! Wednesday, November 18, 1970
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Pages Five
* Wednesday, November 1 8, 1970 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Five
A
ride
in
the
rumble
seat
Robert Sklar, editor, T H E
PLASTIC AGE: 1917-1930,
George Braziller, $7.50.
First
offic
Stat
had
Eigh
By SUSAN M. EDWARDS came
After the tension of World of th
War I, the United States w i t h- ary
drew into itself, seeking "norm- ence
alcy" in a period of internal dis- tran
ruption and corruption in gov- radi
ernment. The nation legalized Ame
prohibition, then spent its ener- Th
gies openly flouting the law with by t
casual defiance. While Al Ca- tory,
pone terrorized Chicago, hooded dogr
Klansmen practiced violent
bigotry against Negroes, J e w s ,
and Catholics in the South. It
was a period of Babbitts a n d
isolationists, of speakeasies and
the Charleston, / and of John
Held's coon-coated collegian and
his flapper. Its heroes were Ru-
dolph Valentino and Jack
Dempsey, Babe Ruth and Char-
les Lindbergh, and, on the dis-
taff side, Lillian Gish and Gloria
Swanson. The automobile and
the motion picture joined to
rapidly transform traditional
patterns of American life.
This volume, the seventh in
Braziller's The American Culture
series. is a collection of essays
printed, introduced, and annot-
ated by U. of M. associate pro-
fessor of history, Robert Sklar.
The various volumes comprising
this series examine the fabric of
American life from 1600 to 1945,
in an attempt "to restore to his-
torical study the texture of life Wor
as it was lived, without sacrific- hold
ing theoretical rigor or inform- Skla
ed scholarship." Gen
To reflect the changing char- was
acted of American life raw data ican
(i.e. sociological studies, maga- exe
zine articles, excerpts from bio- trol
graphies, etc.) are employed to and
present history as it happened. mic
Anyone who has ever struggled the
through hundreds of dusty per- ing
iodicals can appreciate the im- ado
mensity of the task. amor
The, editor's premise, an al- spO
most universal one, is that t h e fre
nng
t World War destroyed the
cial culture of the U n i t e d
es, a genteel culture which
dominated it since the
.teenth Century. In its wake
e the cultural renaissance
he Twenties. A brilliant liter-
culture leaped into exist-
while popular culture was
sformed by the automobile,
o, and the movies, uniting
rica as never before.
he Genteel Tradition w a s,
his time in American his-
, an orthodoxy without a
ma. Yet up to and including
The rewards were quite tangible
ones: upward mobility, respect-
ability, social acceptance, com-
fort, and security. However, by
the beginning of the Twentieth
Century, American society w a s
rapidly changing. Expanded ur-
ban and industrial centers were
challenging the validity of the
genteel order. American writers
who considered themselves cul-
tural nationalists, such as Ezra
Pound, Van Wyck Brooks, H.
L. Mencken, were concerned
with developing a new culture
where social, ethnic, regional,
Id War I it had a strangle
on the American public. As
r notes in his introduction:
teel culture, in a word,
s the instrument the Amer-
rn middle classes devised to
rt some form of social con-
over those below t h e m
d above them on the econo-
ladder. ; . The basic trick,
most subtle and challeng-
was getting people to
pt the desired manners and
rals as if they had been
ntaneously generated and
ely accepted from within.
-The Public Enemy, 1931
and political differences could
express themselves. In o t h e r
words, their belief in a culture
united by diversity ran counter
to the genteel middle-class em-
phasis on tradition and uniform-
ity. It took a world war to shat-
ter their idealistic expectations.
World War I constituted one
of the most massive doses of
uniformity in this country's his-
tory. Dissident intellectuals,
Socialists, pro-German elements,
even German art and artists,
were silenced with wild fervor.
Karl Muck, a German-born
Swiss citizen and conductor of
the Boston Symphony Orchestra,
unintentionally incurred the
wrath of the 100% Americans
by not playing "The Star-
Spangled Banner" at a Balti-
more concert in 1917. "No one
ever asked me," Muck publicly
declared and spent seventeen
months in prison as a result.
Thus cultural leaders (even
Wilson himself, who sanctioned
the Muck affair) debased their
values by linking them with eth-
nic and religious prejudice for
political opportunism.
