Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, March 16, 1973 Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY _r PASSOVER SEDERS and MEALS SEDERS-7:30 P.M. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26--$8.50 THURSDAY, MARCH 27-$8.50 MEALS THURSDAY, MARCH 27 through THURSDAY, APRIL 3 LUNCH-12 NOON (after services-$3.25 each or $30.00 for ten meals) DINNER--6:00 p.m.-$3 25 each or $30.00 for ten meals Reservations must be made at Hillel by Thursday, March 20. No reservations by phone. All meals at HILLEL-1429 Hill 663-3336 ____________BOOKS ON NATIVE GROUND The Modernists in poetry and prose: Have they pierced the heart of America? A HOMEMADE WORLD: THE AMERICAN MODERNIST WRITERS. By Hugh Kenner. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 220 pp., $8.95. ammmimuuI EIGHT BUFFALO WOMEN RGPN HRMou, tgLP. /rp C EVLL E S By RICHARD STREICKER UUGH KENNER'S last book was about Buckminster Ful- ler, and with the publication of A Homemade World we see where the attraction lies. Ken- ner, like Bucky himself, cooks up a storm of ideas on every subject. Like Bucky, he often lacks or disdains the critical ability to winnow the good ideas from the crackpot ones. Like Bucky, he publishes them all, trusting something fertile will emerge in the mind of his read- ers. A Homemade World purports to be about a collection of peo- ple called the American Moder- nist Writers, a collection which includes Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner among the novel- ists, and Eliot, Pound, Stevens, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore among poets. Kenner's thesis is that these eight writers reshaped and re- created American language and literature in the twentieth cen- tury by fashioning new aesthe- tics of language without refer- ence to earlier European mod- els-hence the idea of "a home- made world." It won't wash completely, of course, and in fact Kenner spends little time buttressing this overall argu- ment. It is natural to want to find a connection between all these writers, if only for the sake of tidiness, but A Home- made World neither stands nor falls on its success in proving this connection. As a critc, Kenner is talented in certain directions. If his gen- eralizations flounder from the effort of tryng to yoke together disparate elements, his in-depth treatment of single works is masterly, even brilliant. Here Kenner shows himself the mas- ter classroom teacher. We can I appreciate the fertility of his thinking when he confines him- self to The Great Gatsby or to Williams' poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" because with one specific text before us we can easily sift through Kenner's ideas and choose among them for ourselves. HE HAS THE happy facility for turning a work of art in- side out, examining it from all angles, and drawing an aston- ishing number of conclusions about it, some ridiculous and some so solid that you wonder why you never thought of them yourself. This is the mark of a good teacher. Nobody tops Ken- ner in making comprehensible the workings of the modern po- em or the interrelation of the parts of a novel. His prose has an energy rarely found in criti- cal writing and his breezy style, which betrays him when he ov- erreaches himself, is perfectly suited to the exegesis of the sin- ale work. length poem on a dull spot in New Jersey. Wallace Stevens has little to do with America aside from his work with the in- surance company and Marianne Moore, one of our most delight- ful poets, still fails to square with Hemingway's idea of "sin- cerity" that Kenner rightfully places at the head of American literary values. PY THIS CRITERION the list of American modernists must be expanded mainly in the area of fiction. Americans are storytellers, expansive front- porch ramblers-on, and poetry in this century has been essen- tially reductivist, gnomic, obs- curantist. The liberation of the word as object and the substi- tution of typography for state- ment and emotion is basically a European phenomenon, wholly alien to American experience. The main line of American lit- erature goes from Twain and Whitman in the last century through Sherwood Anderson and Thomas Wolfe, and includes Theodore Dreiser, Damon Run- yon, James T. Farrell, John dos Passos, Ring Lardner, Hen-f ry Miller, Norman Mailer and dozens of others - as well as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. There are ways in which these are not our best craftsmen. Dreiser and Farrell wrote prose as theavy and cluttered as that of D. H. Lawrence, yet Studs Lonigan and An American Tragedy, along with dos Passos' USA, are important landmarks of a country and a century growing up together, the cen- tury in which this country grew to adulthood and to paramount- cy among the nations of the world. There is much to find fault with in America and Am- ericans, but there is also much to praise and consider that nev- er found its way into the closed world of the poetry of Wallace Stevens. For all