Sunday, March 2, 1958
THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE
Page Five
-,. _ _ ..
so performance by Vienna Phil-
harmonic unleashed a storm when
he said a modern work by the
German composer Berger "should
have stayed home."
And at the 1916 May Festival,
he created a brief flurry by noting
a certain young musician was "de-
scribed in the program as one of
Philadelphia's most promising
young composers. Unless he im-
proves considerably, he has little
hope outside Philadelphia."
The usually moderate Tsugawa
called a Mozart Mass (K. 192) a
bit of "musical trash" and drew
fire from a few musicologists.
Even the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, usually considered
above reproach by reviewers, was
tweaked by Benkard when he said
that their performance of "Iberia"
was rather dull listening, "almost
though Munch conducted until
you could almost smell the rosin
on the violin bows."
THE OVERALL view, at least
from here; is not promising. It
appears that little has changed
since the end of the 19th century
when Shaw wrote:
'Editors, by some law of nature
which still baffles science, are
always ignorant of music, and
consequently are always abjectly
superstitious on the subject . .
(The editor) will let me inundate
his columns with pompous plati-
tude, with the dullest plagarisms
from analytic programs, with
shameless puffery, with bad gram-
mar, bad logic, wrong dates, wrong
names, with every conceivable
plunder and misdemeanor that a
journalist can commit, provided
that I do it in the capacity of his
musical critic."
The situation prevails to this
day. The incompetant music critic
goes his way, doing immeasurable
harm to the public desire for a
bit of critical consciousness.
BEING told that "Walter Piston's
sixth symphony lacks the lyri-
cism that makes Tchaikovsky's
Sixth a favorite" but that is never-
theless "excitingly refreshing"
communicates no new thought.
The claim that "only in the last
movement was there a theme that
one can begin to remember" is
about as useless as telling a play-
goer that he may have missed a
good speech in the last act of
Hamlet.
Somewhere in the journalistic
chain of command there must be
a critic's critic. Failing to establish
this post must bring the conse-
quence that the "steady stream of
shrewd and essentially sound criti-
cism" that was Shaw's ideal can
never be achieved.
Our Generation
George Lea's Hopwood Winner Comments on Youth
SOMEWHERE THERE'S MU..-
SIC. By George Lea. New
York. Lippincott. 224 pp.,
$1.50
By DONALD A. YATES
IN 1956, George Lea, then a stu-
dent at the University, entered
a novel in the annual Avery Hop-
wood competitions for creative
writing. His entry won a first
prize of $1,200 in the category of
fiction. The J. B. Lippincott Com-
pany published Lea's novel which
is entitled Somewhere There's
Music.
Lea is of the newest generation
of young Americans who are find-
ing their way toward some means
of literate expression of their
personal feelings. He attempts to
explain the attitudes of the
youthful society with which he
has shared the emergence into
adulthood. George Lea is, in his
way, a spokesman of the genera-
tion to which belong most of the
people who will read this review.
Somewhere There's Music con-
cerns a young man, Mike Logan,
who returns from the Korean ac-
tion to his home town in Michi-
gan. (The town exists in fact and
Lea has chosen to call it Ogemaw.
Its population is 90,000 and it
manufactures automobiles.) The
protagonist, with an aggravating
leg wound to remind him of his
experience as a soldier, comes
home to start afresh. He is un-
compromised by his past. The
novel relates what Mike Logan
does with his new start.
The relationships which Mike
continues from his past and the
new ones which he begins tell
Author Lea's story dramatically.
None of these relationships, one
notes, is characterized by the
feeling of love. This lack of love
is illustrated in the characters of
Mike's father, interestingly
sketched as an earlier version of
Mike himself; Jess, a girl of
Mike's age, dying of a lingering
illness, with whom he has an af-
fair; Mike's friends, most of them
connected with music, the one
thing in which Mike believes.
SOON MIKE, like his associates,
is taking drugs to introduce
some predictable feeling into his
days and nights. Nothing else, Lea
suggests, can bring predictable
sensation into his reestablished
civilian life. And after his pat-
tern of living is adjusted music,
too, is but another form of escape
for him.
The events of the story ulti-
mately carry Mike away from
Ogemaw to New York where, tra-
ditionally, young people learn
things about themselves. Lea's
novelrdepartsdfrom tradition,
however, and depicts the experi-
ence in New York as but a con-
tinuation of the "bad dream"
which Mike's life has unaccount-
ably become.
In the "City" the novel ends.
Witness the closing lines:
"... Mike wrung out the ex-
cess water and pressed the rag
against the nape of his own
neck.
'Feel okay, Dog?
'No.'
'Hell, I shouldn't have got so
hincty - it was only a dog.'
'We're cool then?' He looked
up; his face was unbelieving,
then less so.
'Sure . . . look, how's this?
We'll both snort, take the horn
down to the Nest, I'll sit in and
break things out for you and
me-'
'Aw, man, yeal' Dog stood
quickly, took out another cap-
sule from his shirt pocket and
said, 'Hold out you hand.' Mike
put out his left hand. 'Dog is
Mike's best friend,' Dog said,
carefully tapping a white
stream out of the capsule into
Mike's uplifted palm."
Author Lea has taken a young
man of this generation, has ex-
posed him to the potentialities of
life, and has chosen to label his
existence aimless.
r ERE are several good scenes
in the novel, but they do not
occur in the dialogue. For the
most part they concern them-
selves with Mike's inner thoughts
or with Lea's descriptions of mute
scenes and events. There is one
A former member of the
faculty of the Spanish Depart-
ment of the University, Don-
ald A. Yates now instructs at
Michigan State University.
More of Yates' work can be
seen in the section of the Mag-
azine dealing with the recent
phenomena of our age, The
Rise of The Paperbacks.
depiction of the "cool" music
crowd at ease in their environ-
ment that stands out as the best
single segment of writing in the
book. The general style of the
work is direct, masculine and
shows no preoccupation with lyri-
cism.
Conceding that Lea's realistic
novel is executed in acceptable
literary form, one considers fi-
nally the question of what truth
emerges from it. This reviewer
has perceived much significance
in Mike Logan's story. Mike is an
individual of our times, beset by
the large problems which his con-
temporaries share with him. His
performance in the face of these
common difficulties, therefore,
can stand as a guide, or as a
warning, to others who today find
themselves in the presence of the
same sort of challenge - a chal-
lenge to act.
Mike Logan's story serves as a
warning. Mike is characteristic of
his generation in nothing more
strongly than in his being as an
"uncommitted" man. He believes
in nothing, fights for nothing.
This is perhaps the most striking
trait of the new generation which
has received a number of other
labels, "silent" and "puzzled"
among them. It is a cautious' gen-
eration, careful of where it steps
hesitant to accept beliefs, guard-
ed even in what it permits itself
to think in solitude.
MIKE LOGAN is still an entity
and not a generalization; for
essentially he is weak. The reso-
lution of his story proves this. And
in other ways throughout the
novel he shows he is uncapable
of realizing and grappling with
the demands of his society. (On
returning home he buys a sports
car and does not attempt to
haggle with the salesman on the
price.)
It is true that Mike Logan is
uncommitted, a blank in the
scheme of things; but countless
others of his real-life contempor-
aries who, ahrough a greater ex-
ercise of will, have more control
over their circumstances and their
fate are equally uncommitted. The
reader of Somewhere There's Mu-
sic will want to draw his own con-
clusions.
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