stupid!" which appeared last summer. Malamud has published two novels and this collection of shout stories.
By John S. Lewis Assistant Instructor of English
THE MAGIC BARREL, by Bernard Malamud, Modern Library, 95c.
THERE IS, however, a great deal of difference between them. Harris has a wider range of interest; he has written novels about college life and army life as well as baseball. While Malamud has preferred Jewish life for his subject matter Harris has been more expansive, although Lee Youngdahl, the main character of "Wake Up. Stupid!", is a Mormon, a member of a religious body once persecuted much in the same manner as the Jews.
There are superficial similarities between the two writers. Both men teach creative writing in universities, Malamud at Oregon State, Harris at San Francisco State. Both have written baseball novels; both are very talented.
For those readers whose first acquaintance of Malamud came with the splendid short novel, "The Assistant," this collection of thirteen short stories might be disappointing. The best is perhaps the title story dealing with a rabbinical student seeking a wife through the help of a marriage broker. The ending is inconclusive, in a way, and a real surprise.
Most of the characters in Malamud's stories are Jewish and the field of action is usually the Jewish sections of New York. Malamud, Brooklyn born, apparently chooses to return to the scenes of his early life.
"The First Seven Years," a story with obvious Biblical overtures, deals with a Polish refugee who took a job as assistant to a shoemaker and worked seven years while waiting for the shoe-maker's daughter to attain marriageable age. "The Mourners' concerns an undesirable tenant and the attempts of his landlord to evict him.
Malamud characteristically deals with the relations, often misunderstood relations, between people. He apparently likes surprise endings to his short stories and handles them well. Although the endings may superficially appear to be inconclusive they are actually revelatory of Malamud's concern with the moral man. He is a real master at characterization and, although his range may appear to be narrower than Harris's, he cuts deep into the fabric of life.
WASHINGTON — (UPI) The United States was reported today to have sent Cuba a new note firmly rejecting Premier Fidel Castro's latest charges that this country is plotting to overthrow his regime.
Cuban Fears Calmed By United States Note
The emphasis was said to have been placed on the record of the U.S. government in defending the principle of non-intervention as a cornerstone of the Pan American system.
Specifically, the U.S. statement replied to an April 8 Cuban memorandum declaring that Cuba "will not allow that any international instrument shall be used to violate the sovereignty of our country."
The moderate language of the communication indicated that the State Department still hoped a period of calm might develop in the disturbed relations between the two countries.
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While the U.S. note firmly rejected the Cuban allegations, it was said to have been counched in moderate terms.
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Lewellyn Looks at
In this, our last episode, let's look together at life—yours, mine and the Nation's. This week the editors of Life have embarked on an exploration into the National Purpose — What has it been in the past? Do we have one now? If not, do we need one? If a National Purpose is necessary, what should it be? They have aimed the discussion at you and me, for if a purpose is to be recognized, it is we who must strive to fulfill it.
It is paradoxical that we, the "lost generation," should suddenly find thrust upon us the search for a National.Purpose. Where do we turn to find purpose for the existence (perhaps survival would be more fitting) of a nation, when we falter in giving purpose to our own individual existences? One answer to this bitter question comes back almost immediately; look to the Past. As individuals we have no past — no past of our own making. Acts during the score of years that have been our past have been the doing of others. But a nation has a past. It has tradition, patriotism, symbolism, heroes, living and dead, who testify to the sanctity of vows now grown old. Are these vows themselves not purpose enough for a nation in crisis? Should they not take on more profound meaning as that nation finds itself confronted with a despatotic world, power whose bases are contrary to those very vows in which we had our founding? Ideally the answer is yes. But observation would lead us to think not. What is the barrier that stands between our Nation's present and its Past?
Strangely enough it is linked with the fact that we have no past at all. There are preceding years, but no past. There is no existing bond between now and then. There is only a gaping chasm, ripped open by a bomb and eroded by a hundred little wars, police actions, incidents and accidents. This is perhaps the chasm on whose brink we held hands as a Nation with Secretary of. State Dulles. It certainly looks deeper than ever from atop a shaky summit. The recent air spy incident has been perhaps the greatest of National disillusionments. Regardless of its morality or the plausible justification of the act, it is somehow evidence that the policies of the past, though potent enough when implemented nationally, have been modified somehow when taken into a world that is not willing to accept them a priori as we have inclined to do.
Then comes the sickening realization that these policies no longer stand unimpeachable even within our own society. We have lost touch ourselves with that intangible spirit which permeated our Past. What name do we give to that spirit? Was it democracy? Individual liberty? Morality? Certainly these are high aims. Any one of them could be deserving of our efforts as a Nation, but they were not the National Purpose, nor should they be now.
How does a nation prevent world epidemic, when the disease has invaded its own house? Isolation is suicide — as well as being impossible. Yet somehow this Nation must re-establish its own direction while the world watches. We dare not falter. But if we falter as individuals, is there any hope that as a Nation we can be firm? The answer is yes. It has been said that we live too much in the present. Today this is fatally true. Our "togetherness" is chronological as well as social. It has contributed to the depth and breadth of the chasm that separates us from history. There is too much security in a society that resigns responsibility for its Past because its ramifications in the present are too great a burden. There is a mental illness basic to a social philosophy that denies worth of all else save present comfort. The break has been made. We have thus far renounced our responsibility to a world whose past is everything for it has no present. Our National Purpose has been predetermined by our own actions. We must re-establish human contact with the world to bridge the chasm. We as individuals must re-establish contact with reality — the reality of a future course willed to us in this Nation's conception of the firm belief that man can love his brother.