4 .1, "I I, ~age Eight THE MICHIGAN DAILY Saturday, March 9, 1968 .4' 4 4,, .................................."~*'~'*'''''~'......... Death By MARVIN 4Death in Life: Survivi 4Robert Jay Lif ton. R~ in Lif e' We are all survivors of Hiroshima FELHEIM ors of Hiroshima, by andom House, $10. 4 4. Prof. Llftpon's new book is both monumental and impressive. The result of several years spent In Japan interviewing survivors of the August 6, 1945, holocaust, the 600-page volume con- tains, besides the words of the survivors them- selves (the "hibakusha"), the brilliant explana- tions of Lifton, who not only places all this mnass-of material in profound historical and psychological perspectives, but who also ex- pands the implications of the subtitle to its logical and emotional limits: we are all sur- vivors of Hiroshima. As Dr. Ilifton puts it, in the clear and honest prose which characterizes his entire and enor- mous undertaking, "we may define the survivor as one who has come into contact with death in some bodily or psychic fashion and has him- self remained alive. From this broad perspective we may compare patterns we have observed in Hiroshima to those of other 'extreme' his- torical experiences, particularly the Nazi per- secutions, but also the plagues of the Middle Ages . - .As we examine these categories we find ourselves dealing with universal psycho- logical tendencies; the survivor becomes Every- man." The immediate impression created by Death in Life is thoroughness. To begin with, Lifton interviewed, on extended visits, seventy-five atomic bomb survivors. Then, he had to ar- range the accumulated materials into cate- gories of concern, on the basis of "a modified psychoanalytic approach," and yet with "the kinsd of symbolic and thematic emphasis now prominent in much scientific thought which focuses upon form, and configuration." The result is a model of research (its comn- plexities are noted, especially the delicate re- lationships involved in an American investigator seeking to know the consequences of the A- bomb from its victims) and organization; the clarity is stunning. Not that there are not dull patches, but the overall momentum gathers as we read; ultimately, the work is fascinating. For example, the problem of color discrimination for survivors whose skin was made permanently darker by exposure; thlis, of course, is just a minute part of the larger concern for all aspects of "contamination" and "discrimination."' The perpetual "burden of their survival" dramatizes the fate of the "hibakusha." They have, indeed, faced the final reality -death itself; their continued existence exposes them (and us) to basic questions: "the ultimate coun- terfeit element for- hibakusha is life itself." The guilt element is one of the most provoc- ative conditions which Lifton probes and an- alyzes. When a visiting Indian jurist compares "a Japanese tendency to look upon the disaster as their own fault to a similar tendency of In- dians to hold themselves responsible for oppres- sion at the hand of the British," we are at once in Kafka's world and in the whole large com- plex of world politics, world and national racism, you name it. The overall plan of this book is, finally, very appealing. Starting with the "experience" of the bomb itself (including even the "apprehensions" of residents of this hitherto unbombed military center), Lifton gradually works through events, from confusion to comprehension and on to ultimate reactions. He has fascinating sections on the survivors' "perceptions'' of America and on eventual "creative responses" in literature and the other arts. And his final chapter, "The Survivor," raises the large questions with which this review began. You can't go back to Wolfe By DANIEL OKRENT Glttn= ad=ieri -s Hm= =rolms ofBeing Natural Perhaps the most overblown fallacy that plagues American education is thie Myth of Expertise, that excuse for the teacher's opportunity to stand up in front of his tenth grade social studies class and enjoy the most absurd of "learning process" self- indulgences: authoritarian domination. The "expert" doesn't have to answer as long as he is guarded by an upright lectern and state-given tenure. Occasionally, though, the Myth of Expertise that seems to come as a natural partner with any title or rank of academic distinction, falls away and becomes irrelevant because the pos- sessor sincerely wishes it that way. And those that do, like Marston Bates, make the attractiveness and meaning of learning become clear and inspiring. From the moment Prof. Bates' book embarks on a tour of the human condition and its illogical, ex-i tremely laughable, culturally inherited foibles, the reader is given a carte blanche invitation to answer back. It's not so easy for someone like Bates to do this: he could launch his attack on bugaboos and taboos from the enviable academic record he has earned: an eminent zoologist, he Is one of the University's most widely-respected faculty members. But rather than automatically impose the restrictions that such credentials too often necessarily yield, he drops academic pretense, ignores the egotistic appeal of esoteria, and quite frankly explains that maybe there is nothing wrong at all says Bates, with "coprophagy - the elegant term for