the brilliance of A Homemade World - and its brilliance in parts is undeniable, achieving as it does a complete orientation to twentieth-century Amercan literature in 221 pages - it is not precisely the book we need. America's bicenten- nial lies only a year away, and we desperately need to re-ex-, Hemingway amine American literature in this century. We need a great' book to.pick up the lost threads of our recent literature and1 weave them into a coherent pic-I ture of ourselves and the his- tory of our country. A RECONSIDERATION of the standard authors, no matter{ how skillfully executed, cannot' make up for what these authors themselves leave out. In a Uni- versity literature program ones inevitably touches upon all eightc of Kenner's authors. But who reads John dos Passos today? What Professor assigns Studs Lonigan? Winesburg, 0 h i o Eliot MARCH 16 clings to the bottom of reading lists, but what about Ring Lard- ner's stories or the Broadway tales of Damon Runyon? What the University leaves out, Ken- ner does not touch upon, either. LIKE SO MANY Homers in re- duced circumstances, our most American writers spin their stories in this way. Burst- ing from the constraints of the nineteenth-century forms, these storytellers are the true Ameri- can modernists. Richard Streicker is a recent graduate of the University and a Hopwood Award winner. - APRIL 5 reception - sunday, march 16, 4p.m. UNION GALLERY MICHIGAN UNION UNIVERSITY OF mICHJIGAN ANN ARBOR gallery hours, tuesday & thursday 1-8; wednesday, friday & saturday 10-5; sunday 12-5 Come meet the artists at a recep- tion--Sunday, March 16, 4 p.m. %NE NIGHT ONLY!' World's Greatest 2-Man Band1 Mod March 17th 9 p.m. 516 E. Liberty Join The Daily Staff Whatever you think of Ken- ner's idea of an American aes- thetic handmade of wood and stone, the question must arise of selection of authors. Kenner picked eight. They are the big guns, pretty much what any English professor would have picked. One would have a hard time making additions or sub- stitutions without discarding the whole idea of "leadng authors". Yet there is a memorable pas- sage in Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer where the newspap-; er reporters, who as a group are notoriously interestedein that sort of thing, debate wheth- er Thomas Worlfe or Sherwood Anderson came closer to theI great beating heart of America. If we think of "being American" in that way - in the twentieth century split from the kind of jEnglish-style writing which bound all our authors of the last century, with the towering ex- ception of Walt Whitman - it's a whole different ballgame. We stick with Hemingway and Faulkner, of course, and the Fitzgerald of Gatsby if we re- member that his prose mould be, much more ghastly than that of; the much-maligned Sherwood Anderson. Eliot must go, for there is no more disgraceful sight than an American trying to be an Englishman. Pound; stays as a legitimate successor to Whitman, and Williams stays. if only because he wrote a book-j COUPLES Masters and Johnson take a look at love and commitment THE PLEASURE BOND: A NEW LOOK AT SEXUALITY A N D COMMITTMENT By William Masters and Virginia Johnson with Robert J. Levin. New York: Little, Brown Co., 268 pp., $8.95. By JULIE STOCKLER WILLIAM MASTERS andl categorized lists. I remember discovering their first volumes, Human Sexual Response and Human Sexual Inadequacy while in early ado- lescence. I'm sure I didn't ap- preciate the content as much] as the sight of forbidden words in print. Do not charge through; their latest work in a similar the mind into gross neuroses As secret fears turn inward, be havior in the pair bond alters needlessly, denying both part- ners the opportunity to draw u-, .At . on their mutual trust forrelief The "I don't feel like it to-ยข. night, honey," syndrome is a prime example. A simule rets-" al triggers bitter feelings and the rejection may become swell- ed out of context. The mate sees this as a reflection of personal inadequacy and undesirability, when in truth daily pressures wig, these ordinary folk illus- sometimes result in an honest trate the universality of many desire to escape into sleep. sexual problems and allow the A committed couple must authors to comment both in the communicate to ease such feel- discussion and in the essays ings and retain the bond be- summarizing each. 1teen them. By fully under- Virginia Johnson originally' search for lewd diagrams. The approached t h e professional Pleasure Bond, written in col- world with scientific data ex- laboration with Robert J. Levine r TONIGHT! Winners & Highlights OF THE 13[h Ann Arbor Film Festival Screeninqs at 7, 9 & 11 at both Architecture Aud. & Aud. A, Anqell Hall. Aud. A location is I e s crowded. Tickets on sale at 6:00 p.m. $1.25 Old Architecture Auditorium TAPPAN at MONROE Program info-662-8871 The festival is co-sponsored by Cinema Guild & Dramatic Arts Council ploring and exposing h u m a n sexual behavior. Their medical textbooks quickly advanced