Tuesday, April 19. 1960 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
By M. K. McKinney Assistant Instructor of English
LET NO MAN WRITE MY EPITAPH, by Willard Motley, Signet Books. 50 cents.
This is a sequel to "Knock on Any Door," and I suggest that "Let no Man Write My Epitaph" be read in its context. Otherwise, I am afraid that the reader will have trouble in making sense out of some of the flashbacks and allusions to what has gone before.
The first of these books is the better. Motley sets out to tell how criminals are made—by environment. Nick Romano, the protagonist, becomes a vicious criminal because his father's import business fails during the depression of the 1930's. In the consequent moving to a poorer part of town, young Nick becomes involved innocently with some petty thieves of his own age. He is sent to reform school, and while there he swears to always hate any representative of the law. The reader can understand why when he sees the things that happen to him at school. Furthermore, the reader is amazed at Nick's helplessness to escape his fate.
WE ARE TOLD that Nick is always reaching out for love. Not being able to find it and being convinced that he is no good, he is caught up in a web of circumstances (some of which are of his own weaving) that leads him to the murder of Officer Riley. The rest of the book is taken up with the trial and execution.
The sequel deals with Nick's illegitimate son, who wants to be an artist. In this book we are in the world of dope peddlers. Young Nick becomes an addict, but he is seemingly cured. His mother, an inhabitant of Skid Row, is tricked into taking dope by one of the most fascinating scoundrels in literature. She attempts to get away from the habit, but after spending some time in a sanitarium and subsequently trying to stay away from heroin, she relapses.
Grant Holloway, a free lance writer whom Nick the father met in reform school, appears also in the sequel. He becomes interested in the son and gives him the friendship that he tried to give the father. Holloway's daughter, we are led to believe, will effect his rehabilitation.
THESE TWO BOOKS are good if taken together, but parts of "Let No Man Write My Epitaph" don't ring true somehow. I am thinking especially of the Christmas scene, which seems to have come out of Dickens. Motley, not being a Dickens, doesn't bring it off.
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By Marilyn Stokstad Assistant Professor of Art History
The essays in the January and March issues of Horizon are as varied and lively as usual. However, I can only mention a few which particularly appealed to me.
HORIZON, January and March, 1960.
In an attempt to relieve winter's bleakness, a portfolio of color reproductions of Gauguin's Tahiti paintings is included in the January issue along, with an essay, "The Dream of the South Seas," by James R. Ullman. However, I found the March portfolio of "bad art" a better antidote for winter doldrums. John Canaday's essay "From Salon to Cellar and Back?" was a sound, witty re-evaluation of the much-maligned painting of the French Academy in the nineteenth century. The article was well illustrated with damsels in distress, faithful dogs, and children being terribly cute. Canaday wisely points out that, almost by accident, a good painting occasionally was created by the academicians. A few which he considers worthy of note are reproduced so that we may draw our own conclusions.
I FELT THAT the most significant contribution in either issue was the report and photographs from the archeological discoveries in Piraeus, the port of Athens. Last year, a hoard of ancient Greek sculpture was accidentally discovered by workmen repairing a sewer. Full page color photographs in the March issue of the four bronze figures are reproduced for the first time. Included are three fourth century female figures and an "Apollo figure," circa 600 B.C., the earliest bronze found in Greece.
"The Education of Renaissance Man" by Iris Origo, in the January issue, describes the work of Vittorio da Feltre in his school at Mantua and gives a glimpse into this aspect of life in the fifteenth century. The article is handsomely illustrated with color reproductions of paintings by Piero della Francesco (The Urbino Diptych), Montegna, and Raphael. It should be of considerable interest to students to compare their own schedule of courses with a good Renaissance education aimed at the ideal of "complete citizen."
A PICTURE STUDY in painting and photography of Picasso's companion Jacqueline Roque will delight his vast following. Personally, I liked Richard Carrington's study of the mermaid through the ages. (illustrated — for unbelievers).
