THE. MICHIGAN DAILY
SUNDAY,
II ,
THE MICHIGAN DAILYSUNDAY, I
OCUS POCUS:
Black Magic Replaces
Need for Hero
[artin C*idin, The Long Night, (New York, Dodd, Mead and Co., 1956) $3.00
By ROBE$T B. GLENN
In 1922 Sinclair Lewis erected the resplendent city of Zenith. In
56 Martin Caidin has caused this same Zenith (now called Harring-
n and located farther east, but it is undoubtedly the same city) to be
t by an atom bomb. It was only an atom bomb and it wasn't dropped
curately (it exploded a little too high off the ground); consequently
"only a mere 189,868 were killed.
But the enemy's failure to anihilate
ervantes the city sometimes appears more
to our disadvantage than his.
1 . "The ' Long Night" is a success
only if we conceive it as a pano-
rama of the inevitable anarchy
that consumes an ill-informed and
over-complacent and self-centered
(Continued from Page 4) community when catastrophe
strikes. The firestorm the cadavers
Dreiser-
Sentiment
THIS CENTURY'S REMINGTON:
Artist Vidar Paints War Pictures
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writer?
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"probably," "leads us to believe,"
etc. . At least the author is to be
cobnmended for making us aware
of the reasonable doubt of some of
the data rather than being tempt-
ed into it as indisputable fact.
Cervantes' adventurous life with
all its rich experiences aids us im-
measurably, not only in an ap-
preciation of Don Quixote, but also
in an' analysis and interpretation
of many of its passages.
We see how Cervantes, an in-
tense lover of life and humanity,
put the successes and failures,
emotional adventures, and tragic
injustices of his own life into this
novel, so aptly called "The Bible
of Humanity" by Aubrey F. G.
Bell, a noted British Hispanist.
All in all, a clear and fast mov-
ing style, a sympathetic yet ob-
jective treatment, and subject
matter which is in itself interest-
ing novelistically, make the bio-
graphy a enjoyable and educa-
tional experience for the reader.
(-John B. Dalbr, as a teach-
ing fellow in the Department of
Romance Languages, maintains a
lively professional and personal
interest in Spanish literature.y)
Angel's Art
Work Shown
On display at the University
Museum Building in the Rotunda
are, works of Carleton W. Angell,
retiring artist of the University
Museums, and the late William
H. Buettner, Museum of Paleon-
tology.
Angell in his 30 years with the
Museum has established a wide
and impressive reputation as a
aculptor and artist. He has turned
out 600 pieces of art and sculpture.
All the exhibit halls of the
Museum are filled with the many
fine works of Angell.
Along with those are works of
William H. Buettner, who was the
preparator in the Museum of Pal-
eotology for a period of 41 years.
Buettner had planned to retire on
the first of July this year, but on
March 29 he died.
All the vertebrate fossil 'skele-
tons in the Hall of Evolution of
the Museum Building, with the
exception of two, are the result
of Buettner's work.
The works of these two men will
be exhibited at the Museum Ro-
tunda until September of this year.
Lecture on Design
Edgar Kaufman, authority on
contemporary design, will discuss
"Some Aspects of Design at the
Turn of the Century," at 4:15 p.m.,
tomorrow, in the Architecture Aud-
itorium.
,Kaufman, formerly in charge of
design activities and exhibitions at
New York's Museum of Modern
Art, has been influential in dir-
ecting serious attention to the
esthetic qualities of the machine
and the machine-made object.
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The Dascola Barbers
Near Michigan Theater
OUAV . A l ~ll, V1 i" V
and the' stampeding are all most
convincing. But the bookis tnot
Just a panorama; it purports to be
a novel, and here more disturbing
problems emerge.
it is 'hardly fair to insist that
there is no pot. There are at least
TEN plots, but all sp occur in
fragments and only one (John
Thompson's frantic seach for his
fiancee) hints of resolution. Plot
is best described as a series of
almost related incidents.
