Volume 11 - Issue 1

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the new journal, October 20, 1977

lheNewjournal --------------conanaent------------------Volume eleven, number one Lori Marlan L. Jane Dickinson

Editors-in-Chief Armand LeGardeur

Designer Karen Sideman

Art Editor Beatrice Mitchell

Publisher Editoriol Staff: Sam Austin, Aaron Betsky, Michael Cadden, Darcy DiMona, Geoff Piel, Thomas Russell; Curt Sanburn, L. Mead Treadwell II, Saratoga Summers, Steven Rogers

Graphics Staff: Bo!' 1;4enjamin, Damon P. Miller II , Lucy Lovrien Business Staff: Susan Amron, Caroline Mitchell, Gordon Robertson, Steve Warner

Friends of The New Journal: De Vries, Jean Kerr, Craig Fitt, Dick Foote, DaiU>Jl P. Miller II, Allison Silver, The Media Design Studio, Andrei Navrozov, Therese Ohnsorg, Tarbell, PIP, the late Yale Revue, Weezie, Needler, Dean David Papke, Peter Baldwin, Vigilante, Lee Lieberman

Now let me compare my reaction, written after reading the above program note, as a guarantee of impartiality.

pe Pulchridtudinous Vaccinae In my sweetest dreams, despairing of the grotesque gothic ghouls of Yale, I see the full, lush meadows of Holland painted in the subtlest hues of fresh green, flat but seeming rounded in their abundance, wet with the straight geometric patterns of irrigation ditches, framed by rustic farmhouses, proper and neat modern houses in the distance and the cobblestone road, all of it overhung with that dramatic visualization of God's very own breath, the Dutch sky; af\d this, oh my elusive Elysia, is inhabited by that most splendid of all quadripeds, the Frisian cow.

She is the pure combination of both fundamental colors of the universe, black and white, the dark and unknown of the earth mixing with the wholesome white of milk and other life-related fluids. No shades are allowed in this clearest of colorings except the subtle browns and pinks of her hoofs and the luscious meat colors of her udders, reminding one of the secret and delicious parts of humanity. She is enormous and unmoveable. As a rock she will stand in those soft meadows, slowly flicking her tail as if flies could ever bother her. Gently, she pulls at the grateful grass on which she trods, mixing herself once again with all of nature as her mouth fills with foam and the ground receives the heavy load of what it once was.

Off in the distance, her young issue . darts and jumps in the air, defying the gravity of life, laughing with the sun above at the clay underneath their feet. She looks at them, then ( oh, destiny!) at me, her full round eyes echoing Helen's pleas of passion.

She bats her eyelashes, too long for a mortal, then bends her hind legs and slowly sinks from her uprightness to the ground. Ah, this vache fatale! Her mouth is contemplating the deliciousness of greenery, the black patches on her body undulate and roll with her gentle breathing. Slowly, she shifts

again, folding her front legs underneath her heavy breast. Her udders lie fully exposed, inactive," promising goodness. Slowly, she inclines her head, and I feel as if I could loose my flood of sorrows in her great sea of warmth without ever finding a trace of it back. Then, I wake again, moaning as psychiatrists, doctors and nineteenth-century romantics cluck their tongues at me, impressing the fruitlessness of existence on me. 0 for a cow, a cow to save my sinner's life!

by Jan Kie

Bergman Revisited

Several years ago to the day, there was a ferocious uproar in New York. lngmar Bergman's Persona was shown at the New York Filmfestivalcomique. The artist was present. I say "artist" for what is he if not a painter, with winter light and glasses darkly as his tools, a choreographer of sleeping Credits: Cover, pages 8 & 9, John Laing page 7, Igor Galanin and waking, the heroic soporific of pages 12, 13, 14, 15, from David modern man. I say "present" in hopes of the reader's understanding Hockney by Hockney indulgence. And this man, this walking symbol of so much that is The New Journal is published by the New dark and sleepy on the Northern Side Journal at Yale, Inc., partners in publication of this globe, was forced, alas, the with the Yale Banner, Inc., and is printed at memory is painful, to wait an entire Chronicle Printing Co., North Haven, Conn.

