Sunday, November 17, 1968 THE MICHIGAN DAILY °Pooe Five THE MICHIGAN DAILY Pnni~ Fivp I U jc; I 1 1-- w hipsland, By MARCIA ABRAMSON Ship Island and other stories by Elizabeth Spencer. McGraw-Hill, $5.95. - The delicacy of Elizabeth Spencer's craftsmanship and the subtlety of her perception seem to increase within each of the short Stories in this latest collection. Much of Miss Spencer's earlier work, like The Light in the Piazza and No Place for an Angel, although based on firm technical strength, was harder, shallower, more contrived, the stuff of which little better than mediocre movies were made. Ship Island approaches magic. For Miss Spencer is not interested here in any definitive moral theme or statement; she writes only about people, and how they somehow or other manage to live and even make a good thing out of it. No one succumbs to despair in any of these stories; the characters, especially the women, have passed or are passing through the critical stage of realization that everything changes, that everything is imperfect, that there are no burning passions and , no bright heroes to feed them. Everywoman is more Natasha Bezuhov than Eustacia Vye or Emma Bovary. And perhaps Miss t Spencer is right in her choice of orientation: How many people do give in to despair without eventually learning to overcome it, or at least live with it peacefully when it attacks? More of us are closer to health than to sickness. Freud and Dostoevsky can dissect the maddened, alternately soaring and drowning souls of those who are beyond Miss Spencer's sphere-and our own. Even some of other magic by Elizabeth Spencer today's psychologists are realizing that understanding health is often of more value than the pathology of emotional disruption. People live, and dream, but their dreams cannot be the sub- stance of their lives, and this is the knowledge which provides the foundation for Miss Spencer's characters. The defeat of illusion comes to us at some time or other, except in the most unusual or out-of-control situations. This defeat allows us to turn to the real world of real people, and create a viable existence based on under- standing and acceptance of life as it is. Miss Spencer's characters owe their success-that they become people - to her real understanding of human relationships within a changing universe made up of other equally intricate personal- ities. Situations change, but certain human interactions are built on a more stable foundation of personality. So a woman realizes she must go ,home, leaving behind a tempting, illicit, glamorous European romance; she is saddened, but not shattered. She thinks of her father, the isolated male in a house of sisters; she sees him coming home from church, alone, saying, "Let all things pro- ceed in orderly progression to their final confusion. How long be- fore dinner?" And Frances, on the verge of oldmaidhood, whatever that is, thinks: "No, she had had to come home. Some humor had always existed between them-her father and her-and humor, of all things, cannot be betrayed." Another woman, somewhat older, confronts her wandering al- coholic husband with his misbehavior at a family reunion, only to end up laughing at their totally ridiculous situation. He drinks be- cause. he drinks, and he disappears with Eunice Lisles because Eunice is standing there and he has been drinking. And though she attempts to chastise her husband, the woman has brought along provisions from the family liquor supply. Before she hands over the disguised medicine bottle, she asks what they are coming to. And he tells her what they both know. "It hasn't got to where anything. I'm exactly the same as I was yesterday, or a year ago. I'm a day or a year older. I've got a hangover worse than usual. And I would appreciate never having to hear anything more about Eunice Lisles." When she extends the peace-offering, he admits quietly that he loves her more for every trick she pulls off for him, like watering down her father's whiskey. "I downright admire you," he says, and they sit back; she knows full well that everything he says is true. "She kept on laughing, for its was funny and awful and absolutely true, and there was nothing to do about it." All Miss Spencer's characters are finely drawn, but the women are often the most perceptive 'and compassionate. Perhaps Miss Spencer stays with the theory that you write best about what you known best--a theory that often holds. She also places a great many of the stories in her own South, and presents in a much more gentle way a reaction to the problems of the South felt by other more violent writers. Whatever larger social context enters Miss Spencer's work is simply a function of the way the characters are; the