321

Yearbooks are all alike in their tedium, and no one likes them, unless it is Mother. Each year the editors of these publications rack their brains for something "new." Inevitably, much the same thing issues forth. This year the novelty, according to the editors, is what is called "an editorial approach midway between the reportorial and the historical." "Yearbook writers," they say, "found themselves going beyond the dry facts to set down on paper the atmosphere of Harvard ... the Yearbook has presumed for itself a journalistic role rarely associated with college annual, that of interpreter as well as recorder." If the Yearbook had caught some atmosphere and had done some interpreting, The CRIMSON's often sporadic praise might have flowed freely. But once again the purchaser of a Yearbook must settle for "dry facts" and a few technical virtues. So as to be obviously kind and understanding, we will begin with the latter.

The first among 321's virtues is its increased emphasis on the Houses. Within the college span of the present Senior class the importance of the House in the minds of both the Faculty and the undergraduates has grown measurably. One sees it in the renewed emphasis on the stature of Masters, in new grant for the expansion of House activities, in the insurgence of House drama and general merry-making groups.

A further indication of the impress of the House on the undergraduate mind is the fact that the best-written articles by far are those on Houses, notably those on Adams, Dunster, and Eliot. Perhaps this is sheer accident; perhaps it is because the House is the most vital aspect of Harvard and the Yearbook people could not help but express this.

Another fine thing about 321 is some of its photography. Granted, most of its pictures need a little more light on the subject, but there are a few very excellent ones--the sunlight streaming down on the heads of tutors dining in Eliot, many of the snatches of Harvard drama, and a few terrific outing shots. There is, of course, page after page of dull photography--of boys gazing blankly at books, of people merely standing around, of more boys gazing at books. These perhaps represent the tedium which the editors of 321 seem to find most characteristic of Harvard. But one wonders why it must go on for so many pages. Perhaps there is a contract, or a tradition, that annuals must be a certain number of pages no matter what. This one has 280, so it's probably better than most.

The third good thing about the Yearbook is its freedom from error. Its president has proudly pointed out that all of the polls add up to 100%, a welcome innovation. That the figures in the polls do not always match the figures in the stories on the polls is probably only the work of feverish imagination. Even the spelling of Agassiz with two g's, the description of Radcliffe girls as "winsome," and the reference to the maternal types in the Union as Frauleins should be considered only quirks of whimsy.

And this humor, no matter how accidental, is certainly needed, for the Yearbook otherwise manages only a dull accuracy. No one particularly wants the slapstick which often clutters high school annuals (and indeed appears in a few of 321's captions--e.g. "Radcliffe girl with lab assistant: Using curves of eyebrows to raise the curve"). No one wants clown shots or old-new gimmicks, and we should be grateful that 321 avoids them. But the undergraduate and even Mother, would like a little humor. And 321 provides none, even when it is there to be shaken ripe from the limb. The Lamont Dupont feat, handled with some sprightliness by Life, was ground to a fine, dry powder, and in only a few sentences at that. This, however, is only the most notorious example of the book's sterility. For the editors of 321 there seemed to be no mean between the matter-of-fact and outlandish gaucherie. Perhaps the only attempt at literary imagination had to do with the Radcliffe girl. It was apparently a parody of stream-of-consciousness writing and involved the endless repetition of the phrase "faces in the crowd."

Even when attempting coherency, however, the style in 321 is in most cases lamentable and occassionally nauseating. It plumments to its nadir of tired Timeiness in the section on polls. in which Seniors are told that they can hear "the pitter-patter of little feet...in the near distance" and that they are thirteen percent directed by "libidinous impulses, another word for raw sex." This sort of childishness suggests that the Yearbookmen are not really quite sure for whom they are writing. Indeed, it is a problem whether they should aim at the Senior or at Mother. But in either case, the Yearbook ought to be able to assume that its readership includes neither the feeble nor the aged.

If the style of the Yearbook seems not to be aimed at the even faintly literate reader, its content seems no to be directed at all. The polls are typical of the general inconclusiveness of the whole publication: their summary--"How, then, do we characterize the subject of our poll? ... He is as radical as he is conservative, as intense as he is unconcerned. We are left not with the portrait of a figure but the canvass of an experience..." Considering the construction of the polls, no other conclusion could possibly have been reached. Its subjects range from "Where is your home?" to "Why do you exercise?" It includes such gems as "How many classes do you cut," and "What do you look for in a Woman?" With such diverse questions as these, and with few related questions to serve as co-ordinates and to weave a pattern, it is inevitable that the Yearbook should arrive at no conclusions.

Many of the question, of course, are just stupid. Many important questions are not asked; although the Yearbook is interested in numbers of future progeny, it could not care less about future vocations. Absurd questions, which could have been answered freshman year (where is home, family income, reasons for coming) take the place of questions which could only be answered, if at all, by Seniors. Some of the right questions are asked, of course, but in a way which allows all significance to escape with a quiet hiss. Seniors are asked whether they believe that labor unions have become too strong for the good of the country; the Yearbook expects this question to give an idea of the spectrum of Harvard political views. The Yearbook seems not to be interested in what the Harvardman thinks, but rather in the habits of the animal. He is asked his instincts with regard to war and sex. He is rarely asked his opinions.

The Life scatter-fire-and-look-for-the-oddities approach manifested in the polls has been explained away as a play for the interest of the Newspapers. which are said to be looking for this sort of thing in yearbooks. Yet in 321, this attitude extends beyond the polls. In all of its essayings into undergraduate life there is a failure to ask why. Even in the mediocre best of the lot, an article on religion at Harvard, the Yearbook holds itself to a straight reporting job, never allowing the fact to flower into truth. As a result, its record of the year tends to be a dreary list of things that occurred, without any of the spice or life which would make one want to remember them.

The lifelessness of the publication reveals the absence of a sense of humor. But this is a kind of Grace and cannot be demanded. One might reasonably have expected, however, a concern with the life of ideas which exists (hopefully) behind the movement of academic politics. Instead he is given a summary of the CRIMSON's front page and probably of a few meetings with Deans. It makes one wonder whether anything did transpire in the University besides the endless talk about expansion, besides the reports on the growth of religion (treating it like some kind of stock quotation), besides clanking of the machinery of political clubs, the Student Council, and all of the other Activities.

Perhaps this was what "life" at Harvard was this year. But we have an inkling of something different. We remember the excitement when Hugh Gaitskell came, and the talk that went on afterwards. We know that Buttrick and Tillich actually said things, as well as attending to their functions. We know that i.e. lived, and passed quietly away, for a reason, not merely because it was a "minor publication" and therefore unfunctional. We know that the visiting professors were doing more than visiting, that professors in general were involved with something more than numbered courses. Something was alive somewhere in the University.

Yet perhaps the Yearbook has given us an accurate record of undergraduate failure to react to these things. Its inadequacies reinforce the observations which have already been made about our generation--that we are humorless, dry, undirected, inconclusive like the Yearbook, quiet. Or perhaps the trouble is Harvard, a Harvard with maturity and an inconclusive orthodoxy. Whether the fault is in our generation, feeling baffled and helpless, or merely in an aged and bloodless Harvard, Seniors will presently discover.