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University Daily Kansan, October 31, 1980
Entertainment
A. B. C. D.
Burton Pollin (center), Edgar Allan Poe critic, speaks with members of Stuart Levine's English class at Levine's home
Poe critic assesses macabre master
By MARK LEE
By MARK LEE Contributing Writer
Hainted houses, black cats, insidious torture, grisly death.
Reading the tales of Edgar Allan Poe this Halloween night could conjure these and other evocations of horror and ugliness.
"Poe created beautiful ugilness," said Burton Pollin. "A poe critic, this week.
Roum has spent the last 16 years researching Poe, and in the process, he has uncovered 1,300 illustrations and 200 musical compositions. He has written 80 articles and three books about Poe.
Pollin concludes a two-week visit to the University today. He conducted three Poe lectures on campus last week and has spent most of his time searching for more Poe information in Watson Library and in the Murphy Library of Art History.
Pollin taught English literature at City College, New York, and wrote a retiring in 1874. He now resides in Brooklyn, NY.
"What I miss is the classroom," Pollin said. "I retired to a harvard (book) edition of *The New Yorker*. I liked kicking bickets by lecturing here and there. That's why I'm having my kicks at the University of Kansas."
POLLIN BEGAN researching Poe in 1964, but his interest in the author dates to his childhood. Pollin discussed some of his own childhood experiences in his book *Little Prince* published in 1970 by the University of Notre Dame Press.
"I discovered the effect that Poe made upon me as a child living in Massachusetts in a big, old house," Pollin said. "I had the feeling that supernatural forces were whistling around the open spaces of this old house. I had been reading Poe at the time in my childhood. I don't think that Poe ever quite departed from my awareness of literary experience."
After Pollin's renewed interest in Poe in 1964.
he couldn't kick the habit of digging for new information "like some kind of detective dog."
"Poe deals with unresolved questions that many people have about the supernatural and mysterious part of life," Pollin said. "I love playing a detective in these matters."
ALTHOUGH AS A writer, Dpoelle dwell on the fact that Hillin said he should not be considered a crazy man.
"Poe is a deliberate, painstaking craftman," Pollin said. "The fact that Poe chooses characters who are perhaps intoxicated, insane or criminal does not prove that he is crazy."
Poe did, however, have some personal problems similar to those of his characters.
"Poe's life was a miserable one," he said. "He was mised into marrying Virginia, his cousin. He was addicted to liquor. He is as moral as he can be in 'The Black Cat' against liquor."
The theme of liquor is common in Poe's works, and the book's readers' body may feel an imminent with Poe's body.
"Poe has a category of characters who might be called victims," he said. "Poe was the victim of his own addiction, powerless to cure himself of this addiction, but was a feeling of frustration and misdirection."
"Some people feel that this weakness of Poe's corresponds to a failure of will, whether it be a habit of drinking, marjuana or smoking. They may also have a kinship with Poe, especially in the colleges years."
"THE FALL OF THE House of Ushers," a short masterpiece, describes Poe's literary masterpieces. Pollini said.
"Many people feel that that story is the most perfectly unified of all of Poe's works," Pollin said, "and whose thing is beautifully framed in a world where justice and balance and plot. It is a story more than a sketch."
"Usher" is a complex story about an insane man, Roderick, who lives in a gloomy mansion and is killed by a freak lightning storm in the end.
"In a certain way, Poe wrote himself into
Roderick Usher, "Pollin said. "He is a doomed man of sensitivity whose nerves cannot bear the brutality of the materialistic world. Roderick's problem is that he is equally good in all sorts of fields of self-expression, but not in any particular field of biology. He doesn't direct himself in any one direction.
"Isn't that true of so many youth? They don't have a strong drive in any one direction because they feel that they could do this or that. What should I do? Where shall I go? What should I do with my life?"
Poe was not a moralist, nor did he intend to instruct.
"That is the point modern criticism fails to grasp," Pollin said. "They think that Poe intended to teach something. Poe thought that literature should stand up on its own as an art and should not be enjoyed primarily for its moral or theme."
HE SAID POE'S theory of literature could be summed up in a line from Emerson's poem, "The Rhodora:" "Beauty is its own excuse for being."
being,
Pollin's last book, "Poe: Creator of Words," was published in September by Nicholas Smith, a New York publisher.
"I traced all the words that Poe had coined," Pollin said. "I discovered that Poe created over 1000 words to express exactly the idea he had in his ruin."
Pollin's next publication is due in 1981, to be published by G.K.H. Hall-Twain of Boston.
"I just sent back the galleries of a volume of about 800 pages," he said. "It will probably be called 'The Imaginative Voyages of Edgar Allen Poe.'"
Pollin's research has taken him around the world, including Switzerland last year and Japan this summer. He maintains a nation-wide correspondence with other Poe buchs.
"I really feel as though I've become a universal spaster, casting out a web for Poe source material. I love the sense of rousing to so many movements in art, music and literature as our own Edgar Allan Poe."
Tofu Teddy bids Lawrence goodbye
By KEVIN MILLS Entertainment Editor
Lawrence is losing a family tonight
Tofu Teddy—Dean Ottinger, drums, Barry Bernstein, bass, Alan Mattson, keyboards, and Darrell Lea, guitar —is disbanding
"It was time for a change." Ottinger said.
The band's farewell concert is at 8 tonight in the Kansas Union Ballroom, Volunteers, another Lawrence band, will open the show, a Halloween masquerade ball.
Unlike most bands, Tofu Teddy's members never had any aspirations for superstardom. They simply wanted to be Lawrence's family rock band. They're the kind of guys who are as at home playing in your living room as they are at Off-the-Wall-Hall or the Opera House.
"It seems like every time we played it was a really good community experience," Bernstein said. "Everyone had a good time.