stories always seem effortless. You are never conscious of an "author;" you simply watch as very real people play out their lives, and you draw conclusions as you do from watching and knowing the people around you. Miss Spencer treats the racial question as it is, as tragedy; she condemns no one for having been born into a bsbooksbooksbooksbooksb Living education: Learning from ecstasy By JEREMY JOAN HEWES Education, and Ecstasy, by George B. Leonard. Dela- corte Press, $5.95. The principal is happy and I rejoice with him about the delicious, perfectly balanced flow of outdoor light into a room !filled with beautiful, children. But something dis- turbs me, a vinegary tingle at the back of my neck. There is a, witch in this room. I see her near the back of the fourth row - milk-white skin, black hair falling onto a faded blue blouse, a band of freckles across the bridge of a small, sharp nose. Dark eyes with di- * lated pupils are fixed on me now, bold and direct, telling me that she knows, without words, everything that needs to be known about me. I re- turn her stare, feeling that this girl, with an education she is not likely to get, might foretell the future, read signs, converse "with spirits. In Sa- lem she eventually would suf- fer the ordeal of fire and wat- er. In our society she will be adjusted. An observer visited a typical school somewhere, but it wasn't the perfect lighting, language labs or, multi-degreed teachers that impressed him. In an in- stant he was struck with the realization of what education now is and what ecstasy it could be: a fifth-grade witch had stared him down. The visitor was George B. Leonard, Senior Editor of Look magazine, where he has re- ported on education, and vice president of California's Esalen Institute, where he has explored paths to ecstasy. Thus, his Education and Ecstasy is a pro- duct of thorough study and im- aginative experience. The author cites shortcomings in the pre- sent educational system, argu- ing for a positive and creative preparation for the "unity of life" that John Dewey foresaw decades ago. What Leonard believes neces- sary is an education for the to- tality of living; more important, he seeks a process which would allow people to realize some large measure of the human po- tential and exist in harmony with the enormity of their time. Today, all processes and insti- tutions tend to fragment us, and schools simply initiate children to the compartmentalization of living that spirals with age and experience. A graduate of the current educational- ssytem has become adept at a kind of post- office sorting job - putting emotion, creativity, frivolity, curiosity and a hundred other human qualities into their as- signed cubbyholes, all with his eyes closed. Leonard envisions an over- haul of this initiation process, by applying theories, methods and technological devices t h a t already exist. First, education would be redefined: "The whole superstructure of rational-sym- bolic knowledge can be rear- ranged so that these aspects of life's possibilities can be per- ceived and learned as unity and diversity within change rather than fragmentation within an illusory permanence." This con- cept of education would encom- pass all facets of human func- tioning, and education would become "a lifelong pursuit for everyone." Teachers would share in the learning process with students by expanding consciousness and exploring everyone and every- thing around them. They would pursue the magic moments of learning that sometimes occur in classrooms today and would become accomplished at tech- niques of discovering or creating the delight that makes learning worth it. In fact, society has always had such teachers, Leonard calls them rogues-persons who know what being alive is and who have captured our imagination for just that reason. The old rogues are adventurers li k e Robin Hood, mystics like Christ, mad scientists like Franken- stein, and artists like Dali. The rogues teach us "the first ele- mentary lesson about a life ... in which new technology-whe- ther outside or inside the human organism-is not feared and re- sisted, but deflected toward hu- mane uses." Today's rogues are today's children, the author states, and education should let them discover and express the ecstasy of being alive. Several methods of reshaping the concept and processes of education are discussed in Ed- ucation and Ecstasy. One chap- ter describes an ultramodern school where sophisticated elec- tronic devices impart k n o w- ledge and.hold discussions with pupils. In another chapter, Leonard proposes that compul- sory school attendance be abol- ished. To counter objections from horrified parents, the au- thor suggests that the parents attend