eating shit." Or that history contradicts genetic theories of the harmfulness of inbreeding (generations of incestuous Ptolemys yielded Cleo- patra). Or that homosexuality may be established as "natural" by examining the fact that homo sapiens has reached his heights because of it - you see, there is a certain amount of sub- threshhold homosexuality evident in man's age-old ability to cooperate with other men in building his world. And it goes on, each challenge of social interpretation of biological "fact" smacking not of stiff-lipped authority, but of a simple, rhetorical "Why Not?'" Furthering his attack on a society that uses the brutality of superstition as the basis for its morality, he takes man's two greatest drives - food and sex - classifies them both as necessities, and then extends the com- parison to establish that if we can sell food in the grocery store, why can't we openly sell sex? Of course, such suggestions are based on a spurious premise, that both drives are of equal magnitude and equal importance. And. there is no doubt. that the author realized a certain ob- tuseness of logic. What's important, though, is that Marston Bates can muster the courage to scuttle straight-faced argu- ments with ease, wit, potency and remarkable relaxation What he finally states (and what the reader really senses all along) is that there is no reason on earth why one man cannot choose to become coprophagic, queer, or panderous with- out worrying what the man next door will say or do. That there is no justification for social moralities disguised in the garb of scientific doctrine. That there is no rationale for any number of things we do and thoughts we think, other than the oft-said. "Well, my father/teacher/brother/ uncle/:next door neighbor first president did it that way." tion it attacks. When Bates asks his questions, he invitingly encourages you to reply. He does this just so you can catch yourself in the middle of a pat, rote-learned answer and realize that even if you make more sense, even if your arguiment is soundly base i on fact, it is really meaningless. Why should any man any place, any time, ever get up and take himself so seriously to think that what he sees, for no matter what reason, is the same as what the man next door should - or does- ever see' 0 By DAVID KNOKE Thomas Wolfe, by Andrew Turnbull. Random House, $4.95 You can't, Thomas Wolfe once wrote, go home again nor, apparently, after reading An- drew Turnbull's portrait of the novelist, can you return with the same appreciation to the Thomas Wolfe you once read, Turnbull approaches his sub- ject with the same awe and reverence that continues to win Wolfe countless admirers, all swept along by his torren- tial prose and lyric splendor., Unable to appraise Wolfe's literary nierits, Turnbull is re- duced to reporting assertions about.Wolfe's greatness. While this method will be greatly ap- preciated by those for whom expansiveness and emotion- alism in writing are virtues', ctly toa Elizabet Nowesil', 1960 biographical account or Richard Kennedy's literary cri- MICIAESA SE LL NG NOW!. 2nd Floor, STUDENT PUBL!CATIONS BLDG. WORSHIP tique, "The Window of Mem- ory." However, the personal pomp- osity and neuroticism of a lonely writer come through even in this superficial ac- count of Wolfe's brief, meteo- ric career as The Amer~ican Novelist of the '30's. Wolfe cultivated an image of The Writer as gargantuan con- sumer of experience, but he never achieved his incessant desire to become an artist. In four major novels and count- less short stories running to millions of words, he strove to capture on paper~ his variegated and flamboyant experiences. Wolfe started out to creat art trndtobecome an artist There are intimations - be- fore his sudden death from tuberculosis at 38 - that Wolfe was learning patience and con- trol over his material. Such was not the case in his personal af- fairs, as Turnbull's account makes clear. Turnbull's best sections are Pbiographical sketches of the main actoi's in Wolfe's liter- ary career - his editor Max- well Perkins, his mistress Aline Bernstein and F. Scott Fitz- gerald, the subject of a pre- vious biography. Wolfe received invaluable assistance from all three, but as his success grew he became increasingly guar'- relsome and brought sordid 12 Countries 9 WEEKS JUNE 24-AUG. 27 DC-8 Je t (based on GIT fore) Call BILL LOMdBUS 764-0819 ends to his friendships. The fineness of Wolfe's ly- rics and the nobility of his credo take on a shallow tinge in the revelation of his callow- ness toward his intimate ac- quaintances and the bigotry la- tent in his Southern back- ground. 'He could write, in "I Have a Thing to Tell You," with great pity about Nazi terror- ism against a Jewish travelling companion, but still express ve- hemently anti-Semitic senti- ments against his own mistress. He could write fatuously "I believe in love, the savior and redeemer of the universe,'' yet discard his women once the affais ceased to inerest hm of the time," Perkins once tried to explain, "on account of his being so sensitive and so dis- tracted about his work, etc., that he was sometimes cruel and unjust. But he hated those things. There was no man who loved good more than 'Iom ." Wolfe's sensitivity indeed went into his work. The vision, the scope, the magnificence of his endeavors have n o t been matched in American letters. The contradicitions anid hu- bris of the man and his works are enigmas which Turnbull's biography presents but does not reconcile., 4 * L.UTHERAN STUDENT CENTER AND CHAPEL National Lutheran Council Hill St. at S. Forest Ave. Dr. H. 0. Yader, Pastor 930 and 1 1:00 a m.