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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, March 21, 1968
And all so quietly done
Integration came to KU's fraternity system Monday the way it should have—without pickets, accusations, or resentment.
The event happened quietly, at a time when Alpha Kappa Lambda was under no pressure to pledge Willie McDaniel, or any other Negro. Although McDaniel is the first Negro to pledge en all-white fraternity, race was not significant. Rather it was McDaniel himself.
Not too many years ago, fraternizing with a Negro was a social misdeed. Now, it is fashionable among the "liberals"—who get, and deserve, the scorn of most Negroes—to have a Negro "friend." Having a new car, something to Show and Tell.
Although people take pride in how eloquently they can profess their lack of prejudice,
somehow the whole affair can have a carnival air. The lack of sincerity can be evident.
That's why the AKL pledging is somewhat refreshing. Last semester, the same fraternity refused to pledge a Negro. They wanted instead to vote on the person, not on the race. This semester, they pledged Willie McDaniel.
The pledging of McDaniel was a happening, but not an Event. The United Press at first declined to run the story because it was too commonplace.
As the Negro gains acceptance as a fellowfriend, not an object but a person, the self-consciousness of color must fade. Whites will cease to over-react to color.
And who knows, with progress like this, you may someday even be able to dislike a Negro.
— Diana Wengler
— Diana Wengler Editorial Editor
Paperbacks
Two books about great people of the theatre are available in inexpensive editions, both well illustrated and conjuring up the great past of the American drama. The first is Cornelia Otis Skinner's MADAME SARAH (Dell, 95 cents), a biography of Sarah Bernhardt; the second is Maurice Zolotow's STAGE STRUCK (Crest, 95 cents), which deals with the great Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Sarah Bernhardt in her time was regarded as the greatest of actresses, and legend still conveys her to us that way. Another celebrity of the theatre, Miss Skinner, has told the frequently flamboyant story.
The story of Lunt and Fon-
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tanne is a more recent one. It has not "been too many years since they were appearing almost annually, in such plays as "Aamphryton 38," "There Shall Be No Night." "Elizabeth the Queen" and "Idiot's Delight." Molotow provides an engrossing story not only of the Lunts but of other Broadway names of their time.
A couple of new volumes by Brett Halliday. IN A DEADLY VEIN and THIS IS IT, MICHAEL SHAYNE (Dell, 50 cents each). Naturally the hero is Michael Shayne and naturally there are luscious babes (though not quite as bare as those on the covers), and what else can you say about modern detective novels?
Another Miami-bound Flight
Letter to the editor
Music reviews bad
To the Editor:
During the past two years I have noticed, at various times, certain ineptitudes in Kansan news articles concerning the concerts and recitals here at the University. Usually, the above-mentioned articles are laughably bad; sometimes they are the funniest articles in the issue.
I am referring specifically to the times: (a) when the reporting journalist has obviously not attended the concert or recital about which he is writing, and (b) when the reporting journalist has no basic knowledge of the subject about which he is writing. I am curious—would you write a book review of a book which you have not read? Or write a movie review of a movie you have not seen? If not (and I hope not!), how do you feel qualified to write a review of a concert or recital you have not attended? Or to write a commentary on a musical group about which you know little or nothing?
I have been collecting my feelings concerning this matter for some time now, and would still
I assume you print this paper to serve the University. I feel that you would be doing the University a better service if you wrote music reviews with accuracy and intelligence. At any rate, at the present time I think you are doing a disservice to the music at this University.
be collecting them but for an article in March 15th's Kansan about the New York Pro Musica. This article states, "The Pro Musica, composed of six vocalists and four musicians . . .." Is there any particular reason you feel that vocalists are not also musicians?
By whose standards do you draw the line between musicians and non-musicians? It seems to me that the article should have read, "The Pro Musica is composed of ten musicians—six vocalists and four instrumentalists." It also seems to me that, as responsible journalists, you should give the same kind of accuracy and knowledgeableness to the music reviews that you give to everything else.