school for a day, put- ting themselves in their child's place - no breaks for cigar- ettes or coffee, no deviations from the classroom regimen. Parents might then see, Leon- ard reasons, just how much is learned in a day and how much of the child's valuable time and potential are wasted. ' This is not to say that schools would cease to exist. Rather, in- stitutions such as New York's Fifteenth Street School would operate, and presumably their "f r e e-l-e a r n i ng atmosphere would offer the delights of learning to eager children." The Fifteenth Street S c h o o 1, founded by actor Orson Bean, offers no formal classroom in- struction, though five "teach- ers" read aloud from texts, dis- cuss ideas with students and of- fer guidance. The school pro- vides books, lounges, art mater- ials, games and playing space, and the children are free to work and play at will. This free-learning s c h o o 1 creates a total environment for learning, the situation Leonard considers vital to education as "an apprenticeship for life." He discusses two total environment institutions that have developed techniques of expanded con- sciousness and continuous edu- cation. Synanon, established in 1958 as a rehabilitation center for drug addicts, now operates in four California cities, as well as New York and Detroit. In addition to housing 1,000 ad- dicts, chapters conduct Synanon Game sessions, where 2,500 non- addicts participate in weekly discussions. Esalpn Institute offers exper- imental programs such as "Sen- sory Awakening for Couples" and "Meditation." The Institu- te's week-end and evening ses- sions have provided an oppor- tunity for all who can afford it to work with such experimenters as B. F. Skinner, Alan Watts, Buckminster Fuller and others. A group of graduate students holds residencies there, as well, developing all manner of free- learning environments. George Leonard asserts that there can be ecstasy in learning and thus in living. He advocates the total environment and free- learning concepts as a means to ecstasy, citing three institutions that have overcome the barriers of tradition and brought joy to their members. All of this is the "new education," the author states; now it is left to us to assault the system and our- selves. system which confines all. There is underlying tragedy in the way the blacks enter into the lives of these Southerners. For one boy, they are a party joke: "We used to have this crazy colored girl who went around saying. I'se really white, 'cause all my chillun is.'" Even Frances Harvey, for whom Miss Spencer shows a special sympathy, displays the same attitude to the other race. "Sammie was our cook," she says. "Jerry was her son, or husband, or something. Anyway, they certainly didn't have cars." The only answer Miss Spencer possibly can suggest is time, for she is aware of the changes in the South, the erosion of the old way. More and more, the younger people go away. "First Dark," one of the best stories in Ship Island, gently buries the old South, not without grandeur. Frances Harvey's mo- ther is an imperious old woman caught up in a paradox: She is too much a woman to let any daughter of hers remain an old maid, and too much an aristocrat to allow her to marry a fine but socially unacceptable man. The mother is cold, formidable; she has never been able to express any love for her daughters; she is too proud to be maternal. Mrs. Harvey's power comes back to us through Fran- ces, who, though she loves Tom, cannot help but think, "What had happened to his parents? There was some story, but it was not terribly interesting, and, his people being of no importance, she had forgotten." Only time can undo Mrs. Harvey's stranglThold of the past. And-we must remember she is suffering physically in her age-Mrs. Harvey chooses to recede into the past with an overdose of barbituates, and let them marry. This is change for Miss Spencer. One time gradually recedes; another grows. There are no real human revolutions. Mrs. Harvey may be the outstanding character of the book. She has warned her daughters well not to let the old Southern mansion deceive them: They are not Scarlett O'Hara, and men are very ordinary creatures, inferior to the female. But then again, every woman has to have one. No matter what her age, Mrs. Harvey is female: her old, dry, crooked hand is "eradicably female." She thinks proudly that her ankles are still worth looking at. Knowing her, her final action becomes credible. For Miss Spencer also shows how age has undone her and her world. Tom can marry her daugh- ter, and even worse, her prized mouth is now like a fish's-there is a "tension around its rim, as though it were outlined in bone, and the underlip even stuck out a