If it is diffcult to discover a
believable hero. Not that there
aren't plenty of candidates-per-
haps a dozen-who might have
been heroes. To examine a few.
HENRY THOMPSON, whose
moral regeneration consists in
achieving indifference to the fact'
that his self-esteem and his stupid-
ity had helped his wife to quick
cremation. The hero as irrespon-
sible idiot.
John Thompson, son of Henry,
who panicked, stole a car and
rammed a fire-truck, deserted
from a clean-up detail, andfinally
took advantage of inside connec-
tions to wangle a pass to a hos-
pital 30 miles away so he could
see if his fiancee was OK-this at
the height of the disaster. The
hero as nuisance.
Burke, a policeman who dis-
'persed a mob by firing his .38 into
it, killing two. We discover that
the ends justify the means; i.e., by,
blasting a few the blood will have
its effect and the many will be
saved. The hero as myopic.
Colonel Buyers, the civil defense
director, who faced his crisis when
he ordered evacuation at a cost
of 50,000 lives-as opposed to twice
that many if he didn't order evac-
uation. Here is the one time that
a character achieves some stature,
but his. inability to suffer (mani-
fest most obviously when he leans
on a Jeep and watches some of
the 50,000 being put into gigantic
trenches) prevents his becoming a.
hero.
* * *.
ONE ,SUSPECTS that all the
heroes died in the holocaust. But
if the enemy should incline to
over-confidence in having killed
all but the bunglers, let him take
note now of the true strength of
America.
Most of this strength is deeply
hidden in black magic-that is: in
spite of the shock waves, the fire-
storm, the bodies and the inde-
cision; in spite of self-important
officials and those who abandon
the community in crisis for per-
sonal re-assurance; in spite of the
mobs, the indifference and the
irresponsibility-in spite of all this,
HOCUS POCUS, suddenly har-
mony reigns and progress is ram-
panton a field of ashes.
Man has prevailed after all! Of
what value is moral strength or'
expiation or even a hero when you
have this kind of magic.
(-Robert Glenn is a teaching
fellow in the Department of Eng-
lish.)
Choices Defended
Mayor William E. Brown has
defended his appointments to the
county Board of Supervisors.
Earlier Brown had received criti-
cism from Democrats who said
that the selection of all Republi-
cans to the board violated the
spirit of the city charter, which
says that the appointments be
made without regard to party af-
filiations.
(Continued from Page 4)
mance, middle-class humor, mid-
dle class tenderness, and middle-
class grossness-all of which I am
very free to say I admire. After
all, we cannot all be artists, states-
men, generals, thieves, or financ-
iers." This is observation, shrewd
and critical; but it is not artistry.
And this i Dreser's most dis-
tinguished and most distinctive,
ability. He can be tender, he can
be sympathetic, he can be selective
even, but he simply cannot write
a story. He must always intrude,
with a comment either moralizing,
or, what is worse, sentimentalizing.
"St. Columbia and the River" is
the story of an Irish Catholic im-
migrant who works as a sandhog
on the Hudson River tunnel. The
man is miraculously saved from
death after having prayed to St.
Columbia. Instead .of implying
his doubts within the situation,
Dreiser must insert the obvious.-
The story itself is over. McGlath-
ery, the sandhog, frequently re-
lates the "incontrovertible facts"
of his wonderful escape. Dreiser
must add to the final picture two
sentences, written as separate
paragraphs:
AND AS for the good St. Co-
lumba-
Well, what about the good St.
Columba?
At the end of "The Shadow" and
"Convention" he similarly editor-
ializes. Indeed, this inability ade-
quately to conclude a story vitiates
the undeniable vitality of much
of his first-rate reportage.
This tendency, remarked upon
above in "The Lost Phoebe," is no-
where better shown than in the
sentimentalized comment of the
architect in "Free": "Free!" he
said after a time. "Free! I know
now how that is. I am free now,
at last! Free! . .. Free! ... Yes-
free ... to die!" The excessive
dependence upon the exclamation
mark is not only a sign of Dreis-
er's technical weakness as a writer
but also a mark of the senti-
mentalist.