Distributed free to the Yale community. For day before a contract with a disall others, subscription rate $7.50 per year. tributor was signed, guaranteeing the artist a mere ninety-eight and a half Copyright c 1977 by The New Journal at percent of box-office revenues and a Yale, Inc., a non-profit organization. Letters two million dollar advance. As the and unsolicited manuscripts welcome.

3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520 artist in que.s tion has said, " I owe Phone 432-0939 or 436-8650 more than that in chess debts."

The uproar that greeted his work, had not the sovereign of the city, the von Sydow-like Lindsay, left shortly after the credits, might have lasted a full four seconds. Caused, one has it on good account (that of the critic for comment: beau venus; is Got tod?; snet perfects the pushbutton; Evelyn Wood at Yale; Midnight magazine, Lightning Louie) 2 because the foot and bottle fetishists a summer mailbox arrived too late for the scene involving the broken glass.

The Hanna Gray Story L. Mead Treadwell II 4 As examples of the diverse yet all Everything you always wanted to know and less together reactions caused by this astonishing work, let me cite the 6 Derrida at Yale: ..Please Don't Quote" Leslie Anderson program note. Printed in 9 point Metaphors for the 11UlSses Caledonia - alas why not Trump Mediaeval, or even 36 point P.T. The New Journal Guide to College Seminars Barnum Bold for this artist who has 8 Everything you always wanted to know and more said ..There's one dead every minute"? - it read:

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Michael Cadtkn

Albert Innaurato's Gemini diluted and disQ1Jpointing David Hockney x David Hockney x Curt Sanburn more exclusive than lofts and cocaw

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Another confusing and profound work by one of the heavies ( 185 at last count putting it on, lngmar baby) of modern Swedish literafilm, it will bore some, confuse others, and cost you $5 for a seat with a view of the screen. Bergman's marriage of light and dark, sex and silence, is one of the most profoundly important since that of Akhenaten and Nefertiti (He had the power. she had the legs) in the Amarna period of Egypt.

Soon after entering the theatre, I felt a gradual sensation of darkness. I realized I was not a lone, Others were sensing this too: For Bergman had come up with the astonishing device of dimming the lights before showing the film. Soon after, the .film broke. How often had we seen this as mere fakery in the hands of an incompetent projectionist. But here it was being done for real. film burnt as only a ¡ supreme Swedish craftsman knows how.

Soon thereafter, I encountered the figure of Morpheus, Bergman's substitute for the figure of Death in those iilms where the latter was unavailable, "having entertained a better offer from Hollywood. I had the most peaceful sensation known to man, a kind of drowsiness. a heaviness of the eyelids so similar to that experienced under hypnosis, a desire upon leaving the theatre to remember nothing.

As a last corrective, confirmative of the similarity of visions induced by the swell Swede, let me quote from Dennis Hopper, an artist of similar stature and talent, whose film Easy Rider. shown at the same Filmfestivalcomique was to show once and for all the possibility of combining the figures of the hippie, the biker, the heroine-pusher, and $60,000,000 at the box-office. Hopper's interpretation: Well, yea, man, I mean, he blew it man, I mean like you know man, I mean I fell asleep man, can you dig it? I mean Sleeping at a Bergman movie is like a lot easier than trying to fall asleep on your bike man, I mean shit, man.

Ah yes, this artist, who !:las done so much to revolutionize the world's sleeping habits, whose movies have a marvellously spiritual, timeless quality, as if one were dead and never going to wake up - so aptly symbolized by his frequent docks with no hands - that one finds only in the greatest art. I cannot close without c~ting what must be the definitive artist's analysis of his own work, a comment that seems to distill all his message into a few words, "Wo ist G0t? G0t ist t0d, und 0e'm g0eng to rna ke l0tsa m0eney 0eff it."

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Thomas Russell

Totalphonia I wasn't particularly psyched on the Totalphone at first - it looked a little too lightweight and I wondered if its base would have to be glued to the night table like that ridiculous Princess phone we had for about a month. Until Dave came by with that great Mohaccan and the tube of miracle adhesive you had to pretend you were Yehudi Menuhin as you pinched the receiver between clavicle and chin while holding down the base with one hand and dialing with the other. Elsewise the loaded spring effect of the stretched receiver cord was likely to snap the glow-in-thedark bedialed base into your temple like the backfiring slingshots that Wile E. Coyote was creamed with while trying to catch the Roadrunner.