little. The mouth ate, it took medicine, it asked for things, it gasped when breath was short... The best stories in Ship Island are based on women equally strong as Mrs. Harvey. More than half the stories are about women of the South, although many of them have left. Together they pre- sent a collage of woman, beautifully sketched, each woman still an individual, as every woman by her nature must be. These women range from the Harveys to very little girls to woman in the chry- salis stage, after high school, in college, before marriage. Even the most shallow of these girl-women, Nancy, free and easy and reluc- tant to think, comes to realize and accept although she never thinks very much about it. When she walks down the beach with big man Rob Acklen she thinks she has found happiness. But his fraternity friends bother her, since they know she is poor and so- cially inferior. She deserts Rop at a bar and picks up two men. When Rob informs her he must now drop her, sho simply tells him she can't help being what she is. Rob is miserable; she is not. Nancy emphatically detests virgins; she can't see beyond a reflec- tion of herself. But she sees herself and her relation to others so well that she almost redeems her shallowness. The other girl-women are much deeper, perhaps older. in one story, a woman analyzes her own growing up. Once she was sus- ceptible to the charms of dreams; she thought she loved a boy because "his father had died when he was a babe in arms (tragedy) and he had perfect manners." When she is with him, she envisions perfect happiness; but, she realizes with relief, his shallow insta- bility ended that frame of mind after two days-"enough time to make a nuisance of itself." Now that she has gone away and grown even more, the woman understands that all life is susceptible to change, and yet, some people, some relationships, are strong enough to anchor human existence. I live far away, and everything changes, almost every day. You can't even be sure the moon and the stars are going to be the same the day after tomorrow night . . . I earnestly feel, too, that Foster Hmilton should go right on drinking. There have got to be some things you can count on, would be an ordinary way to put it. I'd rather say I felt the need of a land, of a sure terrain, of a sort of permanent landscape of -the heart. Miss Spencer also realizes one of the crisis points of being a woman-the realization that you can't go home again because you yourself are the center of a home. Once Frances has committed herself to Tom, nothing can be the same for her. The woman with the drinking husband cannot go back to world left' over from her childhood; she has another existence, symbolized with the dis- guised medicine bottle. One woman, thinking of it all, wonders why she should feel guilty: "Was it because I hadn't wanted them enough, held on tightly enough, had not, in other words, love them?" Mrs. Harvey knows what is happening, and refuses to stand in the way. No matter how the women stand out, the men are not unim- portant in Miss Spencer's work. They are the centers around which the stories revolve. But many of them are not as well developed as their women. In "Wisteria," Charley, the narrator, is a perceptive man, though he is never developed and simply tells us about the two women in the story. Miss Spencer gives us a glimpse of the husband of the narrator 'of "The Visit," but he is incomplete; he is only superficially explained in terms of the academic ambition which has replaced his idealism and alienated his wife. Even Tom is not quite a complete individual; he is totally dominated by Mrs. Harvey. Perhaps Miss Spencer will be able to overcome this defect in later works; she shows the potential here. This shallowness is the major flaw in an otherwise tight and beautiful book of stories, perceptive and poetic. Even so, the stories are not "women's" stories. They are human stories, and they stick in your mind. This is more than enough to ask; perhaps Miss Spencer will someday deliver more. But for now, you can't get anything better. Support our boys in Panama and Gorotoland By WALTER SHAPIRO Preserve and Protect, by Allen Drury Doubleday, $6.95. "Trivia" and "camp" have Just about gone the way of all such instantaneous cultural fet- ishes, but late at night when Pe- ter Lawford is talking to John- ny Carson about his pet poodle, you can still find students brag- ging about how they were in the studio audience for the Rootie Kazootie Show when they were five years old., A slightly less perishable breed are the diehard devotees of the bad novel. After years of fight- ing suburban 'matrons for the inside track on public library best-seller reserve lists, I have accumulated a