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Feature
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VOL. XXXV. No. 105.
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1925
EIGHT PAGES
MICHIGAN'S
LITERARY
RENAISSANCE
till tte
Some Reminiscences Of The "Good Old Days" Of Campus Literary Activities When Words Were Use(
d, Not As A
Gloss To Cover Sins But As Knives To Slash The Cover From Them.
Saul Carson and
Murray Godwin On G. D. E., A Review Of "Backfurrow"
.
s.b.
tit -.t-41Ft
0,
.4,.
4Ve
Michigamania
by Saul Carson
FTER the antipasto-chianti. Served by
Anton d'Angelo Septinelli. And with the
spumoni, an hour later, comes coffee fur-
tively mixed with the fermentation of a
pomerantz. Seasoned in the winds of an hyperbolic
streamer blown from the lips of a rusalka.
Somewhere, about the vermicelli, the telegraph
editor mops the lenses thick as the glass playing that
beautiful symphony of which the waiter's name is
the first movement. He uses a ten-dollar bill, care-
fully guarded by a police card and an order to ad-
mit one-someplace. And I tell him about the canon-
ization of Saint Geoffrey D. Eaton.
The academic procession has now reached the
four-inch lawn which shields the new Lit building
from the contamination that is State street. Ameri-
can flags drape the seven Ionic columns. Sopho-
mores, in special exercises held the previous day,
lopped off sufficient imitation granite for the creation
of the niche. Some of the dust was preserved by
maudlin drivelers for their Msbooks. A bust of
Saint Geoffrey now fills that cavity. The architect
who planned the new engineering shops designed the
bust. It was made of Calumet copper, in the Ford
factories, tempered by Lawrence H. Conrad, and
pulsates with the swiftness of his forge......From
the academic procession not a professor is missing.
"All here or accounted for, Sir!"
At a special meeting the Chamber of Commerce
had resolved......"Whereas, and whereas, and
whereas; Therefore be it, and it hereby is resolv-
ed ....." So all gasoline filling stations emptied
their pedigreed attendants. Knocked off for the aft-
ernoon. To march in ludicrous cap and gown. To
bow and to scrape.
"Hail to G. D. E.! Hail to the colors that float!"
G. D. E. risen from the unmentionable to the men-
tioned with pride. Fr. Anathema to Sainthood.
Spinoza and Joan of Arc. Shelley and the Unknown
Soldier. Eaton slugged and Eaton sanctified. Eaton
threatened----then. Eaton taken to the bosom, now.
A Bolshevik spy. An American man of letters.
Transformations performed while you wait. The
R. O. T. C. has its brass buttons polished for the
occasion.
And, behind that mask of Calumet copper, Eaton
roars, paraphrasing Eden:
"Why didn't you dare it before? When I was
starving for this? When I was just as I am now,
as a man, as an artist, the same G. D. E.? I have
not developed any new strength nor virtue. I
haven't even made one new generalization on litera-
ture or philosophy."
The band has formed columns of four. Somehow,
Eaton himself wields the huge lance as a baton,
frantically shouting above the fanatic rush of wind:
"Have at them, at them!" His long, thin fingers
draw cabalistic figures in the air, while the barbaric
strumming of a thousand banjoes keep time to the
Ypsi yell:
"At them, camerado. At their redundant bun-
combe which is still as amusing as the fim-flam
palmed off by a windy gas bag making the circuit of
the Chautauqua Belt. The stuff is inane in its
pathos. It would bounce off the cerebrum of a half-
wit and wallop him in the region of the medulla
oblongata, making him as awry as a brick loose
from one of the architectural monstrosities which
clutter the campus like an impressionistic portrait
,of a coyote yapping his We!tschmertz before a class
of morons, Senators, bootleggers, minute-men from
Evanston, Rotarians, the rev. clergy, sorority girls,
Elks, history professors and other such simple, mis-
guided asses. Let at them one hearty guffaw and
go seek communion with Fantazius Mallare and a
bottle of grain alcohol."
. . ..But the ceremony is not yet over.
"Speech! Speech!"
"Coats! Coats!"
"Let's give an Eaton locomotive!"