Dave had gotten us aU completely (continued on page fifteen)

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the new journal, October 20, 1977

FRIEND OF INFAMY An insinuatins hello to everyone at the end of this long, hot summer - a scorcher IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE, though on some evenings I SWEAR that the only people seeing any action had to be those deliciously daring looters in the South Bronx and points beyond. It was a long summer, but the people who managed to make it endless are those few Yalies still abroad in Turkish prisons.

(I suppose you naughties are going to say you thought it was baby powder!)

Console yourself, kiddies (if this column isn't just censored to RIBBONS by those tempestuous Turks!), at least you don't have to buy a rooming contract this year or for another seven years, at least!!

Aside from the course offerings, though, you jailbirds are missing a lot! (Not to worry; Saratoga ALWAYS has the scoop...)

The ides of October find your intrepid reporter in a real snit after a terrifying ordeal that is, to my mind, simply STRAW FOR THE FIRE that we more attractive Yalies are building to roast our lecherous, lascivious, licentious instructors. I am referring, of course, to the Yale Sex Suit. Oppressed ladies of the campus, FORWARD MARCH! I was taking an Astronomy class, to learn the many uses of the telescope, but little did I know that such knowledge would come AT THE EXPENSE OF MY BODY AND GOOD NAME! ' My teacher wanted me to take my sunglasses off! He SAID that this was so I could see clearly through the telescope, but I understood his hidden meaning. (Who EVER wears sunglasses to bed?) I dropped the course like a hot rock, but now I'm having trouble with my piano instructor.

He's always asking me to PLAY! I'm warning you, boys, Saratoga understands a double entendre. The women of this campus have HAD it! Hang 'em high, girls!

••• ITEM ••• What pert POR postdeb is ripe and ready to dump her amorous, unglamorous boyfriend in a pot of bubbling chickenfat just to watch his skin fry? Yes, this certain bovine Bavarian we know is sick unto death of the ..carnal act," that certain "relation" which some know by names that no decent columnists can get their editors to print. She is ..ill unto tbe grave" of ess-ee-ex night and day, day and night, day in, day out, in, out, in, out! It's disgusting. I almost threw up in the keyhole. This is to a certain fellow whose name will appear in this column if he doesn't learn to sheath his sedulous spear about three times in four. THIS IS THE HUMAN RACE, BUDDY.

•••SHORTIES •••To that couple two rows ahead at ..Casablanca": there ARE bras without those damn hooks, you know ... in case you missed that trunkload of hash from Afghanistan, get your hands on the Lebanese stuff. It at least makes you forget how .many pages you have to write, if not what courses you're taking! ... warning to Bloomsbury: you don't stop screaming your head off at Rudy's, I'll let the rest of the campus in on it. Just try me ... you don't fool around with Saratoga. I see you when you're sleeping, I know when you're awake, and I have nude photos of all of you. After all, as the great philosopher Socrates once said, "the unexamined life is not worth living." And as the great philosopher Spinoza once said, "If you hear any hot ones, pass them my way!"

Farewell, dear readers; until our next pow-wow, I wish most of you love and peace. I wish some of you unmitigated misery. You know who you are.

Adidas- Trx -

Country

Nike- Sting Puma- Rocket Tiger- Pinto Converse World Class Trainer . .. And all the Rest

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the new journal, October 20, 1977

The Hanna Gray Story

When for the umpteenth time, the Yale Daily News ran that photograph of Hanna Gray standing, arms folded, looking cross, word was sent to Woodbridge Hall that it would be nice for the News - and for Mrs. Gray - to obtain a new picture. A photographer went over for a shutter session and Gray - who reportedly hates to have her picture taken because none will do her justice did not show up. The editors then sent the photographer to follow her around in public. He did - for an hour - but Mrs. Gray never unfolded her arms long enough for the photographer to take a different picture.

As Yale enters the flfth month of interregnum, with Provost Hanna Gray as Acting President, the paradox that surrounds her administration can be deflned more clearly. Unlike the charismatic politician who is loved by those who don't know him and an anathema to those who do, Hanna Gray is well liked by her staff.