store of trivia re- garding the literary career of Allen Drury, one-time Wash- ington correspondent for the New York Times. Nearly ten years ago Drury surged to the top of the highly lucrative best-seller list and then won a Pulitzer Prize for his first political novel, Advise and Con- sent. Detailing the Senate fight ov- er the confirmation of a contro- versial liberal, Robert Leffing- well, for Secretary of State, the Drury novel was the first of a spate of books alleging to give readers a titillating glimpse of backstage life in Washington. One of the virtues of Advise and Consent was that its author kept his o w n political biases fairly well hidden. For instance, Leffingwell, who was eventually denied confirmation because he lied about some youthful Com- munist connections, was treated so sympathetically that Henry Fonda was chosen to play him in the movie based on the book. Fans of conspiracy theories may conjecture that Drury wrote Advise and Consent in such a cautious manner so he mise the novel begins when the plane carrying the President home to Washington following his narrow convention victory crashes on landing in circum- stances smacking of Soviet sub- version. In the absence of a vice pre- sident, the old, loveable, speaker of the house becomes President and valiantly vows to carry on his predecessor's policies. But the real focus of the, book is the fight in the party's na- tional comittee over the selec- tion of the next nominee. On one side is the President's de- voted secretary of state and in opposition are the riffraff peace forces backing a Kennedyesque and ruthless governor of Cali- fornia, named Ted Jason. However, even more fascinat- ing than the repetitive plot are those examples of Drury's poli- tical prejudices in action. Only in his fiction are anti- war protestors so conveniently lyrical that they chant at the President's funeral, "Air Force One/What have you done?/ Set us free/Tee hee hee." Later they shorten this chant to simply, "Into the ditch/You Son of a Bitch." As if this weren't enough to damn all protestors for eternity in Drury's fantasyland, the au- thor arranges to confirm all lin- gering conservative suspicions by having the leaders of the protest brigade hold secret meet- ings with Soviet agents to co- ordinate plans. Taking a leaf from libertarian conservatism the President res- ponds by presenting to Congress a bill defining as illegal any ga-j Today's writers... MARCIA ABRAMSON, Daily night editor and Honors Eng- lish junior, is this week's re- thering of three or more "if 1 there is obvious intent to cre- ate civil disturbance and/or riot?"1 But in politics as in religion there is no joy equal to convert- ing the heathen. And so Allen Drury's biggest thrill in writing this novel must have been un- veiling that archtype liberal, Bob Leffingwell, as a convinced apostle to, that glorious Cold War strategy of "responsible firmness."3 While that may have been Drury's bigest thrill, for me the one thing that made wading through almost 400 pages of tor- tured prose and cardboard char- acters even remotely worthwhile was a tiny and insignificant -- albeit deeply revealing - bit of conversation. When chanting demonstrators block the car of Orrin Knox, the loyal secretary of state, Dru- ry's greatest hero courageously orders his driver to "run them down if they don't give way." But alas, only in fiction do men with guts like that get to go to Washington and run the country. READ 'BOOKS' Every Sunday in battle for renomination of a fic- tional President opposed by ir- rationally fanatical peace forces who were protesting twin wars against Communist expansion- ism in Panama and the mythi- cal African Country of Goroto- land. As Drury puts it in the pre- face to his latest literary effort, Preserve and Protect, the theme running through his seemingly endless series "is the continuing argument between those who tect doesn't read like just a bad novel, it reads like a parody of a bad novel. While there are many obvious financial benefits to writing bad novels, greed does not totally ex- plain Drury's dogged penchant for writing political novels. For the book's abiding inter- est lies in Drury's creation of a fantasy world to succor his re- actionary world view. He wants to create a mythical political universe in which conservative so mimic the conservative ap- proach to the UN and domestic disorder. In his fetish for symbolic tri- umphs Drury in his earlier no- vel, Capable of Honor, gloating- ly delineates the casting of the first American vetoes in the UN. The other reason that Drury must create a fantasy world is that while LBJ has adopted part of his foreign policy, the John- son Administration unfortun- ately lacks vindication.