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University Daily Kansan
Friday, Oct. 2, 1959
Rain-Bound Unity
Feelings of depression prevailed in the Strong Hall rotunda yesterday morning as students wait impatiently for the rain to cease.
After almost two weeks of daily downpours, depression seems to have crept into the souls of the people on the Hill. The typically cheerful college greeting has given way to grunts of acknowledgment or droll comments on the weather.
There is not much else to talk about for the outrage presented by the elements has become the primary enemy of all. It has been an uncomfortable beginning, reminiscent of last year when raincoats were the only mode of dress.
But, perhaps some good has come of the discomfort. There has been a reawakening of unification. Persons who stand at opposite ends of
various poles can now converse together sensibly International or local issues slip from sight as antagonist and protagonist wait patiently for the same end.
The end will come. It always has. Soon, a day will dawn bright and clear and we will shake off head colds and don dry socks for a return to the world.
Then, the healthy will prevail. Depression will give way to elation—and unity to normalcy. Enemies will be enemies again. Issues will be issues. And students will be human.
L is a sad thing, this rain. Like the cold war. The only thing that keeps us going is the hope that one of these days we will wake up and it will be gone. —George DeBord
The pep clubs of the University will have their first chance to perform at the KU-Boston University football game here tomorrow.
More Team Support Wanted
Each year a great deal is said about school spirit. Pep club leaders become disturbed because of the lack of support from the KU students.
Perhaps their complaints are justified. But the average student places the blame on the pep clubs for lack of spirit.
Pep leaders admit that improvement is needed in their groups. Their card section last year was
not successful. Students sitting near it could see its mistakes, not to mention fans on the other side of the field.
The pep clubs can do only so much. The real responsibility lies with the students, not in the clubs. Leadership has been provided for students to show their spirit at the games.
Naturally, each student feels that he is supporting the team in his own way. But a little less flask-passing and a little more hand-clapping are in order. —Larry Hazelrigg
Flat Tire
Editor:
I would like to answer Ray Miller's question in the September 29th issue of The Daily Kansan. At least two of the three bicycles shown in the picture accompanying his article, "Where Are Those Bicycles Coming From?" were here last year. Where did Mr. Miller come from?
Donald Shanfelt Bonner Springs junior
***
Tuesday's Daily Kansan carried an interesting letter which blamed movies for a "degeneration of American morals." I believe movies which horrify some people as being "immoral" are actually attempts to portray realistically and certainly a more mature individual would not regard them in the way Tuesday's author did.
Movie Issue
This letter also said that if a
couple went to one of the movies which was "not morally decent," they could not discuss it because it would be too embarrassing. This is ridiculous unless these individuals are too embarrassed to live, for what could be more interesting or thought provoking than a discussion of life, real life?
I feel that there is too much censorship of movies rather than not enough as the Tuesday letter seemed to imply. If people had more confidence in themselves and their fellow human beings they could make reasonable choices regarding their own entertainment
The author of Tuesday's letter also points out that the moviegoer would find himself in a pretty bad situation if he followed some of the examples in the movie. By the time an individual reaches college age he should be old enough that he does not have to imitate everything he sees. After all, imitation is the common form of learning in babies and young adults should be able to use some discrimination.
without having it dosed out to them as if it were a harmful drug.
-Jerrold Gershon Bernstein Kansas City, Mo., soph.
In the Dark With John Morrissey
Went to see the new Summerfield Hall the other day. While there I saw Al (Hitchcock) filming a sequel to "Vertigo" on the fourth floor.
Well, they've finally figured out the female social problem at KU. The freshmen must be perfect in all respects in order to pledge; the sophomores must lead a good life in order to be initiated; good behavior is required of juniors to set a spotless example for the sophomores. And the seniors? They're in a sweat vying for the coveted position of a Stouffer back-scratcher.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"BUT HE TOLD ME IT WOULD LEAVE A SCAR!"
Founded 1889, became bireweky 1904,
trieweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Telephone Viking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
UNIT I NITY
Daily Hansan
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. Received by National Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and final week of second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Jack Harrison ... Managing Editor
Carol Allen, Dick Crocker, Jack
Morton and Doug Yocam, Assistant
Managing Editors; Rael Amos, City
Editor; Jim Trotter, Sports Editor;
Carolyn Frailey, Society Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George Debord and John Husar Co-Editorial Editors Saundra Hayn, Associate Editorial Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Kane...Business Manager
Ted Tidwell, Advertising Manager;
Joanne Novak, Promotion Manager;
Bennett Reed, Revenue Manager;
Tom Schmitz, Circulation Manager; John Masse, Classified Advertising Manager.