Beyond what may only be a veneer of unapproa~hability, they report that she has an incisive sense of humor.

Most of them, from Corporation members to administrative members of the faculty, find her quite approachable; some say that they enjoy working with "Hanna" more than they enjoyed working with "Kingman." ··with Brewster, you never were quite sure what he expected of you," said one administrator who is close to both. "Things run much more smoothly."

With the door closed, the President's Offlce in Woodbridge Hall looks like a closet. It is about the size of a Yale .College single room without the fireplace. For Hanna Gray, the space must be quite confining. Her Pffice as Provost - the one which is really hers - is a large conference room in the Hall of Graduate Studies. But half of her days since May, when Brewster resigned to become Ambassador to Great Britain, have been spent in this offlce.

Mrs. Gray has kept Brewster's small desk which faces the wall.

Brewster's John F. Kennedy rocker sits facing the new couch she has installed. The light green curtains are hers, too. But the trappings of office, the sense of commanding, is just not there. These are temporary quarters.

Bookshelves remain bare, containing only that skeleton of Yale histories and class books which Mr. Brewster did not pack with him. Pictures have disappeared; only the hooks remain.

The administration which is run from this offlce is the same one which was structured and orchestrated by Kingman Brewster, who sat at the desk for fourteen years. And, until a new President is appointed, it is Gray's determination to keep the University on the general course that Brewster set.

"Some people look at this as a transition period and see uncertainty," says Gray. "Actually, a great many, things need doing but the uncertainty is not so great. So much of what is needed to be done here has always been the responsibility of the University as a whole."

Kingman Brewster was a man who spent a great deal of his time on the fundraising trail for the Campaign for Yale during his last years in office.

His schedule, which had once included a monthly appearance at one of the residential colleges, was replaced by a schedule which sent him instead to breakfasts with alumni groups in Atlanta and dinner the same day in New Haven. Brewster was also a much sought-after spokesman for t,he fate of higher education.

How much to fill these shoes, in the midst of a presidential search that may well replace her, is Hanna Gray's dilemma. The day-to-day duties she sees as simply ••an expanded Provostship."

"There is a big difference between being a President and being an acting President," says Stanley Flink, director of Alumni Communications and Public Information. "Mrs. Gray can be a very strong management flgure without having to worry about the range of public activities which are a President's responsibility."

Mrs. Gray demonstrated her talent for "strong internal management" with her handling of the strike. Union officials who gambled that holding off

a ·strike until the school year began would wreak havoc on Gray's administration have lost. Yale holds firm to their predetermined contract offers, and .Deputy Provost George Langdon and Associate Provost Radley Daly have been assigned to coordinate the University's response among non-striking personnel.

The long term work of developing solutions to Yale's financial crisis continues as usual. Last Friday, when the· second rebate checks were paid to students, negotiations remained at an impasse. Mrs. Gray flew off to California for a meeting of the Center for Advanced Study on Behavioral Sciences and a Sunday brunch with West Coast volunteers for the Campaign for Yille.

Vincent Sirabella, business manager for AFL-CIO Local 35, the Yale unit on strike, is not above charges of political ambition himself in questions of what motivated the job action. Yet he sees the plain pattern in Mrs. Gray's actions.

"I have it from very reliable sources," said Sirabella the day before the strike began, ..that Hanna Gray has been told she can be the President of Yale if she does three things. First, fix Yale's deficit. Second, make the Campaign for Yale a success. And third, break my union."

"That is, of course, absurd," responded Gray later. She has heard charges of the sort before.

"There is always the sense that what is done or not done by an Acting President will be seen as a sign of ideas of ambitions," continued the Acting President. "It's inevitable, and you sort of have to live with the fact.

That level of discourse is not very helpful at all."

Whether Gray wants to be President of Yale- though most people assume she does - is something she keeps to herself. Anything she does to change the way she - or Yale does things can bring additional

painful charges that her actions are motivated by ambition. So she lives with a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, maintaining a low profile. Her speaking engagements are kept at a minimum. Mrs. Gray's public posture is only to participate in those parts of the traditional role of the Presidency that are inescapable. "She has not had to be involved, as Mr. Brewster was, in performing the role of spokesman for higher education for Yale and the independent colleges," says Flink.