Gurgle, gurgle, unk---BUNK.
ker-bunk
ker-bunk
----BUNK!
While all look on. he slips from behind that mask,
leaving its emptiness mocking like a bas-relief of a
gold-fish on the door of a ruined temple.
"After all," he changes his mood, "after all you
were asked for something about your recollections of
the Michigan Renaissance-----.
"Renaissance . . .. "I draw out that last syllable.
He smiles, and it is a paradoxical stimulant which
acts as a sedative. And I go on, casuistically:
"in your egoism, you see yourself as the center
of that renaissance. And yet, you are right. And
yet there was a stirring, even if only of ants. After
all, that year of the Sunday Magazine, the Tempest,
the intensely conscious intellectualism, could be
given something. A line, a paragraph, a nocturne
played by a tramp fiddler in a barn, to the accom-
paniment of the typewriters feeding news to the
avid procurers . . . . The Sunday Magazine group
and its tremendous strain on the nerves of the all-
Saul Carson
The "animated microbe
illustrated in this page is
none other than Saul Carson,
as seen by James House 'Jr.
Mr. Carson, erstwhile co-
editor of The Tempest, Mr.
Eaton's quite liberal campus
publication, is now connected
with the Philadelphia North
American.
Utterly devoid of any sense
of humor and wholly in sym-.
pathy with the spirit of "say
what you like, when you like
and how you like," Mr. Car-
son contributes on this page
some memoirs of his associa-
tion with Mr. Eaton both on
the campus and after they had
left it. He writes in terms
of sardonic thought with a
ine disregard for what is
normally known as the sen-
tence. It makes splendid
reading.
strings., pulled eah Sunmag out of its
it snoozed dolefully among sports and ad
hand medical books. The official bull,
mending this "Student Leader", in whic
flco said "I couldn't have done better my
The pontifico scarcely could have done b
of larger stature than his hireling, an
less likely to get on his knees before the
print . . , . . And the "Sixteen Immorta
signed in a body. Rebels with the courag
ed peasants before their landlord.....
and I would go on......For the others
was but a cloud shielding contentment
dared once.......A period of quiet
sheer ennui, I turned to St. Augustine a
and found him vastly more entertaining t
soirees. . . Then the Tempest. The jo
what one wants to say. Where, how, an
wants to say it. The comewhat coldf
money worries. (Continued on Page T
Backfurrow
BACKFURROW. By G. D. Eaton. New
Putnam's Sons. 1925.
It is not that Eaton has written a gre
very good book or an artful book that h
page to himself. It is because anything
of Michigan, that great vocational trai
is eligible for considerable mention.
Who is Eaton, what is he? may very
be a question of the majority of readers in
est College Daily. He was graduated
elms in nineteen twenty-three, leaving a
the gallimaufries of commencement an
his diploma by mail.
Without deciding if "culture" has plac
university devoted to preparing underg
satisfying the economic wants of life, it
to 'point out that there is always a
brotherhood which pursues this culture
popular current. During his residence
was the articulate head-center for the
vices of this group. Customarily such
mutter vaguely. Eaton was a voice in
ness-----a loud-speaker for the arts.
By the time this review appears it wi
monplace among the local illuminati an
that Backfurrow is not at all what w
from the typewriter of such a fellow.
legend as it exists here today makes
raucous, sardonic mogul of amateur crit
was his public side. But there was a sus
while he was in the midst of his fulmi
at bottom he was as sentimental a fool
In this sense Backfurrow gives him awa
being the klaxon young critical gent
traces of human sympathy, he departs f
endary figure.
To sink the individual in the general,
is one of a type of novel that has becom
of the young writer nowadays. There
literally dozens with identical plots. P
because publishers have grown lenient
Murray Godwin
Murray Godwin, a former
student at the University and
then and now literary col-
league of Eaton's is working
in an automobile factory and
writing in odd moments, Of
himself he says:
"Biographically speaking I
work in the tool supply sec-
tion of an automobile factory.
Why? Bed and Board. To
get more intimate, I am the
husband of Victoria Kujaska-
Godwin. The baby's name is
Marguerite. By blood I am
English, Irish and German;
she who puts up with my,
presence, on the other hand, is
Russian and Polish.
