Magazines Seek Prestige Status
Laboratory Playbil ARev
A Strange and Wonderful Selection of Plays Provides an Ex
By MICHAEL OLINICK
UNTIL a few years ago, the Sat-
urday Evening Post's main
contribution to American culture
was a series of virginal short
stories intermingled with uninti-
mate glimpses of such notable
personages as Peggy Lee and Hugh
O'Brian.
Today's Post still contains the
asexual stories and vapid profiles,'
but a new and laudable element
also makes its presence felt. In a
recent issue, for example, one
found sandwiched between "Girl
in the M\ddle" (What does a girl
do when her father and the man
she loves hate each other?) and
"The Boy and the Bear" (The
story of a young Alaskan's violent
ascent to manhood) an article by
theologian Rheinhold Niebuhr on
"The Religious Tradition of Amer-
ica."
Niebuhr's serious and challeng-
ing prose is part of a series, "Ad-v
ventures of the Mind," which be-
gan in the Post a little over three
years ago on April 28, 1958.
"ADVENTURES of the Mind" is
an intellectual offering to low-
brow Americans and is a clear
example of the "intellectualiza-
tion" of popular magazines that
has so quickly transpired in these
last 40 or so months.
Magazines like the Post, Red-
book and McCall's, which are slick
and colorful guides for the Amer-
ican woman and her status seek-
ing husband, are seeking "easy to
understand" and quasi-psycho-
logical articles that can be ad-
vertised as serious thoughtful es-
says within the ken of the aver-
age reader. The goal is an image
of a magazine that is "education-
al" to read and "smart" to have
displayed on your coffee table.
The Post's rationalization for
"Adventures of the Mind" is per-
haps the clearest and most can-
did statement of this purposeful
try.
AS IT DESCRIBES the new proj-
ect, Post editors are very care-
ful to identify themselves with
the common people and attempt
to prove that the "intellectual"
lives in a different universe, di-
vorced from reality, but ultimate-
ly having some effect on it and
unable to do anything concrete
without help from the mundane
world.
The intellectual may form de-
cisions about what is to be done
in areas of vital national concern
because he is master of more
knowledge or has studied the prob-
lem more.
The time, however, which he
requires for this contemplation
and fact gathering has been pro-
vided by the common people's
drudgeries. And the intellectual
can do little without help from
the layman.
"WE HAVE BEEN deeply dis-
turbed," quoth the editors, "at
the obvious-and obviously dan-
gerous-chasm that separates the
intellectuals of our nation from
the millions of citizens whose at-
titudes and opinions determine
national policy and set standards
of national behavior."
The editors see a need to bridge
the worlds, and a series of schol-
arly articles is their answer. The
intellectual, however, is still re-
garded to be the man apart.
It is nice, and perhaps vital to
the nation, that he discusses fun-
damental problems, but he can
never really do anything about
them. It is, they glorify, the Con-
mon Man who holds all ultimate
governmental power,
THE APPROACH in presenting
the series is more an apology
for the intellectual's inbreeding
and a plea to do him a favor by
reading his works than an ad-
MICHAEL OLINICK, a
math-philosophy major, is a
night editor on The Daily. He
reads Dissent exclusively.
Page Fourteen
Periodicals Initiate 'Intellectual Look'
For Post-Sputnik Mass Audiences
of so called "learned men'
their pages.
on
Journals Attempt "Intellectual Appeal."
monition that we must understand
what these men have written if'
we are to help correct the chaotic
situation in the world.
"Yet the fact is that what the
scholar thinks, the artist creates,
the scientist discovers, cannot
achieve full reality without the
rest of us. Without us no ideas or
institutions can flourish. Without
us there would have been no Salk
vaccine, no practical application
of atomic energy, no public educa-
tion, no research to find a cure
for cancer."
Quite a list of accomplishments
for the "ordinary layman" and
one that underrates the impor-
tance of the "egghead" who has
"never met a payroll or a sales
quota" and who goes "his cloister-
ed way-toiling quietly in his
laboratory, at his easel, type-
writer or his blackboard, com-
municating chiefly. with his col-
leagues through lectures and
scholarly journals."
THE POST does not plead that
its readers might consider the
intellectual's life as a full time
occupation for themselves but only
that they have a little familiarity
with "a kind of information not
now available in popular journal-
ism; pure knowledge which, while
perhaps of no immediate practical
use, is the stuff of which sound
decisions are made."
