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University Daily Kansan Tuesday.Sept.27,1960
Ghost of the Kingfish
Last Wednesday the great and sovereign state of Louisiana once again focused its considerable power on the problem of individual rights and the freedom of speech. The result was terrifying.
In one of the most flagrantly unjust acts by a public official in our memory, District Attorney Richard A. Dowling filed a charge of criminal anarchy against a 21-year-old graduate student at Tulane University. This rare charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
The crime? Dowling said he filed the charge because of a "remark" the student made after he had been arrested following his participation in a lunch counter sit-in.
What did the student say that shook the foundations of the great and sovereign state of Louisiana, that incited rebellion against authority in that state, that in any other way led to a justifiable charge of anarchy? If Mr. Dowling knows, he isn't telling anyone.
This incident, taken by itself, is not important; the injustice that underlies such action by the state and makes a mockery of the sanctity of individual rights and the freedom of speech certainly is important.
Injustice has a tradition in the land of the Longs. Its root is found in the political ignorance of the people, an ignorance so profound that they permitted Huey Long, the Kingfish, to trample underfoot the entire concept of human dignity.
The Kingfish muzzled the opposition press, spoon-fed his favorites, browbeat the legislature and looked the other way when his supporters — and they were legion — slipped their hands in the public till. Long allowed he'd like to be president; then the assassin's bullet struck him down.
But even in death Hitey Long has retained his stature among the voters of Louisiana. His methods of political conquest set the pattern followed by other elected officials in the state, a pattern which has steeened this area in corruption since the Kingfish offered his first bribe.
Huev was the darling of the rednecks, the backwoods and bayou people who saw in Long a reflection of themselves and who returned him to office time and time again. They listened to his promises for the little man, and did not realize
that these promises could be kept only at the expense of thousands of other little men. They applauded his bitter, baseless attacks on his detractors and took them to be gospel because, after all, didn't Huey tell them it was so?
Long was no fool. He did much for the little people who sustained him — new hospitals, roads, schools. But at what cost? The many things Long gave them were bought at the expense of those who desired to speak out against what amounted to tyranny, did speak out — and were crushed.
Long used brute force and sly coercion to keep the city vote tame. He did not need to apply pressure to the rednecks, for it was with their blessings he built his unholy empire.
- A machine was created which to this day has held the state in thralldom. Earl Long, Huey's brother, spit on the floor of the legislature; incumbent Jimmy Davis is more at home with a hillbilly guitar than with the rod of office. Both are heirs to the Long tradition, and the people who worry are vastly outnumbered by those who only ask; What's in it for me?
So now we come full circle, back to the student who, in the last analysis, is an ultimate victim of Huey Long and the state machine he created. The outrage perpetrated by the state in this case is traceable to the ignorance and selfishness of those who allowed Long and his successors to defile the high office of the state and abuse the law for their own purposes, making of it not an instrument of justice but a sword hanging over the head of every citizen who dares speak his mind.
So Sydney Goldfinch, 21, languishes in jail, charged with the attempted subversion of authority in his state. We can foresee no help for him or for anyone who cherishes the right of freedom of expression while the voters of the state are held captive by the Long political method, an organism which has survived to taint the people of Louisiana. Not until they understand that democracy can never be an expression of individual interests alone in order to work for the public good will they be truly free.
Bill Blundell
GRANADA: FROM THE TERRACE: COLOR
At the Movies
"From the Terrace" is one of the outstanding shows of the year. The ingredients are all there: John O'Hara with his profound ideas on society, a contemporary social situation and two of today's top actors. Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman.
The superb acting based on a superb novel makes for a most interesting evening's entertainment. The beginning of the show seems to have so little in common with the climactic ending, but yet the plot flows smoothly into place.
The movie centers on the unbounded ambitions of a young naval officer returning from World
War II to make his fortune. His broken home, along with a not too understanding father, drive him out.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
The character's are not the righteous, untouchables in society that one thinks of in connection with Wall Street. Instead they possess the faults of all normal persons, but sometimes to a greater and more burning extent. Mr. Newman and Miss Woodward play their parts brilliantly.
SPORTCASTER: " IN SPITE OF INJURIES, FOLKS, OLE STATE FIGHTS BRAVELY ON WITH POLANSKY GOING IN FOR BEAEN—"
John O'Hara, author of the book "From the Terrace," wrote the novel in reaction to the American's all consuming drive for wealth and position. The movie opens a most critical eye of high-class society in New York, and leaves one wondering if it is really that bad.
The movie is delightful entertainment. It has unmatched acting, a fast-moving plot and portrays the burning desires of man-success and sex. It is enjoyable if one wishes to see a movie either for relaxation or for an insight into life.