Trilling, in "The Liberal Imagi-
nation," has suggested that Dreis-
er is "precisely literary in the bad
sense; he is full of flowers of
rhetoric and shines with paste
gems; at hundreds of points his
diction is not only genteel but
fancy." These are characteristics
which can be remarked again and
again in Dreiser's "best" stories.
One is not forced, however, to
conclude on a completely negative
note. One story does not stand
out; and although it does not re-
deem either the collection or the
writer, it offers a refreshing con-
trast to the others. Interestingly
enough, this is Dreiser's first short
story, "McEwen of the Shining
Slave Makers," written in 1899.
This tale, which antedates Meta-
morphosis by many years, relates
how McEwen, after sitting idly on
a park bench, suddenly finds him-
self transformed into an ant, a
member of a colony of the Shining
Slave Makers, who are engaged in
a war to the death with the Red
Slave Makers. McEwen is killed.
He awakes from his dream (again,
Dreiser contrives a sophomoric
solution to the artistic problem) to
watch the progress of the real ant
war and to comment: "What a
strange world ! . . . What worlds
within worlds, all apparently full
of necessity, contention, binding
emotions and unities-and all with
sorrow, their sorrow-a vague, sad
something out of far-off things
which had been there, and was
here in this strong bright city day,
had been there and would be here
until this odd, strange thing call-
ed life had ended."
.This quotation may suggest ano-
ther of DIreiser's values: his stories
incorporate interesting historical
attitudes. But this is still not art.
(-Marvin Felheim is an as-
sistant professor in the Depart-
ment of English.)
By JIM BOWT
Back in the nineteenth century,
Frederic Remington rode with the
United States cavalry, 'painting
the Indians and their battles on,
the Western plains.
During World :War II, Frede
Jensen Vidar, an assistant profes-
sor in the architecture college,
served with the United States
Army in the Pacific, playing much
the same role as his nineteenth
century predessor.
From 1942 to 1946, Vidar was
official U.S. Army Combat Artist
in the Pacific, describing the war
on canvas as was also being done
in photographs and in newspapers;
in fact, Vidar describes his ex-
periences in documentary art as
"a sort of journalism in paint-
ing."
But, Vidar has also been able
to convey some of the emotions of
the war-the horror and the ang-
uish- as well as the events, the
victories and defeats.
Unlike the nineteenth century
Remington, whose paintings pic-
tured more of the glory than the
strife of war, Vidar has captured
the horrors of modern warfare,
which is especially evident in two
paintings-one of a dead Japanese
soldier, the other a picture of the
decaying body of a Filipino scout.
In Vidar's own words, made more
melodious with the hint of a
Scandanavian accent, this type
of description "can offer some-
thing that a writer can't."
Forced Landings
When asked the inevitable ques-
tion about any close calls during
his war experiences, Vidar smiled,
mentioning that he was often
forced, to land on island outposts
two weeks ahead of the main force
of the Army.
Vidar recalls one experience
when he was in a rubber assault
boat during the invasion of New
Britain. "One member of the crew
accidently shot himself, and in
the confusion we fell behind the
rest of the landing force.
"We drifted -~for several hours
and I was counted, along with the
rest of the crew, as one of the
missing, and my family was noti-
fied."
In time, the boat was pickedup,
but not before Vidar's belongings
had' been sent back to the United
States
Vidar's wartime experience has
not been the only highlight of his
career, for he has won fellowships,
exhibited his paintings both in
this country and abroad, and has
achieved the unusual distinction
of being abletosmake a living
from his art.
Frede Jensen Vidar was born
in Denmark, coming to the United
VS
States when he was twelve. When
asked about his early ambitions
for a career, Vidar explains that
painting was always his goal.
He spent four and one-half
years at the University of Calif-
ornia School of Fine Arts, and
has studied at an impressive list
of other schools - L'Ecole des
Beaux Arts, L'Academie Julian,
Royal Academy, and the American
Academy in Rome.