The Post series-which has fea-
tured Oppenheimer, Barzun, Tay-
lor, and Gropius-has been match-
ed in other magazines by both
authentic and pseudo-scholarly
work in a host of other maga-
zines.
MADEMOISELLE, the magazine
"for the smart young wom-
an," still keeps its accent on fash-
ion and beauty, but brings to its
pages Ionesco, Mailer and Engel.
In addition, editor Betsy Talbot
Blackwell enlivens her pages by
aidvancing the avant - garde,
through art and fiction contests,
and presenting the outstanding
work of young college poets.
The Ionesco interview is also
part of a new Mademoiselle se-
ries. This one is called "Disturbers
of the Peace" and will include a
lengthy talk with active and vi-
triolic William F. Buckley, the
young editor of the conservative
National Review.
The "first magazine for wom-
en," McCall's, this month began
to run John Steinbeck's new nov-
el "The Winter of Our Discon-
tent." The same issue contains a
biography of Mrs. Rose Kennedy,
a portfolio of paintings of Ameri-
can roses and "Merry Play Clothes
in Gingham and Stretch Terry."
THE ONCE ROUGH and rugged
National Police Gazette nas
toned down considerably in its
116-year history of presenting
"Sports, People and True Adven-
ture in America's First Pictorial"
but still deals primarily with the
lurid and sensational.
The gazette, however, has taken
cognizance of the intellectual, if
only in derogratory terms. The
May, 1961 issue "exposes George
Lincoln Rockwell and Marilyn
Monroe's marriage problems while
it reveals "How Eggheads Gave
Cuba to Castro."
The Gazette's reputation for he-
man stories was once matched only
by Esquire magazine. Esquire,
however, always managed to in-
clude some fine short stories (not-
ably by Hemingway) between its
semi-pornographic cartoons. While
line drawings of nudes have died
out from its pages, the "Magazine
for Men" has increased the seri-
ousness of its fiction and essay
contents.
IN RECENT MONTHS, Esquire
has featured Buckley, Alberto
Moravia, full length works by
Tennessee Williams and Friedrich
Durrenmatt and the continuing
literary criticisms by Dorothy
Parker.
Even Playboy, which once sought
to revive the materials Esquire
has matured too much to publish,'
has begun to de-emphasize sex
and gambling and beckon out-+
standing male writers to fill a page
or two with appealing fiction. .
Concern with important politi-
cal problems and a desire to ele-
vate the "seriousness" of the mag-
azine's image has led editors of
previously light and breezy per-+
iodicals to leave the world of the
optimum interior decoration or
most uniquely saccarine shower
gift for a few moments at least.
This change in content has been
one that was forced on the reader
by editorial boards deciding what
people ought to read. There were
no strong demands on the maga-
zines to alter their structures; at
least, there were no strong direct1
ones in the form of letters to the
editors or petitions threatening to
boycott if changes were not made.
But those at the top of the
magazine hierarchy were not wag-
ing their professional necks on a
perilous gamble when they decid-
ed to put the unillustrated prose
THE "magazine revolution" be-
gan long after Sputnik. It was
born in an atmopshere generated
by the Russian spacecraft, an at-
mosphere of self-criticism, of new
respect for education, of ques-
tions about ultimate issues we
need to resolve.
By this time the American adult
population had already become
conditioned to this atmosphere
and swallowed the propaganda of
Rickover and Conant, or they real-
ly felt an honest desire to explore
these issues in their new found
leisure time.
The magazines which were re-
lied upon in the past still were de-
pendable in the new age of anxie-
ty. As the editors added educated
sophistication, the popularity of
their publications remained high.
IT SHOULD BE noted here, how-
ever, that the number of new
magazines which have arisen in
the fields of male adventure, teen
activities, or womanly charms is
very high and many of them have
survived. This indicates that a
large proportion of the popula-
tion has undergone very little
change in critical taste, only in
numbers of hours off the job.
The popular magazines which
have added serious articles to their
contents have been hesitant about
really presenting a dry, but im-
portant piece of writing.
The distinguished scholars they
have asked to write have felt re-
stricted to discussions of their
field in general, and not to the
new or most exciting area of his
work which would presuppose too
much information on the part of
the reader,
THE NUMBER of articles which
have appeared in these maga-
zines which have had any signifi-
cant degree of scholarly validity
have been eclipsed by the quasi-
educational article, the essay
which purports to leave you with
a thorough knowledge of a recon-
dite field.