-Worship Services 7:00 p.m.-"Urban Renewal"-Mr. Philip Wargelin, Johnson, Johnson & Roy, City Planning Firm. WEDNESDAY 7:15 p.m.-Lentern Service. A Layman inter- prets the Christain Faith - Dr. Arthur Johnson, U-M Medical Faculty. FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH 1917 Washtenaw Ave. Dr. Erwin A. Goede. Minister Phyllis St. Louis, Minister of Educati'on 9:20 vand 11:00 a.m.-''The 400th Year of Yout Sunday -- Student Religious Liberals: .Edcation For What?" Panel Discussion, BETHLEHEM UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Phone 662-4466 1 432 Washtenaw Ave. Ministers: Ernest T. Campbell, Malcolm G. Bsrown. John W. Waser, Harold S. Hon SUNDAY Wrship at 9:00, 10:30 a., and12:00 noon. Church. ms er HURON HILLS BA PTIST CHURCH Presentry meeting at the YM-YWCA Affiliated with the Baptist General Conf. Rev. Charles Johnson 761-6749 9:30 a.m.-Cof fee. 9:45 a.m.-U. 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Badstuf t saisf eeryone T HE C H URC H O F C H RIST W Stadium at Edgewood Across from Ann Nrb.r High Roy V. Palmer, Minister SUNDAY By ELIZABETH WISSMAN Fifty Works of English Lit- erature .We Could Do With- out, by Brigid Brophy, Michael Levey, and Charles Osborne. Stein and Day, $4.95. This group of essays is dedi- cated to that legion of readers who have learned through tor- turous experience that "ars 10-00 a.m.-Bible School. 1:0 a m,-egulgr Wrshp WEDNESDAY 7:30 p.m.-Bible Study. Transportation furnished far all NO 2-2756. Contrary to Rumor services-Col I Telephorne 665.6149 Pastors: Er R. Klaudt, Armin C. Bizar, ~9:30 and 10:45 a m.-Worship Servi ces. .9:30 and 10:45 a.m -Church School. UNIVERSITY LUTHERAN CHAPEL 1511 Woshtenaw (ThedLutheran Church-Missouri Synod) Sunday at 9:45 and 11:15 a.m.--Services, with Holy Communion, "Perspectives of the Cross." Sunday at 11:15 a.m.-Bible Class. Begin study of John. Sunday at 6:00 p.m.-Gamma Delta, Dis- cussion of Religious Drama. 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"A Look at the Gospels." Lunch 25c. FLLOWSHIP and TH ANN ARBOR David E. Jefford, Pastor 9:45 a.m.-Discussion. 7:00 p.m.-Vespers. For transportation call 663-2869-. IS STILL ALIVE!Y longa, vita, brevis." There are moments, in the midst of "Fin- negan's Wake," when it seem~s that Joyce has simulated the process of eternal recurrence all too faithfully. Authors Brophy, Levey and Osborne are assured of a ready audience. For there is nothing written that is not too long, too chaotic, too balanced, too dirty, or too clean for some- one's taste. But it is not "taste" which the authors attack, so much as the ossification of taste into a rigid standard. They aim at those "classics" which make up the forced feeding of the young or inexperienced in England and the United States. This kind of challenge to the accepted norm is as welcome in literature as in any of the arts. But it be- comes annoying when Brophy et al take a Promethean stance. Our heroes set forth against demon Scholasticism with all the comical clank of outmoded chivalry. They would oppose their emotional and intellectual honesty ("our taste is, at least, felt and scrutinized") to the Evil Giant of the Academy. The authors successfully mistake 1968 for Eighteenth Century France. In fact, they are even anachronistic in some of their specfictrs. I cn't.on tradition which supports the merits of "Tom Brown's School- days" or "The Bride of Lam- mermoor." The attack is further miti- gated by the authors' indecision. rAs readers, we desire either a sound argument or a burst of delicious malice. We get neither. What is a statement like "Hop - kins' is the poetry of a mental cripple" compared to the crea- tive invective of Paul Krassner? And surely there must be some- thing more reasonable at fault with "Huckleberry Finn" that its "abstract concept of 'boy- ishness'." There is an unevenness in "Fifty Works" which is perhaps unavoidable with three authors. Certain essays are notable for a sustained and deadly irony, such as the attack on "Eliot's Notes on 'The Waste Land'." A /few others discover structural flaws within the work from which a credible case may be elaborated. But in most cases, Brophy, Levey and Osborne damage their work by rigid comparisons. While all critical attacks imply an alternate standard of value. "Fifty Works" falters by being too specific. The trouble with Trollope, we are told, is that he is neither Thackeray nor Dickens. This type of reasoning can only return us to the stand- ard, with each new work praised only for its relationship to the ing and Joyce. But whatever is produced of value today must be something else. For the Latest in visit ULBRICH'S TRADE BOOK DEPARTMENT on the 2nd Floor 4 UNIVERSITY REFORMED I CHURCH BOOK SAL 9CuS O p e Donald Postema, Minister 10 a.m.-Worship Service. Sermon: "Today in Paradise" 7 pm.-Evening Worship Service. Sermon: 316 5. State NO 2-5669 92 East Ann St _ .,.