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BOOKS
By Richard Gustafson Instructor in English
Summer Session Kansan
LIFE STUDIES, by Robert Lowell. Farrar, Straus and Cudahy $3.50.
Although framed at beginning and end by free verse poetry, the center of Mr. Lowell's work is a charmingly-familiar prose sketch of his boyhood as a Boston Lowell with expectations. His father was a jargon-bellowing naval commodore whose superiors objected to his maintaining shore quarters on Beacon Hill; his mother objected to his father. Pre-adolescent Robert objected to being enrolled at Brimmer girls' school, just becoming co-ed in the lower grades, and whose upper grades were dominated by a strident female militarism.
The Lowells had produced poets of renown—Robert, himself, James Russell, and of course—"Remember Amy Lowell, that cigar-chawing, guffawing, senseless and meterless, multimillionheiress, heavyweight mascot on a floating fortress. Damn the Patterns! Full speed ahead on a cigareto!" —says a friend of the family.
The piece is lightly treated with all the mild jabbing and loving forgiveness of bemused reminiscence. Mr. Lowell regards his pioneering forbears with the indulgent ease to which their quiet repose entitles them. According to the author, one of the cherished family portraits seems to say, "My children, my blood, accept graciously the loot of your inheritance. We are all dealers in used furniture."
Mr. Lowell's prose style has the vivid but jammed effect of thought condensed into rich metaphor which characterizes the prose of many poets. In the poetry the most noteworthy characteristic is his descriptive power. The poems, except for a few in this volume, lack statement and form. They seem quite like the free verse and imagery that the redoutable Amy Lowell nursed a half-century before. The images connote a mood for which there is little formal control, but the pictures are memorable. In the nearly-forgotten family farm—
The Pierce Arrow clears its throat in a horse-stall.
Then the dry road dust rises to whiten
The fatigued elm leaves.
As an overscrubbed little boy—
I was a stuffed toucan
With a bibulous, multicolored beak.
Or the family—
Family gossip says Aunt Sarah tilted her archaic Athenian nose and jilted an Astor.
But at times the vividness bursts into a mottled splash—
In his book Mr. Lowell is vivid as a poet and warmly likeable as a personality, but his art lacks melody, formal control, and serious statement. And as for the last, who but a dogmatic reviewer would ask it of a personal reminiscence.
He was animated, hierarchical,
like a singer snap man in a clothes-press.
PENGUIN ISLAND, by Anatole France. Bantam, 50 cents.
This is the classic satire about the near-sighted monk who baptized an island of penguins, about the folks in heaven deciding that they must back the mistaken fellow, and about how the penguins behave when they become people. Well, they become people. They go through primitive times, establish their hierarchy of saints, enter the Middle Ages, endure a Renaissance, and come into modern times. Then they acquire a Napoleon, industrialism, fast-moving motorcars, and civilized morality. The digs of the writer are as pungent in mid-century America as they were in early-century France, and they are prophetic as well. Summary: a fine addition to this company's line of classics, and required reading alongside Orwell's "Animal Farm." —CMP
THE MEANING OF ART, by Herbert Read. Pelican, $1.25.
Read's 28-year-old survey of the history of art has been brought up to date with a new preface. Though a paperback, it is worth $1.25 for the plates alone—Chinese pottery, an Etruscan mirror, Viking, pre-Columbian American, Negro primitives, El Greco, Michelangelo, Rubens, Turner, Delacroix, Rousseau, Picasso, van Gogh, Renoir and Matisse. It is a brilliant and highly understandable study of art from the beginnings up to today—pottery, sculpture, paintings. It may be petty to carp to mention is Jackson Pollock. Surely the American landscapes of the 19th century can compare with those of Turner or Corot; surely a word about Homer, Allston or Whistler would not be amiss.
—CMP
UP FROM SLAVERY, by Booker T. Washington, Bantam Classics, 50 cents.
Today's militant leaders of the NAACP view the placid, acquiescent Booker T. Washington, who was born around 100 years ago, as an "Uncle Tom." Probably he is that, but his story is one of the great American success stories, and his fight for Negro rights has made possible the Adam Powells and Thurgood Marshalls of today. Bantam Classics now has published in paperback the famous work that appeared in Outlook in 1900. It tells of the Virginia slave's efforts to receive an education, of his founding of Tuskegee Institute, of his close association with the great of the land, his friendship with McKinley and Roosevelt and Julius Rosenwald. Here is a log cabin-to-success legend that can rival, if not surpass, anything dreamed up by Horatio Alger. —CMP
Summer Totals Largest Since Post-War Years
With 3.261 students having paid fees for the University of Kansas summer session, the campus has its largest student body since the "vet-eran-swollen" days following World War II, according to James K. Hitt registrar and director of admissions
The total, up about 10 per cent over 1958, includes 2,906 on the Lawrence campus and 355 at the KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan.
The summer session student body shows sharp contrasts with those World War II days. While today there are 797 veterans, about 27 percent of the Lawrence campus students, fewer than half of them receive any "GI" assistance.
Instruction is heavily concentrated at the graduate level. The 1,190 enrolled in the Graduate School and 68 in the School of Law comprise 43 per cent.
On the Lawrence campus men outnumber women only by the slim margin of 1.7 to 1, while at Kansas City there are 210 women to 145 men.
There are 592 new students, more than 65 per cent of them in the Graduate School. The operation of five summer institutes for the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Office of Education contributed to the upward swing in the Graduate School but still involved less than half of the 365 new students.
Enrollment by schools: Graduate, 1,190; College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 515; Engineering and Architecture, 342; Education, 308; Fine Arts, 120; Business, 115; Law, 68; Journalism, 11; Pharmacy, 10; Medicine—47 nursing students at Lawrence, 355 at Kansas City.
Dairy Creates $300 Pharmacy Grant
The Steffen Dairy Foods Company, Inc., of Wichita has created a $300 scholarship in pharmacy at the University of Kansas through a gift to the KU Endowment Assn.
Dean J. Allen Reese, School of Pharmacy, will choose the recipient for 1959-60 from among men and women coming from the geographical area served by the Steffen Dairy Foods Co., Inc. Academic achievement and financial need will be considered in making the award.
Friday. July 10, 1959
835 Mass.
JULY CLEARANCE SALE
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Formosa Threat Unchanged
TAIPEI — (UPI) — Vice Adm. Roland Smoot, senior U.S. military commander on Formosa, says the Communist threat in the Formosa Straits remained unchanged despite Sunday's 1st battle.
"But I'll admit frankly that the Communists in the next hour or the next day could make me eat those words," he said. "We'll just have to wait and see what is up their sleeves."
(The Hong Kong publication Ming Li News Service said advance model MIG-19 Communist jets used air-toair missiles to destroy a Nationalist
bomber May 29, but intelligence sources here denied the reports.)
Nationalist China's first missilemen returned from training in the United States to man Nike Hercules missiles guarding northern Formosa.
Three planes arrived at Taipei International Airport yesterday with 150 Nationalist officers and soldiers who were trained in the operation of the Nike Hercules missiles at Ft. Bliss, Tex.
They will take over the four missile sites around Taipei, which have been manned by U.S. Army crews since their arrival last October.
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