be- yond the clinical eyes of doctors and psychologists into the book- shelves and nightstands of mass reading audiences. Within two decades, the phrase Masters- and-Johnson has come to denate a team of sexual technologists who turned the most secret sexual anxieties into graphs, the most passionate behavior into of Redbook Magazine, demn- strates an understanding of the emotions involved, not in labo- ratory copulation, but in safe- guarding a loving and com- mitted sexual relationship. Areas discussed fall into one clearly stated category: xvhat happens when the honeymoon is over, w h e n the excitement grinds down into routine and standing the disaster rejection wreaks upon the usual ego, a partner may gently respond in a warmer fashion than the "I have a headache" routine. sexual harmony collapses with a dull thud. "The belief that HE BOOK exclusively can-: with the loss of novelty sex must 1 vasses conflicts in terms of lose its power to arouse passion both members of the pair,? isa assumponssumption. ike stressing the necessity of unity all assumptions, it risks being in attacking problems. One of turned into a self-fulfilling pro- the more interesting theories phecy, they warn. discussed is the unconscious in-I BUT NOT necessarily. Mas- ters and Johnson offer their experience and insight as a me- thod of "preventive medicine," drawing primarily upon the powers of communication as a cure. Surprisingly enough in a decade pretending sexual so- phistication, many find the on- set of sexual satisfaction a soli- tary anxiety. Relatively com- mon concerns then magnify in corporation of stereotypes in most sexual relationships. The use of these fallacies is a com-: mon camouflage for dysfunc-: tion: no, I can't be aggressive,' that's his role; no, she doesn't like sex because women don't have such drives. Despite at- tempts at enlightment, the doc- tors suggest, the Victorian con- cept of sexual role-playing is: nevertheless imbedded in even the most modern couple. The various essays in The Pleasure Bond are presented in a vehicle that is both captivat- ing and informative. The text includes five symposiums in: which Masters and Johnson speak with non-professional men and women. These small groups' consist sometimes of couples randomly assembled to discuss their marriage, others are indi- viduals of varying background with one common experience,! swinging couples or divorcees, for example. With little prompt- MAJOR FLAW in the sym- posiums, however, is that they do rot really seem to be a represental ?.ve sectiv-" of the us- tal adult. Participants are mar- r'ed for secoid and third times, active members of swinging clubs, or happily drowning in a series of extra-marital afairs. Perhaps I am naive. No where in the book did I meet a couple happily married for twenty-five years to the same person. The unusual habits of their groups does not seem to bother the authors. They never hesitate to chailz'age the honesty of a speaker, almost as a psychia- trist attempts to make painful 'ruths surface. Although rarely passing judgement on even with most controversial lifestyles, Masters and Johnson neverthe- less are not gentle. When one gentleman muses that it would be fun to have babies "to watch something grow and develop" Virginia Johnson suggests he get a plant instead. The Pleasure Bond is neither a handbook for sexual prowess nor a jiffy cookbook for success- ful relationships. It is an excel- lently written argument for committment and responsibility in an effective relationship. Ev- en without the diagrams. Julie Stockler is a junior who has devised her major of science writing. a.. w I 4 "tr' E Si i' t *t w y r. I IL I ti r,... - .+. ... , ": ", : IjV rr .. . I THE ANN ARBOR FILM CO-OP will hold open meet- ings on March 16, 23 &s 30th for those interested in ioinina our board If you want to participate in vari- ous film activities, "film showinas, festivals, organiZ- inq film makers," please come see us Sun., March 16 at 4:00 'p.m, in Blaqdon Room at the Michiqan League. I I T- I I i I ., I g ($ $tr gjo Mi ijpn ti, OFFICE HOURS CIRCULATION - 764-0558 COMPLAINTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS 0 a.m.-4 p.m. CLASSIFIED ADS - 764-0557 10 o.m.-4 p.m. DEADLINE FOR NEXT DAY-12:00 p.m. DISPLAY ADS - 764-0554 MONDAY thru FRIDAY-12 p.m,-4 p.m. Deadline for Sunday issue- WEDNESDAY at 5 p.m. I 7:30 p.m.-Wednesday, Mar. 19 *30 people from the class will be selected to participate in the clinic, Saturday, March 22 ($5 fee) , 4 4 LEARN TO TUNE YOUR OWN CAR for BETTER MILEAGE-CLEANER AIR PROF. APYEH GOREN PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY AT THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY 4:00 P.M.-"The Search for Community; the Puritan Way and the Kibbutz Way, Some Comparisons." M.L.B. Lecture Room 1 Jacobson's Open Thursday and Friday Evenings Until 9:00 P.M. Sunday Until 5:30 P.M. JacobsoI'~s BEAUTY SALON SUDDENLY, . . Y'U'RE LOVELIER ...free of the facial hair that mars your good I I 'I I Ewi min f