318

The 1954 Yearbook is a painstakingly through edition with a number of improvements over last year's. 318 summarizes the year exhaustively, but it fails in one of a yearbook's most important tasks: to catch the spirit of the year and hold it for the future. Both the writing and photography lack the spark and understanding necessary to create nostalgia at any given future date.

The best quality of 318 is its completeness. There is more information about the seniors, more pictures of Faculty members, and a series of the most significant passages form President Pusey's rookie speeches. All are designed for that future date when a yearbook comes in handy as a reference.

In the drive for thoroughness, though, 318 has sacrificed any attempt at good literary style. The review of the year, for instance, can catch the mood of the year when written well. 318, however, has abandoned efforts at coherent styling. A series of items--jolly-ups, biddies, football ticket scandals, the Yale weekend--appear in a crude sort of stream of consciousness which is vague enough now and will not mean anything a few years hence. For example, an item, presumably about the Conservative League, starts: "Some plots have a way of thickening--even thick plots. . . a boy and a skunk, and I can't trust my roommate anymore." Doubtless, the editors who compiled the review had interesting thoughts, but it seems unfortunate that no one put them into prose.

A series of profiles of the Houses, by Gaylan Bergman, is an outstanding innovation--the single best touch in the book. Draper Hill's caricatures of the Housemasters are also entertaining.

On the whole, 318 is a good buy, primarily because it contains so much material. In future years, the sections written for the present will be forgotten, and readers will probably mellow toward some of its other faults.