These unfortunate enterprises
build up a false notion of wisdom
among the reading public. A man
thinks he knows all about atomic
physics after reading a single ar-
ticle, when he is probably cog-
nizant of a thin and untrue sur-
face region.
As Pope warned, this smattering
of intelligence may be worse than
none at all, especially if sound
political decisions are expected to
rise out of it.
FORTUNATELY, there is anoth-
er side of the "magazine revo-
lution" which may alleviate this
situation in some degree.
Portions of the mass audience
of the popular magazines, driven
by an increasing desire to know
more and by dissatisfaction with
the lack of substance in their tra-
ditional journal readings, have
turned to more serious periodicals.
This second trend is clearly evi-
dent in a visit to your local well-
stocked magazine stand which
now carries the journals of lit-
erary analysis and radical poli-
tical thought (The Arts, American
Scholar, Dissent, Audience, World
Opinion) alongside the Readers'
Digest,
ONE SUCH "newsstand" is in a
large shopping center just out-
side Detroit which caters to the
buying whims of a middle class
which has all the typical bour-
geoise traits Marx and friends
have pictured.
The magazine counter at the
shopping center handles several
hundred magazine titles and their
range of coverage squelches the
most insatiable Id. -
There he-man physique Jour;
nals, political tracts, teen-age
abominations and movie mags rub
printed spines with philological
works and Sewanee reviews. And
all the magazines sell well.
THE CLERK at the counter ex-
plains the stocking of the more
esoteric magazines. "We tried it
as an experiment and discovered
that people really want to read
this sort of literature.
"They pay a little more money
for it in most cases, but they ap-
pear very satisfied. I think it's
because people now feel guilty
about squandering time to be en-
tertained; they want to be edu-
cated at the same time."
The question of guilt is an in-
teresting one. Guilt and the de-
sire for status are probably the
chief contributing factors in this
renaissance of the periodicals.
After Sputnik, a man is not sup-
posed to feel complacent; he's sup-
posed to realize the importance of
education.
This education, however, is not
synonymous with general enlight-
enment; it signifies for the dec-
ade of the sixties the power to
strengthen defenses and secure
our present forms of hollowly un-
derstood freedom from an evil
menace lurking abroad.
THE IMPROVEMENT in con-
tent and new popularity of the
more serious journals reflect a
trend of growing intellectualism
and desire for understanding. The
ultimatebreasons for it, however
cannot be readily found in an
examination of the magazines
alone,
Let is suffice to say that, since
Sputnik, Americans want to know
what our scientists and research
men are doing to protect our lives
from the Slavic hordes.
This interest in one branch of
intellectual inquiry has naturally
extended into the humanities and
social sciences, but only in so far
as these influence the environ-
ment.
An appreciation of "knowledge
for its own sake" and encourage-
ment to satisfy curiosity is still
not widespread, and perhaps will
never be in political and social
systems rooted to a materialistic
or capitalistic foundation.
THEATRE - GOERS who pay
good money to see the Uni-
Versity Players and never come
to the Laboratory Playbills, which
are free, miss more than a bar-
gain. For mere competence and
even for first rate performances,
the student directed series has the
better average.
If none of the productions this
year quite came up to "The Vis-
it" (a powerful play even in Mau-
rice Valency's wretched transla-
tion), neither did any flop as
spectacularly as "The Frogs."
Such failure takes lavish use of
time, space and equipment. Lab
bills are necessarily somewhat
more austere and they are short.
COUNTING the double-bill May
eighteenth, too late to be in-
cluded in this review, the season
was seventeen plays long and re-
markably varied: a Roman com-
edy ,a medieval morality, an early
Tudor play, one from eighteenth
century England, two from Ger-
many, one from Russia, four
French, two American, two by
Irishmen, and two originals.
Since most of the one-acters
readily available are contempor-
ary American, it is surprising-
pleasantly-to find a group of di-
rectors who are, at least collec-
tively, so widely read.
THE PLAYS given in the round
were usually more successful
than those staged in Trueblood.
Very probably the necessity of
shaping to a new space plays"
written, for the most part, with
another kind of stage in mind,
stimulates the imagination.
Bruno Koch's production of two
scenes from Brecht's "Private Life
of the Master Race," one of the
few interesting things performed
upstairs, lost a great deal by be-
ing played out of context. The
real force of the disconnected
realistic scenes of that play is in
their contrast with the song blar-
ing from a Panzer truck filled with
soldiers, that frames the scenes
and holds them together.