Embodying the mood of grow-
ing disillusionment- with Anglo-
Saxon America, The Plastic
Age presents Randolph Bourne
and Van Wyck Brooks in class-
ic statements regarding Amer-
ican Culture. Bourne, a hunch-
back with a "peculiarly a c u t e
mechanism for suffering," op-
posed World War I and soon
found his writings suppressed.
He died at thirty-two shortly af-
ter the conflict ended, pro-
phesying a "fatal backwash and
backfire" upon creative and de-
mocratic values in this country..
The American traditions which
he had counted on for ideas and
for continuity had failed him.
Viewed from an historical per-
spective, his essay, "The War
and the Intellectuals," sounds
curiously modern in its c o n-
demnation of war. Striving fo r
continuity, Bourne had to ex-
pand his sympathies to the
breaking point, while pulling the
past and present into some sort
of interpretative order. He ask-
ed himself:
Are not our intellectuals
equally fatuous when they tell
us that our war of all wars is
stainless and thrillingly
achieving for good?
There is work to be done to
prevent this war of ours from
passing into popular mythol-
ogy as a holy crusade. What
shall we do with leaders who
tell us that we go to war in
moral spotlessness, or w h o
make 'democracy' synonymous
with a republican form of gov-
ernment? There is work to
be done in still shouting that
all the revolutionary by-pro-
ducts will not justify the war,
or make war anything else
than the noxious complex of
all the evils that afflict men.
Bourne also quickly pointed out
that the same men who felt little
responsibility for labor wars
and the oppressed masses had
a large fund of idle emotional
capital in the struggle for free-
dom abroad, the task of mak-
ing the United States fit for
peace was abandoned in favor
of a feverish concern for t h e
management of a war. As
Bourne's writings were suppres-
sed, the foundations of cultural
optimism were destroyed.
Van Wyck Brooks similarly re-
coiled from the pseudo-culture
around him. In "The Culture of
Industrialism," he declared that
the young artists of America,
with
with no sense of a collective
spiritual life to work for, were
becoming a race of Hamlets; he
called for a Whitman to reaf-
firm a humanity which was old-
er than Puritanism. Brooks at-
tacked America's middle-class
Genteel Tradition for failing to
create an American aesthetic
and for preventing the forma-
tion of a democratic culture.
Robert
her hair and the women of the
world followed. Fashions, in be-
havior as well as in dress, were
now dictated by Hollywood, in-
stead of by Paris. Following a
type of prescriptive formula, the
Lillian Gishes gave way to the
Clara Bowes. The big change in
American mores from 1917 to
1930 might conceivably be chart-
ed in terms of what happened
Sklar
chapters) to women per se than
to any other topic.
It soon became unmistakably
clear that a large portion of
American society (besides wo-
men) would cease to abide by
the previous dictates and con-
straints of genteel culture. It
was no secret that the Eighteen-
th Amendment was primarily di-
rected against t h e notorious
drinking habits of immigrant
workingmen. Indeed, no cultur-
al crisis was more severe in
Anglo-Saxon America than the
ordeal of coercion and rejection
suffered by idealistic immigrants
at the hands of 2nd to nth gen-
eration Americans (excluding
Indians) during the war. Such
hostility resulted in the enact-
ment of a quota system in 1924.
Both radio and the movies forg-
ed common bonds of informa-
tion and values. Beginningwith
D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a
Nation in 1915, film was re-
cognized as both an artistic and
an emotionally-engrossing med-
ium.
The motion pictures gave
Americans a common fund of
experience, making them more
alike than ever before. In Sk-
lar's words:
The movies gave to America
in the Twenties what genteel
culture was no longer capable
of providing - manners and
morals, heroes and heroines
. . . [They] learned to build
on the hollow shells of genteel
convention not to offer false
reassurance, but to create art.
Thus, in the Twenties, a mass
culture was forged by amalga-
mating the cultures of those who
created the new media and all
those who responded to them.
What is particularly remark-
able, in view of the rampant
prejudices of the times, is the
fact that it was immigrants and
their children - the Mayers
and the Thalbergs of Holly-
wood - who were shaping this
culture.
While reading The Plastic Age,
I often found myself shouting
for more Sklar; indeed, the ob-
servations which he provides in
his brief notes were often more
enticing than the essays which
they prefaced. But this seems to
substantiate the scholar's prob-
E
b
0
0
k
s
lem of finding first-class c o n-
temporary insight into a period.