"She is not the President," said one supporter, in reaction to criticism that Gray's administration is necessarily static ...Everyone expects her to act like the President. It's anguish. You have to act it, but you're not it., Other administrators report that the Presidential search has had a decided effect on the number of new policy matters brought up by Administration members. They claim that Gray will not implement or develop new policy which could co~ct with the goals of a new President. "To stop an idea halfway through is worse than not starting it at all," says University Secretary Chauncey...But there's no point in not going ahead with plans for projects in certain areas. After a President is selected, we'll be ready."

Gray continues her administration "on a tough tightrope,, ..on one corner of the stage in the spotlight," or "with bullets constantly whizzing by her bead," depending on which metaphor of which University offlcial suits you. Substantive policy changes, except those budgetary decisions which are the prerogative of the Provost or initiated by the Corporation, will wait on the Search Committee's decision. And, as another campus likely candidate for the job put it, "I know she and I both hope the committee comes to a decision within a month or two.,

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the new journal, October 20, 1977

Hanna Holborn was four years old when she first came to Yale. The year was 1934; her parents were among the first of the academics who came from Germany to escape the Nazis. Her father, Hajo Holborn, joined the Yale faculty in European History. A Sterling Professor here until his death in 1969, Holborn's entry in Who's Who is, for the time being, longer than his daughter's.

One evening a few weeks ago, Gray's position as Acting President of Yale put her on the dais of the kickoff dinner for the New Haven area United Way Campaign. Also at the head table was Vincent Sirabella. As Mrs. Gray was introduced to the audience as a life-long New Havenite who had attended the Foote School, an observer saw Sirabella's jaw drop in amazement. " Here was Sirabella who thought Hanna Gray came from outer space somewhere. He had never heard that she went to the same school his daughter does now. •• The New Haven of Hanna Gray's childhood was one of an elm-lined Hillhouse A venue with a mansion, rather than a tower, at the end.

Science Hill was called Sachem Hill.

"That's where we went sliding and learned to cross-country ski," remembers Gray. She continues to ski today as often as possible, with her husband at their house in Vermont.

At the precocious age of 15 Hanna Holborn entered Bryn Mawr College.

Her prime extracurricular activity was the Bryn Mawr College News. "We were not very kind to the Administration," says Gray with a laugh. ''Bryn Mawr did not have a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. We led a campaign against bringing it on campus. Our motives were part snobbery, part populism. The snobbery was the feeling that surely everybody at Bryn Mawr rated Phi Beta Kappa, so why have it at all.

The other reason was that we thought the curriculum was too rough, and none of us would make it."

Almost as soon as Gray became a giaduate student at Radcliffe, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. "By then I'd grown up," said Gray. "I was-a little embarrassed about my previous history." .

After her college journalism experience, Gray told the New York Times last year that she hoped to find a glamorous New York publishing career. Somehow though, the family tradition of scholarship prevailed.

Gray was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford from 1950 to 1952, and received her history Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1957. In 1954 she married Charles Montgomery Gray, also a career educator, who is now Senior Research Associate at the Yale Law School.

For seven years after receiving her doctorate, Gray took junior faculty teaching posts at Bryn Mawr, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. Tenure came at the University of Chicago in 1964, where she continued her work in general European history, with a concentration in the intellectual development of the Renaissance and Reformation.

Sooner or later most modern scholars have to choose between academics and administration; Gray took the fateful step in I 972 when she was named Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. Just a year before, Gray had been elected a successor trustee of the Yale Corporation and was one of the fmt two women in Yale history to serve as a trustee.

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"The post at Northwestern was particularly interesting," notes the Dean, who left the job to come to Yale as Provost. "The time was right to go into administration. It's an extension of my interests." · It was then up to Kingman Brewster, who was seeking to flll the Provost's job vacated by now Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, Richard Cooper. Sources say that Brewster was looking for a woman. The person he found, the person who assumed his duties as Acting President last spring, was Hanna Gray. It was late 1974, and the budget problems of the expansive Brewster years had just come home to roost.