It Looks This Way . . .
By Bob Lynn
Remember the old story of the "Ugly Duckling?" A modern supplement of that duckling is on the campus today. This duckling is the older student who evidently feels he (or she) is too old to receive the full benefit of a college education.
Most people can recognize the type of person concerned. He is the one who possibly has been in the armed services for from two to four years, has married, realized the need for education, and entered college. He should be easy to recognize, for one in every four students is a member of this older group.
The most peculiar and unifying aspect about these older students is their almost complete absence from other than classroom activities; those activities so vital to a complete college education.
For one thing, he misses a chance to exercise the skills learned in the classroom. For another, he shirks opportunities to share his interests with new friends. But most of all, he refuses the means by which he can learn to successfully associate with his fellows.
Of course, many of this older group are tied up with family and job responsibilities. But that is not the excuse they use to avoid campus activities. Their stock answer is, unrealistically, that activities are too immaturely conducted to satisfy their older type of living.
If the older students do possess a higher degree of maturity, the University then needs the charity of their presence. Their continued absence does no good, but only continued harm to everyone concerned.
By John S. Lewis
Assistant Instructor of English
Twenty-one essays are represented in this anthology, and only T. S. Eliot is represented more than once. The number of critics who are known primarily as artists is strikingly high. Aside from Eliot these include: W. B. Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf, Allen Tate, and Katherine Anne Porter. But the lines between artist and critic are quite blurred. Eliot, for example, is a poet and a dramatist. He is also acclaimed as a great critic and no one will deny the tremendous influence his criticism has had.
And Allen Tate is a poet of distinguished stature, an influential critic, and a teacher who has fired the ambitions of hundreds of students.
On the other hand, I. A. Richards, William Empson, and Herbert Read are better known as critics. Yet all three have written poetry, and Empson, perhaps, may be remembered for his verse when his criticism is dismissed as adolescent precocity.
The English professor looking for a textbook to use in a modern criticism course may be forced to search elsewhere. He will not find the precursors of modern criticism—critics such as T. E. Hulme or Irving Babbitt—here. But he will find critical essays which have been ignored by other anthologists.
F
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The previous century was a great age of criticism too. Yet the appearance of such a book as this one in the nineteenth century would be almost inconceivable. Nineteenth-century critics did collect some of their better essays and publish them in book form. But the collection of a group of essays by various critics as an attempt to present a representative example of contemporary criticism is a recent development. More than anything else an anthology of modern criticism indicates that the critic of today takes himself quite seriously.
The essay by Richards is not from the hoary "Principles of Literary Criticism," and an anthology not containing Eliot's "Tradition and Individual Talent" may be greeted with a sense of relief. The present writer would not have discovered the fine essay on Hardy by Katherine Anne Porter, or the provocative criticism of Milton's Satan by Arnold Stein. It is also gratifying to see a chapter from Arnold Kettle's fine "Introduction to the English Novel" included.
The personality of the editor is manifest even though he includes critics who take much different views from his own. Irving Howe contributes an essay on Walt Whitman, placing it in an unobtrusive position in the anthology. But his introduction—"Modern Criticism: Privileges and Perils"-is far more memorable because Howe is concerned, not with a history of modern criticism, but with establishing a relation between the artist and the critic.
MODERN LITERARY CRITICISM, by Irving Howe, Beacon Press. $6.50.
The systematic study of literary criticism is a modern phenomenon and is coincident with what may prove to be the most fruitful period of critical activity since classical times. Whether the present age will be remembered primarily as an age of criticism or not cannot be determined now. But the phrase, "age of criticism," is commonplace to the extent that it has almost become a cliche.
ZT
Howe sees the critic as a man living in the world. The critic's task expands beyond the immediate duty of understanding and estimating the worth of a work of art. He must be the ally of the artist, the defender of a literary tradition.
Above all, he must serve the art he espouses by retaining a sense of discriminating values that have been largely ignored by the world about him.
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