For instance, in the cases of
films and automobiles, the bulk
of current documentation is pri-
marily concerned with technical
or commercial aspects. Little
was produced at the time on
aesthetic effects, The historian,
therefore, is faced with a r ea 1
dilemma which Sklar resolv-
ed in many cases by turning to
sociological studies, in m o s t
instances, classic ones. These
studies play a double role for
not only do they offer contem-
porary data but they reflect the
Twenties' own fascination with
research and field studies. The
period of 1917 to 1930, then,
was ,a period full of restless vi-s
tality, burgeoning in a field
where all of the old rules seem-
ed to be gone. Old familiar cer-
tainties and hopes, drifted off
like mist as new ones were
formulated. Society, seeming
to sense that things would never
be the same again, galloped
through these last years in a
paroxysm of activity.
of
A merica
Eve Merriam, THE NIXON
POEMS, Atheneum, $2.95, paper.
Robert Sward, HORGBOR-
TOM STRINGBOTTOM I AM
YOURS YOU ARE HISTORY,
Swallow, $5.00.
By ROBERT C. WHITE
In the perspective of main
currents of American literature,
Eve Merriam and Robert Sward
have a great deal more in com-
mon with Walt Whitman than
the traditional schoolroom poets
such as Longfellow, Whittier, or
Field. In the poetry of both
Merriam and Sward, the rmeter
grows as freely so to speak, as
the "leaves of grass" and there is
hardly a n y self-consciousness
about edifyingmodels of the
classics. But then, again, they
are similarly a long shot from
Whitman. While unabashedly
singing of America; they sing a
bitter tune with few allusions to
the wonders of transatlantic
cables or magnificent new rail-
roads spanning the continent.
Where, for Whitman, once
glowed the "gorgeous clouds of
the sunset," Robert Sward sees
the sun as "a bore, The sun is
feeble, Not hot enough, Not fun
enough." Or Eve Merriam com-
ments cynically on the decep-
tion of a spring day'.
April, I'm loving you.
Make six copies
and keep the original
in the top file drawer.
Whitman, the transcendental-
ist, could sing a song of human-
ity "and of these one and all,"
weave the song of himself. Rob-
ert Sward warns that he is do-
ing something else.
Now, I am not writing poems.
I am writing You, America.
I am writing the big; fat,
Ugly American novel.
I am distractible.
I have a seven-and-ahalf-inch
penis,
And bizarre sexual tastes.
What will you do about that
When I am reborn,
And am your President?
The language of both poets is
iconoclastic and blunt. And al-
though both focus more on
For the Student Body:
DENlIM
FLARES
America the wasteland than
America the beautiful, there is
an essential difference between
the- two stemming from the
method of their perceptions.
Both rely heavily on the camera
technique of journalistic ima-
A new building
has gone up
with
no spaces for windows.
Traveling with Sward, on the
other hand, requires a step to
the rear of the bus where the
images slowly filter through a
myriad of sensory impressions.
And the bus, in this case, is no
Grayhound express but rather,
one feels, a dilapidated vehicle
colored with dry-glow paints.
Sward, in fact, describes his
long, choric poem as "a record-
ing from other countries and
from the context of America it-
self of fantasy, song, and apo-
calypse . . . ." His traveling
companions, on the journey
which begins in Mexico in 1965
and ends four years later in
New Hampshire, are all Prank-
stemrs of the grotesque. Among
them areOrphan Annie, Dick
Tracy, Mamie Eisenhower, Mi-
notaur, waterskiers, etc.-all of
them, in Sward's words, "inno-
cent and horrendous, in a grop-
ing and violent evolutionary
state."
Ultimately, when one disem-
barks, then, he is left with en-
tirely different feelings depend-
ing on whether he has been
riding with; Eve Merriam or
Robert Sward. Eve Merriam has
taken a quick jaunt into the
American country and returned
hurridly to relate the shock of
her impressions. Robert Sward is
still travelling, and the reader
is hauntingly pulled with him.
Today's Writers . .
Susan Edwards, a graduate,
student in Museum Practice,
will be interning next semester
at the Henry Ford Museum.
Robert White, a regular re-
viewer and a Tyrolian sheep-
dog breeder, reports that he is
now experimenting with a new
hairless variety.