Iri the peaceful mornings, before the cars outside have turned Hillhouse. A venue from a quiet residential street to a linear parking lot, Mrs. Charles Montgomery Gray is a gardener. The Provost's House, right next to the Secretary's House and two doors down from the President's House, has a sunporch. Mrs. Gray has turned it into a greenhouse. Every day, at about half past eight, the plants are watered and pruned. By nine or nine-thirty she is gone.

Whether her first stop is the President's Office in Woodbridge Hall or the Provost's Office in HGS is determined by the events of the day.

Her schedule is precise to the point that time is equally divided between the two offices. For the most part, her day is broken up into half hour segments. Meetings with her staff, other Corporation officers, and members of the Provost's Office are frequent and expeditious.

"We all know that we should work a little harder and a little longer before we go into meetings with her," said Associate Provost for Personnel Rad Daly. "I have a sense that I want to come into meetings with all the homework done."

"People who work with her know they need to have something to say, and that they better say it clearly," says Gregory Campbell, an Assistant to the Acting President who was a junior colleague with Gray in the University of Chicago's European History Department. "You couldn't run a discussion group or a seminar without doing that either."

The academic feeling around her prevails. Some people who have talked to her feel that she "suffers fools badly;" officials around her confirm she is demanding - to a point. . "She hates to be interrupted," observed one Corporation officer.

"She'll just go right on talking. But I've never seen her_interrupt anyone else either. " It is especially funny to see someone who has a point to make which has to be made immediately.

She'll just ignore them until she is finished ."

"It's not that opposition is not allowed," says Campbell. "The question is whether the point is of worth.

A discussion will continue as long as there's substance."

"But she tries to warm up a meeting fmt," says one Provost officer. "During the playoffs we might discuss the relative merits of the Yankees and the Red Sox," adds Campbell. "She's a Yankee fan."

Lunches are usually working affairs held in the Officers Dining Room above Commons or at Mory's.

During long meetings at the Provost's office around a conference table sandwiches will be brought in.

"The President's Office in Woodbridge is about the size of a Yale College single room- without the fireplace. For Hanna Gray, the space must be quite confining."

"At an Officers' lunch she's usually the leader in spoofing somebody," notes Chauncey. "And usually it's the Secretary - me."

On the day the strike began, retired Associate Secretary George Vaill asked in jest if he should join a picket line. "No, George," replied Gray, "but you could go home ·and make us some cookies."

During the first week of school, a member of the German Department of Yale University received an engraved invitation to a reception at 43 Hillhouse.Avenue. But the card puzzled him. "Mr. and Mrs. Charles M. Gray request the honor of your presence at a reception," read the card. He took the invitation home to his wife. "Do you know any Charles Gray?" asked the professor. She didn't either. Finally they figured it out.

Last week the Grays gave another party unlike anything ever seen at the Brewsters. People said later, "Gee, wasn't that fun." And at the receiving line for the freshmen the Grays didn't want to have a student introducing them. Informality reigned; there's something less royal on Hillhouse too.

As Acting President, Hanna Gray Jacks authority to rearrange Yale's priorities. However, she can and is preparing the way for the financial pruning which must be the first task of a permanent President.

The most important policy objective for the interim administration is to devise a process of budgeting which will prevent Yale from again . acquiring huge unforeseen deficits.

This year a controllable, anticipated $800,000 budget overrun turned into a whopping deficit of $6 million.

Two major reports will emerge from the administration in the coming year; both will have important consequences for the way Yale raises and spends money. On the immediate horizon is the work of Anthony Knerr, a new Gray appointee who is Special Assistant to the President for Budget and Planning. His report will be released in November,' and from then on Yale's funds will be spent through "programmed budgeting."

Not unlike Carter's "zero-base" approach, the change will put the total cost of each Yale program into one budget column.

Knowing the "real cost" of each program will help administrators to relegate priorities. Hence, it will be easier to "trade off," and shift one use of resources to another: "The system will improve our .ability to control budgets so that people can be held accountable," says Associate Provost Daly. "It will be able to send up warning signals throughout the year if things aren't going right."

