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Summer Session Kansan Tuesday, July 20, 1965
The Perils of Criticism
We're in trouble again, here on the Kansan. They (the complainants shall remain unidentified) don't like some of the things one of our young men has been saying about the Sunday concerts.
Now this young man is named Jonathan Block and, like our complainants, he has opinions. He hasn't liked the Symphonic Band as much as some of the other things he hears on Sunday. Jonathan's views seem sound enough: opinionated, but then he's supposed to be. He doesn't seem wildly irresponsible. He has a little trouble with his commas and subject-verb agreement, but then that's a familiar ailment of the race, afflicting even some students in the gifted student program and probably touching a Fine Arts major now and then. We understand that he can read music, which puts him a notch ahead of some people who set out to review concerts, and some who criticize newspapers, for that matter.
JONATHAN NEEDS to know that he's not the first person to get us in trouble. Over the long years on Mt. Oread (I soon go into my 15th) the Kansan, which is, after all, only a student newspaper, has made many people unhappy with its criticisms, including some members of the journalism faculty. But we've felt that criticism is one function of the press, so we keep letting our students review plays and concerts.
We suppose there's some complaint because Jonathan isn't old enough. We'll say to that, first, that it seemed healthy for a member of the Midwestern Music and Art (and now Journalism, by the way) Camp to try his hand at criticism of his peer group (good sociological term). We'll say, second, that our observation would be that for some folks a critic is old enough to criticize only when he says the right things and doesn't make anyone unhappy. This means that Brooks Atkinson, who has retired from criticism, never was old enough. Nor, we suppose, was Bernard Shaw.
THE WAYS OF A CRITIC are troubled. But occasionally he comes up with a nice way of saying things:
Like Eugene Field: "So-and-so played the king. He should have played the ace."
The New Yorker, reviewing a book called "The Sooner to Sleep": "Most prophetic title of the year."
Time magazine, reviewing "Huckleberry Finn," a 1939 movie: "Mickey Rooney vs. Mark Twain."
He also can say some stupid things:
Like a student I once knew, commenting on "A Streetcar Named Desire": "It stunk."
Or a Kansan reviewer of "Richard III": "The cast did as well as it could with the stupid play."
THEN THERE'S Walter Winchell, who had spoken too harshly of plays at the Shubert theaters. "I have been denied tickets to openings at the Shubert theaters. Now I can wait a night and go to their closings."
Or John Steinbeck, who bought ads in the New York newspapers to protest the critical shutout (deserved, in all likelihood) of a Steinbeck play called "Burning Bright."
Jonathan, perhaps, can be denied seats at the Sunday concerts. How, we don't know, but the thought might be percolating somewhere. That would deny him, of course, the opportunity to hear some good music. Or maybe some bad music, too, because the fine young people who blow horns and things in the bands and orchestras are likely to hit sour notes on occasion. Or have trouble with their semicolons when they write their English themes.
WELL PROBABLY go on reviewing plays and music, and getting nasty phone calls and nasty letters. We remember what a speech professor said once last winter: "We're not asking for nice reviews. We just want someone from the Kansan to review our shows so the kids'll know what somebody else thinks."
Now there's an attitude we'd like to frame. Come back, Gordon Beck! We need a friend. -Calder M. Pickett, Professor of Journalism
Our Finest Spokesman
I felt a little like I did November 22, 1963. The difference was that I hadn't expected my sorrow to be quite this deep when Ambassador Adai E. Stevenson died.
He, and President Kennedy before him, were only men—but the imprint each has etched on history is as sharp and clear as that of a mighty army.
Their army was a philosophy of justice, peace
and good will. They were condemned for being "unrealistic and impractical."
But both served by inspiring a coming generation and molding the ideals of pragmatists after their time. Together they have left a heritage of truth and beauty to nations of children yet unborn.
"America has lost . . . her finest spokesman." It is not yet too late for America to hear his voice.
— Jacke Thayer
Summer Session
Kansan
111-112 Flint Hall
University of Kansas Student
Newspaper
Telophone UN. 4. 2398 businesses
Telephone UN 4-3198, business
UN 4-3646, newsroom
Jacke Thayer ... Managing Editor
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Jake Thayer ... Managing Editor
Tom Magur ... Business Manager
University Daily Kansan (regular session) founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member of Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50th St. New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. 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 examination periods. Published Tuesdays and Fridays during Summer Session. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas. Accommodations, goods, services, and employment advertised in the University Daily Kansan are offered to all students without regard to color, creed, or national origin.
Warning
BOOK REVIEWS
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, by Victor Hugo (Signet Classics, 75 cents).
