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Fridav. Jan. 15, 1969 University Daily Kansas
By W. D. Paden Professor of English
THE EVERGREEN REVIEW. Nos. 8, 9, and 10 (Spring, Summer, and Nov.-Dec., 1959): pp. 256, 224, and 192 respectively. The Grove Press, New York; one dollar an issue.
This quarterly magazine, though it is distributed among the paperback volumes from the Grove Press, has pretensions to a place in the avant-garde. The last issue is both the smallest in bulk and by far the best in quality, which may indicate the advent of a firmer editorial hand. A firmer hand was needed.
The three numbers make up almost 700 pages. They include one successful short story, by William Eastlake, and an incomprehensible but interesting play by Samuel Beckett. In neither of these does the author occur, either explicitly or apparently, which places them in strong contrast to the three other pieces of successful prose — an account of her childhood in a public school by Cynthia Ozick, a lament for Billie Holliday by Jerry Tallmer, and view of Los Angeles from the gutter by John Rechy. All five of these items are in number 10, but when considered in the order given they lead backward from a recognizable norm of literature into the obscurity which the Review formerly inhabited — into a dark smog where wandering beatniks mistake each other for existentialists, or stand shouting the virtues of Buddhistic calm.
At first glance the whole affair seems to be another illustration of how truth can be blunted and thwarted by mediocre minds. John Dewey announced that man learns by doing; and before his death discovered that for some of his less brilliant pupils doing not only excludes but stands opposed to thinking. So Wesley and Wordsworth (among others) announced that man knows truth primarily through emotional experience, and Freud (among others) declared that imaginative and emotional experience is primarily subconscious—and now we discover that for some earnest theorists imaginative labor not only excludes but stands opposed to purposeful and rational thought.
These writings phrase their conviction in various ways. Henry Miller proclaims that "Rules are for barbarians, technic for the troglodytes"; and also that "To distill thought until it hangs in the alembic of a poem revealing not a speck, not a shadow, not a vaporous breath of the impurities from which it was decocted — that for me is a meaningless, worthless pursuit, even though it be the sworn and solemn function of those midwives who toil in the name of Beauty, Form, Intelligence, and so on." It is true that when Jack Kerouac announces that one should "if possible, write without consciousness, in semi-trance," a disciple hastens to qualify the dictum
— "Intellectual conjuring has nothing to do with the creative act as such, though it may certainly be concomitant with it." But Kerouac disdains such caution in his statement of Belief & Technique for Modern Prose:
"28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, the crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
29. You're a Genius on the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored and Angeled in Heaven"
in Heaven."
Or as Allen Ginzburg says of his own work, "A lot of these forms developed out of one extreme rhapsodic wail I once heard in a madhouse...Not purposely, I simply followed my Angel in the course of composition."
It is clear enough that these men seek the essence of being, which gives it meaning and value, in themselves, beneath reason and consciousness; and that this essence they identify with the angel (which is, being interpreted, the messenger) of God. Such a man should attempt in meditation to approach the arcanum of his personality, and in writing to be fully controlled by the force it radiates. But judging from these specimens, the results are not good. The writers remain incapable of constructing a unified literary work. And because of the close relation in our culture between the unconscious and sexual desire — which is no doubt the cause rather than the result of the emphasis in Freudian psychology — such a writer's attempt to descend into the subconscious causes him to resort habitually to the heterodox, the indecorous, or the scabrous, with a distinct preference for the subjects that unite all three qualities. Why has such work been accepted at all, by readers no matter how undiscriminating? One may suspect that some readers, at least, have confused their sense of psychological vigor, consequent upon a momentary release from repression, with intellectual clarity or spiritual achievement, or both.
In any case, the degrees of success of these writers seem to be in rather strict inverse ratio of their acceptance of the ideas maintained in numbers 8 and 9, and muted in number 10. An even more convincing result emerges from an examination of the poetry, for poetry requires more discipline. The only successful poem is Robert Lowell's commemoration to his father — and Lowell belongs in a very different environment indeed. Otherwise, one page by Derek Walcott shows some skill in traditional techniques, newly applied; two items by Gary Snyder contain material for poetry; and some casual curses by Paul Blackburn are invigorated by a sense of humor. All the rest seem, to speak plainly, incompetent and futile.
There are certain other ways of serving God than by talking to undergraduates—or even to graduates; nonetheless we (historians) have tended to exalt the written over the spoken word in the practice of our profession. Dexter Perkins
Students Take Correspondence
About 450 students are taking correspondence courses from the University Extension Center at the same time that they attend a least 13 hours of other classes on campus.
Donald R. McCoy, director of the extension center, today said these students are among some 2,900 individuals now taking correspondence courses.
Mr. McCoy said over 230 of the students enrolled in the university and taking correspondence courses are doing so because of schedule or work conflicts.
"Some seniors take correspondence courses for freshmen-sohmore credit because the classes do not fit into their schedules with other classes of upperclass credit.
"Courses taken simultaneously by upperclass students in any school here are usually scheduled at times that seniors may take them without any schedule conflicts. But when seniors try to fit freshman-sophomore credit courses into such schedules, they often come up with conflicts."
Mr. McCoy said a few students take correspondence courses in order to graduate early.
"About 1,425 students, or 50 per cent of all those taking courses by mail from the KU Extension Center, are in high school. They take courses for high school credit or for credit at the university when they come here in the near future."
Several hundred graduate students take courses by correspondence while they teach school. Educators, who have taught 13 years, in Kansas public schools, must earn eight hours of college credit courses every five years. If they have their master's degree in education, they only need six hours of college credit every five years.
Mr. McCoy said others in the so-called "worldwide classroom" are servicemen, those at other colleges who plan to transfer the credit and persons who just like to study and learn. He said some people study by correspondence when they take a year or two out from KU and plan to return.
Mr. McCoy said about 340 of some 2,300 taking correspondence courses five years ago, were students regularly enrolled in over 13 hours in the university.
Neither Mr. McCoy nor Francis Heller, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and adviser in the gifted students program, could name any student now enrolled in more than one correspondence course in addition to at least 13 hours of classes on the campus.
John Ise to Discuss Political Race Today
John Ise, professor emeritus of economics, will be the speaker at the Current Events Forum at 4 p.m. today in the Music and Browsing Room of the Kansas Union.
Prof. Ise will discuss "The Presidential Race — Its' Thoroughbreds, Darkhorses and Plugs."
Here is another bead on the string of confusions—William E. Woodward
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