Given separately the scenes
have some force, but of a differ-
ent kind, a force that would prob-
ably have been emphasized by the
intimacy of arena staging.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS'
"Purgatory" (also given in
Trueblood) is barely successful
drama, but it contains some ex-
quisite verse. Unfortunately, the
actors not only made the plot+
By BERNARD WALDROP
'The Tragedy of Tragedies or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb
seem more stupid than it is by
overacting; they failed to make
any rhythmic sense of the verse.
John Smead directed one play
each semester. His production of
Yevreinov's "Theatre of the Soul"
was an entertaining quarter-hour.
The play is set in a human heart,
well represented by a dirty, ill-
lighted place.
MORE RECENTLY he gave "The
Tragedy of Tragedies or the
Life and Death of Tom Thumb
the Great" by Henry Fielding.
"Tom Thumb" is a tremendously
funny, somewhat obscene, play
and nost of the production was
adequate in both respects. The
opening was a bit slow and the
scenery, though good enough in
itself, was not used very well.
Two high stools, for instance,
made a potentially funny throne
--but neither the king and queen
nor anyone else ever sat on them.
After a few minutes the comedy
gained momentum and the last
half was all one could hope for.
Barbara Sittig was excellent as
Queen Dollalolla; Judith Price
made a fine Huncamunca; James
Harris, as Noodle, was uneven but
occasionally inspired; Richarc
Kretchmar held an expression of
idiocy with remarkable consisten-
cy. Carl Shurr, familiar from the
last two Gilbert and Sullivan pro-
ductions, was a fabulously good
Lord Grizzle. Casting a girl in the
title role was a mistake, but one
can forgive mistakes when the to-
tal effect is as satisfying as this
production,
T HE LOW POINT of the season
was hit when one director at-
tempted "The Maids" by Jean
Genet. Genet is quite possibly the
best playwright of this century;
"The Maids" is, at any rate, a
great play. The production was
spoiled by lack of restraint, tech-
nical ineptitude, bad taste, bad
acting, and-apparently-prudish-
ness.
The play is supposed to open
with an illusion: we are supposed
to think we see a lady (in her
slip) slanging her maid, and only
later discover this is a game be-
tween the two maids. When the
curtain was drawn in Trueblood,
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there were two girls on stage, both
dressed as maids.
A great difference in tone is
necessary to separate the game-
scenes from the rest; neither maid
managed. One of the maids is sup-
posed to deliver a monologue to
three imagined characters. As if
fearing the actress would not be
able to carry the scene alone (he
could have cut the scene, have
gotten another actress, have given
some other play), the director
made all the lights so weird,
brought the three imagined char-
acters on stage, and put them
through silly motions till they end-
ed up with foreheads to the floor,
butts pointing audienceward.
The play is supposed to end
with a triumphant speech by So-
lange-Solange (the best, inci-
dentally, of the three actresses)
was made to sob out this speech
from behind the bed; it was al-
most unintelligible.
DAVID BURR directed a some-
what shortened version of the
least known of Buchner's three
plays, "Leonce and Lena." The
cuts were well chosen, whether
by Mr. Burr or the translator. An
attendant or t w o sometimes
blocked the view of parts of the
Arena audience, but the staging
was generally skillful. Richard
Burke, as the philosophic King,
was outstanding even in a well-
picked cast.,
The best plays of Maeterlinck
are not too good and "The Death
of Tintagiles" is one of his worst.
Like the rest it tries to generate
feeling by 1 o n g impassioned
speeches of characters who do
nothing but speak. The symbolism
is crude and the plot uninterest-
ing. In the last scene mother and
dying son kiss through a chink,
for all the world like Pyramus
and Thisbe.
Carol Langlois directed "Every-
man" with an ingenuity and sense
of timing uncommon in local thea-
tre. A morality play is hard to
give before audiences suspicious
of plays with a moral. Miss Lang-
lois did well to hold the archaic
flavor of the play, even with a
(necessarily) modernized text.
Her "Everyman" was spatially
beautiful and moved with appro-
priate solemnity.
Of all the roles in "Everyman,"
one would suppose that of the
messenger who announces the play
the hardest to make noticeably
good or bad. It was, however, no-
ticeably bad. The rest of the cast
was quite good, especially Herbert
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Critical Perusal
Lab Playbill--highstandards of production at low cost
THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE SUNDAY, MAY 21, 1961