---'
bed where
s of second-'
again com-
h the ponti-
self!"....1
etter, being;
d therefore
piles of wet
Js" who re-
e of tenant-
Only Eaton
the smoke'
with having
Out of
t that time,
than artistic
y of saying
d when one
intrusion of.
hirteen)
York. G. P.
at book or a
e deserves af
spiritual out
ping school,
pertinently
this Great-
from these
week before
d accepting
ed in a state
raduates for
is not amiss
discontented
against the
here EatonA
G. D. Eaton, Personally
by Murray Godwin
N.APPEARANCE, G. D. Eaton-as you can see by
House Jr's sketch--is not obviously the author
of a book like "Backfurrow". Neither 'does his
conversation reveal the fact. One more easily
discovers in him the critic, the thoughtful polemist.
One finds'in him particularly the student. He studies
men, books, life, 'constantly, I think, and without
having any definite object in view.
I am tempted to set forth the thesis that the Uni-
versity interrupted his studies; or that, at least, it
brought out the polemist in him at the student's ex-
pense. I am tempted to go into careful analysis,
point out that, while such intellectual free-for-alls
as may be engaged in by fellows eager for learning,
serve to puncture fatuous assumptions, flail mental
rows free of trash, and in general to clear and inte-
grate the ideas of the participants; the opposite, or
something just as profitless, results when a student's
assertions are met with objections, not of an intel-
lectual, but of a political, moral, ethical or theo-
logical sort . .. that is to say, of a sort valid, final-
ly, because it is backed by the strong arm, by official
or sycophant thuggery, and because of its being di-
-----the creation of ideals and the adjustment of them
to life as it must be lived-----is recognizable.
Perhaps this is all we should expect from a:
young man's first novel----apparently, from the cur-
rent samples, it is. Perhaps, from a fund of ex-
perience accumulated in twenty-five years experience
with life, this is all that is possible. In such an
event these novels must be estimated on other
grounds.
Where Eaton has improved the type over the
examples of his contemporaries i in the very place
wherein he surprises his acquaintances. By de-
parting from the collegiate scene to the hilly farms
of Michigan and by presenting a veracious picture
of conditions there he has achieved a higher literary
value than is customary to this kind of novel. The
tawdryflauntingtof the campus life with its petty
wickednesses and its sensationalism has been work-
ed to destruction. Farm life, even when liable to the
adjective "sordid", is preferable.
In a technical way, the book is quite bad. It
commences with a Sears-Roebuck catalog of the
scene that is sufficient to dampen the ardor of the
most sympathetic reader. The mechanics of the book
creak and the clockwork of motivation runs down at
the'end. This latter fault is common to all books of
this kind. The hero is left, after some emotional
crisis, with no place to go but with a definite idea of
how to go there.
If that elusive literary quality, style, is to be al-'
lowed into the discussion at all it must be admitted
that here again there is ground for disappointment.
There used to be a sort of stock defense of Eaton's
rabid .critical conduct here. "After all," his cham-
pion would say, "after all, the man can write." And,
indeed, his critical pronouncements are stated with a
precision and force that is quite exceptional. But
these things are got off in his sardonic manner, a
manner to which he had become habituated through
years of use. Faced with 'the necessity for an im-
plicit literary method, a style of suggestion rather
rectly connected with the navel cord through which
throbs the thick, hot, fear-ferocious blood of the
tribe.
But through this thesis could be convincingly de-
fended by even so backward a literary hobo as the
writer, I am conscious that It is only fractionally
true. The opposition that Eaton encountered made
and kept him red-necked; but his head remained
considerably below fever heat. Finding that he had
to do with hippopotami, he early tossed aside his
rapier and took up the broadsword and hull-hided
target of the Gael. But the rapier did not rust,
Whenever a breathing space arrived, he kicked oi,
his clotter brogues and put on the slippers of the
student. In the course of a number of breathing
spaces he managed to write "Backfurrow". During
one vacation-that of his junior year, I think-he
stayed for a few weeks in the north, turning out, I
am informed by a friend who shared his cabin, a
chapter a day. Besides this, he kept up in an ap-
parently effortless fashion his required studies,
served several sheets with reviews, and gave his best
energies to the active understanding and application
of science and the languages he had selected as most
worthy of his mental steel.
