Friday. Feb. 12. 1960 University Daily Kansas
Page 3
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Editor
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By Frances Grinstead Associate Professor of Journalism
THE WRITER AND HIS MARKETS, by Paul R. Reynolds. Doubleday & Co., $3.95.
HOW TO WRITE AND SELL MAGAZINE ARTICLES, by Richard Gehman. Harper & Brothers, $4.95.
Reynolds is a highly regarded agent handling, primarily, the work of professional authors of books. Gehman, a freelance writer of articles for popular magazines, is not as famous in his field though perhaps better known to the reading public from his bylines. Each of them obliges with invaluable insight into the cogs behind the writer's production line.
Some of Reynolds' information and advice—about contracts, foreign rights, paperback editions, and especially the potential value of a literary agent—will be useful to any writer. More of it is of value only to the writer who is or hopes to be "big time."
Gehman, on the other hand, gets right down to the hard sledding which precedes, accompanies, and sometimes follows early writing sales to magazines. His language is often earthy, the anecdotes funny as well as illuminating. There is a forgivable degree of bragging in the latter chapters. Among the early ones, the greatest illumination is given beginners by the check-lists of small faults and mistakes so familiar to any writing teacher who seeks to help the tryo become a "pro".
Basically, Gehman employs a case study method in his presentation of his own experiences as guide and warning to the student of non-fiction writing. He publishes, along with accounts of how he chose a subject, prospected, researched and developed it, the article in question as finally published. He tells how he sold a piece, occasionally how he failed to sell it. Each chapter concentrates on one of our major writing-problems. The one on "The Lead" is worth the price of the book. So is the one on "Telescoping Time" and another on "Making the Outline." (In freelancer parlance, an outline is an informal letter to the editor telling him what you plan to do with a subject, asking his suggestions.)
Part of Gehman's book is for enjoyment, an enbullence that overflows because he's that kind of writer. There is none of this in Reynolds when he discusses "the writer and his markets." Yet the discriminating student will find Reynold's far the better book, and will realize he is in the hands of a knowledgeable man.
Paul Reynolds' integrity is not to be questioned; his wordly information about selling procedure is unexcelled. His book includes a list of members of the Society of Authors Representatives, from which the writer whose work has become a real business property may make a choice of agent. There is also a list of professional organizations—truly professional groups, not "backslappers' leagues" which mislead too many beginners. Sample forms of good contracts are included. Every word counts, yet the information is skillfully written.
The general public may be most interested in the chapters on how the agents operate in Hollywood, in relation to television, or in selling stage plays. These, however, are secondary to the discussions of selling books of wide general circulation, magazine fiction and articles of major importance, and secondary rights which add to the author's—and consequently the agent's—business success.
From the News-stand
The American Novelist
"...much more in the main tradition of American fiction will seem such a novelist as J. D. Salinger, whose 'The Catcher in the Rye' captures and sums up its period and stands in the same relation to it as 'Appointment in Samarra' did to the 1930s and 'The Great Gatsby' by the 1920s. Of these novels, Fitzgerald's, now almost thirty-five years old, is already of classic stature, but what all have in common is extreme disquiet about the relationship between the individual and society that Cozzens would have us accept. 'The Great Gatsby' is permanently fascinating as an evaluation of American experience at a specific point in American history, and what Fitzgerald, up to the last paragraphs of his novel, makes abundantly clear. Gatsby is, at is were, an ideal figure whose odyssey captures, in Nick Carroway's eyes, that 'transitory enchanted moment when man must first have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.' 'Appointment in Samarra' is a lesser work; its chief interest now is probably sociological—it remains, for the European at any rate, the best introduction to the mysteries of the class structure of American society that we have; but it is because there is nothing in the world of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, commensurate with his capacity for wonder that Julian English is finally undone. The weakness of the novel is that Julian English is never quite adequate as the tragic hero, but throughout the novel there is the sense that somehow American society has gone subtly wrong and has gone wrong precisely because it has become complex, at least as compared with that simpler society, so much closer to the values of the frontier, of which Julian's father, Dr. English, is the acceptable and adequate hero.