In unabridged form comes a paperback edition of one of the greatest novels of all time. Some prefer to use the title Hugo gave the novel, "Notre Dame de Paris." Under that title it is able to convey much more the probable intent of Hugo, that of depicting the great cathedral and the medieval church. "The Hunchback" is the popular and familiar form, made even more so by the frequent film versions of the story.
As in "Les Miserables," Hugo provides considerable French history and social comment. For "The Hunchback" is more than a story of the bellringer of Notre Dame, the gypsy dancer, and Claude Frollo the priest. It is a well-rounded story of medieval Paris, with all its drama, excitement and viciousness.
Hugo masterly gives us a picture of a mob action, the torment of the deformed Quasimodo, the color and light of the city and the cathedral. Some classics seem unreadable to the modern reader; this one deserves the wide audience it has had for so long.
LAST LETTERS FROM STALINGRAD, translated by Franz Schneider and Charles Gullans (Signet, 60 cents)—Part of the contents of seven bags of mail from the remnants of Hitler's 350,000-man Sixth Army at Stalingrad. These letters were seized by the German high command, which found them too damaging to the Nazi cause to be delivered. After the war the letters were captured, and 37 of them have been translated and collected in this interesting new volume. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall writes, "These letters bare for us the soul of the combat soldier in his worst hour. Amid the encompassing blackness, there is also a tenderness hardly less than sublime. The writers were Germans, in that hour our enemies. But who may read and not weep for them?"
Vintage, which has brought out other volumes of O'Neill's plays, provides here six of those short plays that for the most part preceded the great era of O'Neill in the American theater.
SIX SHORT PLAYS, by Eugene O'Neill (Vintage, $1.65).
"Before Breakfast" dates to 1916-1917, "The Dreamy Kid" to 1918 and "The Straw" to 1918-1919. "Gold" and "Diff'rent" appeared in 1920, when O'Neill was bursting forth on the New York stage, and Welded" appeared in 1922-1923, after he had arrived.
That O'Neill was our major theatrical talent is probably unnecessary to say, even in an age that is more interested, perhaps, in Albee or Williams. These plays, unfortunately, do not reveal the true greatness of O'Neill. But even in his weaker plays there were strength and power, as is apparent in these curiosities.
They believe that the general reader also will find much in this book. This is possible; it is not likely that such a reader will turn to this when he can turn more easily to television or to the latest novel by Irving Wallace. But all readers could find insights here into how men of other ages have tried to deal with the troubling problems of their times.
Here, largely for the scholar, is a book of readings in Epicureanism, Stoicism, Skepticism and Neoplatonism. The editors are of the department of philosophy at San Jose State College. Their aim is to offer a convenient introduction to the four philosophies of what they deem the first "Age of Anxiety" in the western world.
JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY: A MODERN SELECTION, by E. L. McAdam Jr. and George Milne (Modern Library, $2.45)—The famous dictionary of Dr. Samuel Johnson that is so delightful to scan through it could almost eat up the time required by reading a novel. The editors, in fact, seem to have sensed that the entertainment value is as high as the scholarly value, and offer it to the reader in that vein. Johnson does a special service, too; in defining words he takes examples from the masters of literature: "dogcheap. Cheap as dogs meat; cheap as the offal bought for dogs. 'Good store of harlots, say you, and dogcheap? Dryden.'"
H. M. Burton has selected writings of Shaw and has provided an introduction and notes to go with them. He has chosen from Shavian commentaries on education, music, theater, religion, politics, and his youth.
BERNARD SHAW: A PROSE ANTHOLOGY, edited by H. M. Burton (Premier, 75 cents).
HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY, edited by Herman Shapiro and Edwin M. Curley (Modern Library, $2.45).
Bernard Shaw was more than playwright, as the fascinating prefaces to his dramas attest. He was satirist, essayist, critic, philosopher and wit, and he challenged many of the standards and values of his day.
THE VIKING, by Edison Marshall (Dell, 75 cents)—Wild nonsense by a writer who has turned out a full shelf of historical nonsense. The hero is Ogier the Dane (Kirk Douglas, say); the heroine is a Welsh princess, Morgana (Sophia Loren, maybe, and forget the Italian accent). There are excitement, savage fighting, passionate love, mythology, fantasy, adventure, and all in all a lot of amusement before hero and heroine set forth for "the new world" of America.
SECRETS OF THE HEART, by Kahil Gibran (Signet, 60 cents)—The Lebanese poet who wrote the widely popular "The Prophet" also wrote this largely autobiographical work, in poetry and prose, which shows the reflections of Gibran relating to life and its meaning. He attempts to point the way to peace and serenity by blending the tasks of life with man's endless search for truth.