—CJP
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
JEW DEBES
Ray Miller
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
DISTRIBUTOR DEPARTMENT
John Patterson Co-Editorial Editors
Bill Blundell
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull Business Manager
By Arnold H. Weiss
Assistant Professor of Romance Languages
SPANISH STORIES—CUENTOS ESPANOLES, edited by Angel Flores; FRENCH STORIES—CONTES FRANÇAIS, edited by Wallace Fowlie; Bantam Dual-Language Books. Bantam Books, 75 cents apiece.
These twin volumes, prepared with the general reader in mind as well as the language student, present respectively thirteen and ten short stories, with the original and the English on facing pages. The format of the two books is identical: a general introduction, shorter introductions to the individual stories and their authors, text, notes, questions (in the foreign language) over the stories, and a vocabulary, the latter omitting words and phrases which the editors consider should be familiar to a person who has studied the language for a year or more.
EVERYONE WILL HAVE his own opinion of just what and how much is familiar to such a reader and of how well the editors have judged this, but with English texts facing the originals, the problem is more academic than real. The similarity of the two books ends here. "Cuentos Españoles" professes to cover the entire history of the Spanish short story in one pocket-sized volume; this is of course possible only at the most obviously superficial level. And to fill the nearly 300-year gap between Don Juan Manuel (early 14th century) and Cervantes, the editor has had to bring in two chapters from the early picaresque novel, "Lazarillo de Tormes." The chapters are interesting, even if using them is a bit of a fraud. Some purists may boggle at calling Juan Manuel's moral tales short stories, though on that point I side with the editor. My only complaint on the score is that satisfactory translation of medieval and Renaissance Spanish is almost an impossibility; if the translation is literal (as it is here), the English usually turns out to be too stilted for modern tastes; if it is free, it tends to throw off an inexperienced reader. The text reaches more solid ground when it leaves Cervantes and concentrates on the standard prose writers (both Spanish and Spanish American) of the late 19th and 20th Centuries.
THE READER of "Cuentos Españoles" is advised to disregard the introductory material and critical apparatus and to concentrate on enjoying the stories. Introductions and notes are painful exercises in pedantry made doubly annoying by gib and superficial writting, abuse and misuse of the English language, inconsistencies, incomplete and sometimes wrong information, and generally poor editing. The notes are particularly obnoxious; many seem designed to reimpress one with an ingenious translation which he has already understood and appreciated from the text itself, so that what should be a help to the reader turns out to be a series of insults to his intelligence. It is a tribute to the vitality of the Spanish language and the genius of its writers that the stories overcome this deadening handicap imposed by a hack job of editing.
All this makes it a pleasure to turn to "Contes Français." The stories are good — as are most of those selected for the two volumes. The introductions are shorter and clearer, the notes few, brief, and to the point. (As a matter of comparison, the 248 pages of "Cuentos Españoles" — i.e., 124 pages of Spanish and 124 of English — get 26 pages of notes, while the 280 pages of "Contes Français" require only 8 pages of notes.) The French volume also sensibly avoids trying to produce a far-ranging survey and so goes back no further than Voltaire (in his case also the "stories" are chapters from a novel); this has made the translators' job a lot easier, with corresponding profit to the reader.
A WORD ABOUT the translations in both volumes. The statement by the publisher to the effect that they are all new is by no means correct. But they are accurate and in some instances — notably in the last two stories of "Cuentos Espanoles" — brilliant. It is a pity that sufficient credit is not given the individual translators; in most cases their names are not mentioned. Talent deserves a better fate.
***
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
PERSUASION and LADY SUSAN, by Jane Austen. Dell Laurel Books, 50 cents.
BOOKS, 50 cents. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, by Jane Austen. Dell Laurel Books, 50 cents.
Two handsome volumes that should impress both professors and students of the English novel are these works by Jane Austen in the Laurel series. They accompany the earlier volume, "Pride and Prejudice."
There is a peculiar charm about Jane Austen, whose mild-mannered comedies seem almost out of the mainstream of 19th century social comment. Such comment was not her concern; rather she felt that novels should be about people living quietly mannered lives, about middle-class families and eligible daughters and handsome suitors.
No wild floods as in George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss," or Gothic horrors like the novels of the Bronte sisters. Rather novels of manners, told in comic fashion that would prove highly influential on the realists of late century.
Miss Austen's titles reveal her absorption in the subject matter. She is dealing with over-proud heroes and heroines prejudiced because of this pride: of a heroine, as in "Persuasion," who finally weds her lover after many long years, of practical persons on the one side and those more attuned to demands of the senses on the other. Her works are a refreshing delight after a diet of heavier realistic novels of a later day.