Donald Oenslager's designs for the Central City production of "The Ballad of Baby Doe" in 1956 should be compared with Herbert Camburn's recent work in the University Theatre. A thought provoking discussion of American official architecture by Allan Temko rounds out the January volume.
From the March issue, I would like to call attention to "Timeless Teutons" and the revival of interest, at least in Europe, in the work of the Cologne photographer August Sander, to Katherine Kuh's interview with Isamu Noguchi in "The Artist Speaks for Himself" series, and to the study of the organ from the Roman hydralus to present models by E. Power Biggs.
'My Fair Lady' Wins Russian Laughter, Tears and Applause
MOSCOW—(UPI)—A capacity Russian audience, including many who could not speak a word of English, laughed and applauded itself giddy last night over Broadway's "My Fair Lady."
The feeling was entirely mutual. Pretty girl dancers wept unabashedly at the overwhelming reception for the American stage production, brought here under the cultural exchange program.
An estimated 1.800 persons in Moscow's Red Army Theater clapped and cheered so wildly and so often that much of the dialogue and some of the singing was lost.
FOR MANY of the Russians, words were incidental anyway. They did not know any English and drew their thrill from the
The final round of the informative speaking event will be at 8 p.m. May 4 in Fraser Theater.
Tryouts Set For Potpourri
The best speaker from each of the 40 Speech I sections is eligible to attend the tryouts. Two tryout sections will be on Monday and two on Tuesday. Three Speech I staff members will judge each tryout section.
Eight sectional winners will compete in the final round which also will be judged by three Speech I staff members. The judges will select the three best contestants.
Tryouts for the Speech I Potpourri will be 4 to 6:30 p.m. May 2 and 3 in Strong Auditorium and Bailey Auditorium.
At the end of the show—the first American musical comedy to reach Russia—the ovation lasted a full 10 minutes, punctuated by shouts of "bravo" and "bis," which is Russian for encore.
music, dancing, dazzling sets and costumes.
The Potpourri is conducted every semester. All Speech I students are required to attend the final round.
The cast, headed by Lola Fisher in the role of the Cockney flower vendor, Eliza Doolelittle, and Edward Mulhare as Prof. Henry Higgins, the ornery speech tutor who teaches her the King's English, came back for five curtain calls.
Summer Housing Reservations Due
A FEW ROOMS are available to graduate students or teachers in Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall.
The Soviets readily joined in pep rally-like volleys of "hip-hip-hurrah."
"Pygmalion," the George Bernard Shaw play on which the music is based, is well known to Soviet theatergoers.
Applications for University apartments should be made to the housing office, 26 Strong Hall A list of privately owned housing, both furnished and unfurnished, also is available in the housing office.
Stouffer Place, Sunflower and Sunnyside are the married students' living quarters which will be open.
Reservations for student housing for the summer session can be made in the offices of Dean of Women and Dean of Men and the Housing office. Applications may be made as long as space is available.
Two University resident halls will be open during the summer session. Templin Hall will be open for women students in one wing, and men students in the other wing.
RESERVATIONS for space in the residence halls should be made through the office of the Dean of Women or the Dean of Men. Ten dollars of the total charge must accompany each application and the remaining payment is due at the opening of the summer session.
The KU Endowment Assn. has received a bequest of $10,419.65 from the estate of the late Dan Miller of Wellington.
The play will run nine weeks in Russia, hitting the cities of Leningrad and Kiev later on.
The bequest creates the Dan and Sara G. Miller Memorial Fund. An income of about $500 a year will be used for the medical care and treatment of children in the Children's Rehabilitation Unit of the KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan.
KU Receives $10,419 For Medical Center
The flower market ballet in the second act was the high point of the show, as far as most Russians were concerned. The red and gold theater fairly shook with applause and stomping of feet in the balconies.
THE CAST, including 70 singers, dancers, actors and production personnel, celebrated afterwards by treating Russian stage hands to a champagne party.
Mr. and Mrs. Miller lost their lives in an auto accident in May of 1958.
"All we want to know is, this isn't the last time we will see your (American) musical comedy?" said one Russian. "Won't there be another 'one'? How about West Side story?"
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