-Kay A. Johnson
Council Bluffs, Iowa, junior
Kansan movie review
"Ulysses:" in our eyedrums
By Scott Nunley
If we all sit down and agree (over Irish whiskey) that James Joyce is a great novelist and that "Ulysses" is perhaps the greatest of all modern novels, then (perhaps, after the rye) we might all go see the film together and agree that it too is magnificent.
The question of course is why.
There were people bored by Joseph Strick's film version of "Ulysses," just as there were enthusiasts. There were even people who had the guts to walk out on a three dollar evening. But the question still is why.
For a start at an answer, ask a few more-specific questions. As a motion picture, was "Ulysses" emotionally moving? (Deeply, not only but certainly sexually.) Was it visually fascinating? (I haven't enjoyed my optic nerves in black and white so much in years.) Was it intellectually exciting? (My friends can't stop talking their way back to it.)
That's a hell of a lot to say for anybody's movie.
But of course (remember the Irish whiskey) we went to see this cinematic monster because it wasn't anybody's movie—it was Joyce's. It was "true to the novel" (which may mean that it was true in a novel way?). So perhaps we should inquire to just what extent Strick's film was a faithful documentary of a touted Twentieth century literary event.
The novel itself (published overseas in 1922, allowed before sensitive American eyes ten years later) was a masterful development of those 19th Century European poets who experimented with images, with language pictures that flashed much more than their dictionary weight upon their reader. Too, "Ulysses" brought to fruition the Continental experiments in stream of consciousness, a monologue from within a character's mind.
Using both symbols and interior monologues, then, Joyce attacked the Homeric story of the wandering Greek king Odysses or Ulysses. Searching for a return to his wife and son, Ulysses in the 20th century becomes the outcast Jew Leopold Bloom (certainly no wily legendary king). Ulysses' faithful wife Penelope becomes the openly sexual adulteress Mollie Bloom. And Ulysses's lost son Telemachus becomes the pedantic and rebellious young poet Stephen Dedalus (seeking a "father" of his own).
"Ulysses" as a novel moved through one day in the lives of these three characters, within or near the earthy city of Dublin. After long hours
of wandering and pain, Joyce's study concluded with hope that the needs of all three might possibly be fulfilled.
But as a film, "Ulysses" moves away from this regeneration and healing and towards an apparently hopeless alienation of father, wife, and son.
This basic lack of settlement in the film is unsettling itself. Doesn't Joseph Strick believe that "Ulysses" is an optimistic novel? Or doesn't the optomism of the film come across as it climaxes in Mollie's sensual (and magnificent) monologue? Or doesn't it matter that the film isn't something else outside itself?
The net result of course is that Strick's motion picture is static. It jumps about a lot, it makes a lot of wave motions, it appears to "move." But it has no progress. From the breakfasts of Stephen with Buck Mulligan and Leopold with Mollie, to their erotic night adventures, there is no real advancement.
The amazement is that we can even discuss these problems. Without the recent popularization before American theatre-audiences of the films of Fellini and Antonioni, how could "Ulysses" have been shown in public? Without their experimentation with cinematic visions, with narrative unreality, and with sensual honesty upon the screen.
Bloom never makes that momentous pronouncement that his wife will henceforth serve HIM breakfast-in-bed. Mollie's satisfaction is only fantasy. And Stephen—unfortunately the film must slight him so badly that he is scarcely ever more than The Brooding Young Man.
Certainly the notoriety (even popularity) of the film will serve to juvenate interest in the novel. Lit profs who have steered shy of Joyce (with reasonable dread) may find their undergraduates uphefting eagerful faces. Bookstores will reorder their copies.
The question of course is why bother.
Because there is something dreadfully in need of examination in the belittling and dehumanizing urbanized super-culturalization of 1968. Because you and I are ironic Ulysses' lucky to find a kindlier Circe (drawing the season of the witch about our ears in gale) much less a Penelope fair. Because the telly might be raising us to be imaginistic analytics who dissect with no resuscitation.
Because we can no longer pretend that human beings are the simple narrative organisms of neatly romanticized plots.
And because (despite the Irish whiskey) it might afterall be fun to soak language up through the drums of our eyes.
...quotes..
"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?"
Mark Twain
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