"At present 'The Catcher in the Rye' seems the better novel and may well be of classic stature. Professor Arthur Mizener, talking in the Third Programme, said not so many months ago of 'Huckleberry Finn' that it is really a lyric elegy for Mark Twain's lost youth, and it is perennially fascinating to all varieties of Americans, from business men to T. S. Eliot, because it is the nearly perfect American lament for all lost youth.' It seems that for nine years now the intelligent young in the United States have seen Salinger's novel, which they regard as speaking to them and for them, in similar terms. It is indeed a work of almost magical charm, though charism is not a quality its hero-narrator, Holden Caulfield, would approve of. Almost certainly he would find it 'phony,' to use the word which is for ever on his lips as his capacity for wonder is unsatisfied. 'The Catcher in the Rye,' like 'Huckleberry Finn,' is a triumph of the vernacular. Holden is a year or two older than Huck but, like him, is a conscious Ishmael who dreams, though we know the dream is even more hopeless now than it was a century ago, of 'lighting out for the Territory,' and for similar reasons, because his experience of the grown-up world falls so far short of his expectations of it.
"It is this that relates Holden Caulfield to Jay Gatsby and Julian English—and also, as with them, to the doomed heroines of James. It is as though for the American novelist his characters' most dearly cherished possession is a highly burnished innocence that eternally re-creates itself but is destined to be destroyed because of the corruption of society, and society is seen as corrupt precisely because its nature is such that it must destroy innocence. It is the knowledge of this that makes the American hero an Ishmael..."
(Excerpted from The Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 6, 1959, "The Limits of the Possible.")
Actor Says 'The Crucible' Difficult
By Rael F. Amos
Anytime an actor does a period show and he is put into a situation with which he is not familiar, his biggest difficulty is in trying to achieve reality and be convincing.
This is the opinion of D. Michael Blasingame, Gardner graduate student, who portrays Deputy Governor Danforth in the University Theatre production of "The Crucible." The play opened Tuesday night and will close tomorrow.
Biasingame. a drama major, is
"One of the most difficult things about my part as Deputy Governor Danforth is being consistent. I have to be stern and against what the others in the play are for. I'm the only one who does not change character. The others change their positions," he said.
"Because mine is a political position, I must hang them (the convicted witches). I am bound by the letter of the law. Playing the part of Danforth, I am a character who is not villainous and black, but fair and uncompromising. When Danforth feels that the court and the law is threatened, he has no mercy, and because it is a political situation, he doesn't feel sorry for these people," Blasingame said.
Danforth is the judge in the play who is trying to prove witchcraft on the part of the accused women.
"Devoting your time to a theater production and trying to do the best you can in it, and at the same time keeping up your academic standards is sometimes difficult," he said.
teaching two sections of Speech I this semester. Last fall he was on a directing assignment in Colby, Kan., where he directed "Life With Father" in the Community Theatre.
"Reaching the character is a matter of degree. Perfection is in the mind, and, as an actor, I will never achieve all I would like to achieve. But you try to work the character up to a point acceptable and believed by the audience. Without them (the audience) you are nothing—you have nothing for which to work.
Speaking again of his part as Danforth in "The Crucible," Blasingame said he found it necessary to make personality changes—such as using the inverted sentence structure and the use of the word "were" where "was" should be.
Asked how an actor knows when he has successfully reach the point of portraying a stage character accurately. Blasingame settled back in his chair, thought for a few moments; then said:
"It is achieved by being selective with your schedule and by budgeting one's time efficiently."
"Acting is really a marvelous
thing. It deals with aesthetics. There are not any strict formulas. You simply work, sweat and hope by the will of God to create an acceptance on the part of an audience. Finally, you reach a point of going no further. You can't improve. This, usually, is when you get so personally involved with
'The Crucible' Nears Sell-out Performance
A few balcony seats are still available for the remaining performances of "The Crucible," tonight and tomorrow. Tickets may be obtained by exchanging ID cards at the University Theatre box office and the Kansas Union ticket office.
Regular tickets may be purchased by non-students for $1.50. Seats are available in the balcony only for both performances.
the part you are trying to portray that you must rely on the valid criticism of another person.
"The director fills this job (as a critic). To me he is a representative of the audience. One person's yardstick of measurement is not necessarily everyone's. This is where the director enters the picture. I think a director is the greatest influence on an actor's character. He is in a position to
accept or reject what the actor gives him."
Blasingame said the cast started rehearsals in early December and reheared both afternoons and evenings during the vacation between semesters. Asked what he plans to do Sunday morning, he answered:
"Sleep—and then later evaluate my work, and maybe next time I can improve it."
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