The pioneer law of self-preserva-
tion was blamed for making
the nation dynamic materially
and static spiritually; posses-
sive instincts have preempted a
"national fabric of spiritual ex-
perience," pigeon-holing it f o r
"practical purposes." His so-
lution was the creation of a na-
tional culture built on the bed-
rock of everyday experience,
rather than enforced from
above. In other words, a replace-
ment of the outmoded, oppres-
sive Genteel Tradition by pop-
ular culture.
Strangely enough, at a time
when the Genteel Tradition was
reaching out "to legalize prev-
iously informal control o v e r
culture," it had lost its force,
introducing The Plastic Age, a
period of enormous diversity,
and vitality. As the Genteel
Tmradition succumbed, people
were freed from its constrict-
ing bonds of conformity. N e w
modes of dress ,entertainment,
and sexual freedom seemed to
reintroduce individuality. But
did they? Or was it just another
type of conformity in a differ-
ent guise? Irene Castle bobbed
-Ladies Home Journal, Feb., 1930
to women. They entered the era
with long hair and long skirts;
they left it with the Castle bob
and short skirts. The Gibson
Girl had become a flapper! By
the mid-twenties so ,many wo-
men were wearing their h a i r
short that moralists were won-
dering about the possible harm-
ful effects of the "free and easy
atmosphere" of that traditional
masculine sanctuary, the bar-
ber shop. Sklar, sensing the im-
portance of this dramatic lib-
eration of women in the Twen-
ties devotes more space (t h r e e
W on't a e
ON
Student
I
LIVE IT UP! (
$upplies
at
FOLLETTS
Just Spend
It Madly
GRADUATE ASSEMBLY
STATED MEETING
TONITE
7:30, West Conference Room
RACKHA M
Agenda Includes:
1. Judiciary Board
2. Rcckham Executive Board Representation
3. Student =Relations Committee
-ALL WELCOME---
Dine with Us and
Dance to the Music of
MY FRIENDS
WEDNESDAY THRU SATURDAY
0
0
r
gery, but Miss Merriam shoots
with an Instamatic where Sward
relies on the panoramic effects
of cinema.
To travel with Miss Merriam
is to view the American land-
scape in quick, split-second
takes. For example, "Fashion
Note in Wartime."
U
Open:
319-S. 4th Ave. Mon. thru Fri
761-3548 11 a.m.-2 a.m. V
Sat. & Sun. {
Sp.m.-2 a.m.
Mon. ihru Thurs., no minimum charge
.-:" .
., :" ........4:}}G Mi;4::.........E ns ati:.""v :..:::a"# h."": .xU :::".:: : n::::}:."".%"": :"S::."rr:%v"n: <t4
CULTURE is NOT ENOUGH I
Soviet pianist EMIL GILELS will be at Hill Aud., Wed., Nov.'18, at 8 p.m.
While he is here, a thousand Jews are in Soviet prisons for publicly
asking to leave for Israel. WILL THEY BE "LIQUIDATED"?
Newsweek Mag. says 80,000 Jews want the simple freedom to "do
their thing" in Israel. WHY CAN'T THEY?
Whether you are a Jew or not,
DANCE with US
SING with US
BE with US
high
as
are
skirts
the
as
this
week's
body
count
Or, from a different vantage
point, note the poem simply en-
titled, "View."
Paid Political Adv.
VOTE
HYMEN - FRIED
L.S.&A. Student Gov. Members-at-Large
" PASS Governance Proposal
" EXPAND and Revise Counselling Service
" ESTABLISH- L.S.&A. Student Assembly
- ABOLISH Language & Distribution Requirements
* PRESERVE Recitations-Creat Work-Study Program
WEDNESDAY-THURSDAYt
Spend An Evening With
THE FIFTH
DIMENSION
't '
G
A{:
i'
i
F
I
i Src
E ::!:
; ;
1
...
Yearbook-
M ICH IGANENSIAN
ON SALE NOW IN
FISHBOWL
November 9-20
$7.00 now
Inflation Raises Price to
$7.50
after December
on the steps of HILL AUD.
THIS WED. EVE. AT 8 P.M.
"Am Yisraeyl Chay!"
THERE MUST BE HUMANITY!
-
ROMANTIC VISIONS
OF THE PAST, CAR VED
IN CAMEOS
Our fine collection includes
Oval brooch/pendant $42
NOW is the time to buy your
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The University of Michigan Yearbook
Just return this card with $7.00 (check or money order payable
to the MICHIGANENSIAM to the Sttuisnt Puhlis-rntnn .. ri