2
Eaton left an example, I think, for whoever needs
it. He gave a complete demonstration of how to
achieve, through self-assertion, freedom as a state of
mind. Under present conditions, he could have done
no more.
It is a matter of record that, in Mediaeval times,,
the university was not the faculty and buildings, but
the students. The student council paid the faculty
out of funds supplied by the student group. Further-
more, it served within university limits as a civil ad-
ministrative and executive body. When officers o
the city of Bologna ventured to arrest some students
within university bounds, the university packed its
knapsack and moved, if I remember right, to Palua.
The facUity followed. Later, merely to keep its
sense of independence sharp, it moved again.
In such a fashion a tradition of freedom was es-
tablished-of an objective, group freedom. How
free the mind of the individual was, in those dark
days, I don't exactly know; but the outward freedom
of the student body was evidently firmly founded,
difficult to down.
Some vestiges of this freedom, I believe, still
remain in Continental seats of learning. But the
accession to power of the bourgeoisie, which even in
Europe left only vestiges,ton this side of the wat-
er-because it coincided with the growth of the uni-.
versit yitself-left no freedom at all. Power is to
the Paymaster. The student no longer chooses his
teachers nor does he hold the purse. If he did,
though he might succeed in paying off the faculty,
the upkeep of the paraphernalia of the modern know-
ledge-factory would find him strapped. Naturally,
those who pay the shot insist on naming the poison;
and so the student is let to stay, if he behaves.
Mr. John Jay Chapman, I notice, is covering with
a good deal of seeming skill the question~of the uni-
versity as a center of learning. The languages (ex-
cluding English) and science aside, it would appear
that the university offers nothing which could not 'be
secured, with much less trouble and cost, from the
I. C. S., on the one hand, and the Public Library on
the other.
These concentrated disadvantages, well heated
and housed, are available to the seeker after learn-
ing as soon as he pays his tuition, provided that he
consider himself for the years following the property
of his debtor, the inferior of various bands of non-
entities with lodge buttons in their lapels, and the
unworthy servant of any movement to enhance the
size and value of the property cu which the plant
stands.
Confronted by the university as it is, G. D. Eaton
made use of its science and language departments,
declared a permanent moratorium on his debt to his
Alma Mater, thumbed his nose at the spores of
badged and buttoned amoebae; and, instead of boost-
ing in a loud voice for the institution in general, be-
gan to assert in black on white the more or less
skeptical opinions that gradually marked him as a
monstrosity, that is, as a servant -who wouldn't serve.-
Let it be remembered that he used the university,
opposing to its venerable and solemn egoism, his
undisguised own. Toward the end of his university
days, when more or less official channels of expres-
sion were blocked against him, he constructed a
sufficiently effective one for personal use, and so,
to the time of his matriculation, had despite every-
thing his say.... .
Eaton's critical aspect is usually uppermost.
Under the barrage of vigorous stupidities that was
rained on him, it became armorlike. His first im-
pulse is habitually rationalistic. Before a new piece
of art he erects the barrier of technique. He notices
first that the music of a poem is broken by a pause
in the first line, or that the poet has used concealed
rhymes tn trick the reader into faith in hi .thA
virtues and
malcontents
the wilder-
11 be a com-
d blas-bleus
as expected
The Eaton
him out a
icism. That
picion, even
nations, that
as anyone.
y----he stops
and shows
rom the leg-
Backfurrow
ne the genre
are almost
?erhaps it is
with art and
4 V J A
heroes have already achieved learning-of sorts-and
are engaged in a more or less philosophical rational-
ization of life as seen through the adolescent eyes
of their authors. Nevertheless, the general scheme
FConcerning Jame House Jr.
Jim House is a struggling young art stu-
dent at Philadelphia. ''his page is adorned
with some of his struggles.
Mr. House is a native of Michigan and
grew to young manhood in the neighbor-
ing town of Jackson. Had he been de-
signed for the bar he would have graduated
from the local law school in nineteen twenty-
four. Several of his caricatures have ap-