"We've always had an extended family. We've played in the gym before our gigs. It was a life with a family prog."
That's not meant to berate their talents. All are accomplished and entertaining musicians.
Totu Teddy was taught in the spring of 1978. Bernstam himself had played as an acoustic guitar player at time.
In its brief two-year existence Tofu Teddy took its get-up-and-dance gospel to "scene Wichita, scenic Emporia, scenic Perry" and other Kansas municipalities, Lea said.
"I guess the reason we started the band is to play what we wanted to玩." Lea said. "We didn't play the music that was the trend, or have the right haircuts."
The band's repertoire has always been opened. They've performed onstage with magicians, other musicians and singers. The band was opened for Commander Cody in Wichita and Lawrence.
But the apace of Tofu Teddy's short career was a New Year's Eve concert in 1979. Truly a multimedia experiential film on the lives of the ceiling of Off Hall. At midnight, band members passed out joints.
"When Tofu Teddy plays we can be twelve bars into the first song and the dance floor fills up," Mattson said.
Always popular, always entertaining, Tofu Teddy seemed to capture the real spirit of live performances.
Bernstein said, "I don't prefer to think of it as a disbanding, but more as a transformation. None of us are quitting music or anything. Otters argue."
30 Why is it for a bodybuilding?
"A lot of it has to do with the fact that we're interested in different things which we couldn't do together." Mattson said.
So why is Tofu Teddy disbanding?
"Somehow the spirit of Tofu Teddy will live on," he said. "A phoenix will rise from the ashes."
TODAY
MUSIC: Leon Lear Fleisher, master classes in piano; 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., Swarthout Recital Hall
KU Concert Choir, fall concert, 8 p.m., Swarthout Recital Hall
The Lotions, 8 p.m., at the Lawrence Opera House
Johnny B. Hill, 8 p.m., at Mo.
Nation, 8 p.m., at G.P. Loyd's West
THEATER: "Uncommon Women and Others," by Wendy Wasserstein, inga Theatre Series, 8 p.m., Inge剧院, Murphy Hall
RAKEN, Eastwood, east wood paintings, and Jim Bass, sculpture, Kellas Gallery
"Likeness: Portrait Photographs from the Collection," and "Tokaido: Adventures on the Road in Old Japan," at the Hellenic Forestsmuseum of Art
MUSEES: The Ford, midnight at 9:30 p.m., at the Kansas Union "The Foo," midnight at the Union
Spare Time
SATURDAY
MUSIC: Leon Fleischer, master classes in piano, 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
Swarthowratch Recital Hall
MUSIC: Leon Fleisher, master classes in piano, 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., Sawhall Rebuttal Circus
The action, 9:30 a.m., Overture Opera House
Tom Brown, 7:30 and 10:30 p.m., at the Uptown, K.C. Mo.
Nation, 9:00 a.m. at G.P.L. Loyd's West
THEATER: "Uncommon Women and Others," by Wendy Wasser-
stein, Inge The剧院 Series, 8:30 p.m., Inge The剧院, Murphy Hall
"The Ghost of Andre Carneau" presented by the Seem-To-Be-
Players, 1:30 p.m., Lawrence Arts Center
ART: "On the Travel and Culture," 9:30 a.m.
Spencer Museum Auditorium
Martin Cheng, watercolors, Kellas Gallery, reception from 3:30-5 p.m., Kellas Gallery
MOVIES: "Halloween," 3:07 and 9:30 p.m., at the Union
MONDAY
p.m., Swarthout Hecital Hall
KU College Musicum, fall concert, 3:30 p.m., Swarthout Hecital Hall
The Clocks, 9 p.m. at the Lawrence Opera House
ART: John Schuman, conceptional art and law, Lawrence Arts Movies: "Twentieth Century," 7:30 p.m., at the Union
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
MUSIC: KU Man's Glee Club, fall concert, 8 p.m., Swarthout
MOVIES: Who's Afraid of a Friar Wife? 7:00 p.m., at the Union
MOVIES: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" 7:30 p.m., at the Union
Hall
Rossington Collins Band, with Henry Paul Band, 8 p.m., at
Morgan Hall K. C. Kan
THURSDAY
MUSIC: Haiti Dread String Trio, faculty recital, 8 p.m., Swushout Recital
Haiti Cordell Band, with Henry Pau Band, 8 p.m. at
Flower Shoppe
1101 Mass.
84-0100
8:40-30
Mon.Sat.
Savanna, y p.m., at G.P. Loy's west
MOVIES: "Gentleman's Agreement," 7:30 p.m., at the Union
$4.50
MUSIC: Student Woodwind Ensemble, student recital, 8 p.m.
Swarthrock Recital Hall
Tim Weisberg, 9.9 m, at the Uptown, K.C. Mo,
Savannah, 9.9 n, at G.P, Lovest. West
SCORE:
MOVIES: "The Gospel According to St. Matthew," 7:30 p.m., at the Union.
"Tokaido: Adventures on the Road in Old Japan" is an exhibit of 85 woodblock prints that depict 19th century Japanese life and landscapes. The exhibit will be displayed in the Kress Gallery until Dec. 21.
TAKE A RAINBOW HOME WITH YOU.
You've worked hard all week. So treat youself to our Friday Flower Feature. You deserve a big, bright weekend. Our feature will make it even brighter. It'll be more价较 and ready to take home with you right now.
Trick or Treat
Fall Bouquet
Come in Costume,
Bowl 2 Games and get a third game FREE!
Red Head Pin Night A Red Head-Pin Strike wins a FREE GAME! It all happens after 7 p.m. Halloween Night!
Jay Bowl
KANSAS UNION
HALLOWEEN WEEKEND AT THE PLADIUM
with PLAIN JANE
There will be cash prizes awarded for 1st & 2nd best costumes.