In 1937 Vidar *received the
Chaloner Fellowship for three
years of creative painting and re-
search in Europe, and in 1946 he
received the John Simon Gug-
genheim Fellowship for creative
painting.
Vidar has taught at several
schools in the United States, and
from 1946 to 1956 was an artist
and war correspondent with Life
and Fortune magazines. It was
during this .time that Vidar re-
lived some old experiences, for he
landed with the Marines at Inchon
during the Korean War.
Artist on Paper
Vidar began his career as a
documentary artist during one of
his return stays in Europe. He
worked for a Danish newspaper
as a staff artist, prompted by the
"necessity of earning a living."
He first became a wartime docu-
mentary artist when he went to
Cuba during the Machado-Bat-
ista uprising. During this revolu-
tion, he also almost ended his
career, for he was in the National
Hotel in Havana when it was
bombed by armed mobs.
After World War II, Vidar spent
time on several documentary as-
signments. He painted the Apache
Indians, the lepers at Carvill,
Lousiana, and the consistorial
ceremonies of the elevation of
cardinals at St. Peter's in the Vati-
can. Discussing this last assign-
ment, Vidar explains that in some
of his recent work he has "got
-Daily-vern Soden
. VIDAR
k of war experiences.
religion," and is very interested
in religious symbollism.
Vidar returned to the war scenes
in Korea and in 1953 he joined the
faculty of the University.
Vidar rescribes his work in doc-
umentary art as "a little nerve-
wracking," but he is quick to add
that his interest in people has
added the fascination to his role
as a "journalistic artist."
At present Vidar has exchanged
his Army insignia for a short gray
beard. This transition has not
been complete, however, for Vidar
is still a member of the Reserve
Officers Association.
He comments that in his role
as a teacher, he doesn't have to
sell his paintings. Instead, "I can
have them and enjoy them my-
self."
' To Build
Telescopes
The University's astroniomy and
electrical engineering departments
are working together to construct
two radio-telescopes.
Once the telescopes are finished
they will be used to pick up radio
signals from the sun and outer
space.
The first, a 28 foot instrument,
is expected to be installed this
summer. The second will be com-
pleted sometime in 1957.
Directing the work on both units
will be Fred T. Haddock, who was
recently appointed ass't professor
of both astronomy and electrical
engineering.
Ass't Prof. Haddock comes from
the Naval Research Laboratory
where he pioneered in the navy's
radio-astronomy program.
With the radio-telescopes Uni-
versity astronomers expect to
acquire information on our galaxy,
on the vast interstellar gas clouds
and on the causes of the universe.
I
Read Daily Classifieds
Organization
Notices
I I
Episcopal Student Foundation: Buffet
stepper and talk by Mr. Arthur Carr on
"The Poems of Gerard Manley Hop-
kins," today, 5:45 p.m., Canterbury
House.
* * *
Hillel Foundation: Sunday night Sup-
per Club, 6:00 p.m., Hillel. A.flm will
follow the supper, "House in the Des-
ert," at 7:30 p.m.
* " s
Lutheran Student Association: One
of our German students, Berhard Rap-
pel, will speak on student life in Ger-
many, tonight, 7:00 p.m., Lutheran
Student Chapel, Forest & Hill.
Michigan Christian Fellowship: Dr.
Minor Stegenga, Trinity Reformed
Church, Holland, Michigan, will speak
on "Is Christ Alive Today," today, 4:00
p.m., Lane Hall.
Student Religious Association: Polk
dancing at Lane Hall in the Recreation
Room, April 23, 7:30-10:00 p.m. In-
struction for every dance and begin-
ners are welcome.
* s s
Westminster Student Fellowship: Cab-
inet Meeting, today, 4:00 p.m., Presby-
terian Student Center.
* * *
Movie, "In Face of Jeopardy," today,
6:45 p.m., Presbyterian Student Cen-
ter.
Congregational and Disciples Guild:
Exchange Supper Meeting with E. and
R. Guild, tonight, 6:00 p.m., Bethlehem
Evangelical and Reformed Church.
j:.
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