And in the long run, when academic goals meet with budgetary realities, programmed budgets will mean a big difference. Bluntly, the object is cuts. "It's a problem of defining our weaknesses when we want to eliminate them to build our strengths," concludes one planning official.

Due to the recent extension of the Campaign for Yale until next June, Corporation Officer for Institutional Development Charles Lord has more time to consider a replacement program which will continue to seek capital for Yale's endowment. Until the Campaign for Yale, endowment funds were raised on an "as needed" basis; from now on there is little indication that Yale's thirst for more endowment will ever be satiated.

Lord should be reporting directly to the Corporation on this issue sometime next year. His final formulation, though, surely awaits the arrival of a permanent President.

"We are surely going to need a continuing development effort," says Gray. "It will be a separate office concerned with maintaining a continued relationship with other kinds of donors."

The "other donors" Gray seeks are in addition to "Yale's own" who are solicited by the Alumni Fund. It takes more than old school ties to win funds from corporations and foundations.

"This is something we've learned from the Campaign," says Gray.

continued page 13

the new journal, October 20, 1977

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Derrida at Yale: "Please Don't Quote"

by Leslie Anderson Jacques Derrida admitted in an interview that he is a cautious writer and speaker. He asked me not to quote him in this article, explaining that in view of the care he takes not to simplify in a written text, be is hesitant to generalize in an interview, or have his ideas simplified within a quotation. In his writing, he will not state his logic outright, though he invites the reader to pursue it to its radical end. One often feels that his conclusions are only implicit, although crucial in understanding and evaluating him. If one attacks Derrida regarding the inferential quality of his writing, be can reply that he never said such and such; his caution pays off.

A professor of philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Derrida confines his teaching in France to philosophical history, but in the United States be is known primarily as a literary critic of the PostStructuralist school. As a guest lecturer in the Comparative Literature Department at Yale this fall, be gave four lectures in French on Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art," four lectures in French on Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and one lecture in English entitled "Ltd., Inc." on his own article, "Signature Event Context" and "Reiterating the Differences: a Reply to Derrida" by John R. Searle.

I asked Derrida why he felt he was so controversial. He answered somewhat self-consciously that his type of deconstruction destroys the foundation for all the presuppositions of Western philosophy, academic institutions and political beliefs, and described his method as a very minute questioning into all that forms the basis of culture. His essays and lectures supply the presuppositions and bases that he has in mind.

Western man assumes that his language comes from and points to material reality. Science, philosophy, and every other discipline consider their development part of a progression towards an absolute, external truth. Derrida believes that the "truths" man discovers in nature are only the assumptions and prejudices with which he perceives it. In his English lecture, "Ltd., Inc.", Derrida used this argument to attack Marx's claim that economic principles gave rise to th~ superstructure of culture and ideas, as well as to his own political theory. Derrida noted that, like everyone else, Marx had to idealize objects in order to talk about them: his conclusions simply reproduce those ideologies, or in Derrida's words, "the axiomatic that belongs to the entire philosophy."

"Derrida's analysis makes no distinction between philosophical, literary or scientific texts. He is not interested in finding the meaning or 'right interpretation' of a text, but in explaining how, as a text, it increases human understanding, and why human understanding always involves texts, just as it always involves metaphors."

Marx tried hopelessly to circumvent ideology. Philosophers, obsessed by purity, try in t.he same way to avoid using metaphors. Within Literature, one word can have many different meanings and several different words can have the same meaning. "Sun" is the father of nature or the "son" of God. "God," "seed," "gold," "sun," "eye," and "Father," are interchangeable in certain contexts. Philosophers attempting to transcend this web of meanings speak in an abstract language of "concepts" which are meant to be "univocal," or free of any metaphorical associations.

But according to Derrida, every concept bas a metaphorical component. When someone says "My essays are rid of metaphors - I am a pure thinker," or in Marx's words, "I am a materialist" he has merely resorted to a rhetorical device, turning ideology and idolatry into ."truth." Man must think through . metaphors and, in a larger sense, through texts. Metaphors do not entrap thought until men enshrine them, as they have the Bible, Aristotle, Marx, and Freud. In our interview, Derrida criticized Marxists for treating Marx as though he were sacred, and added that he personally does not have any sacred texts.

Professors have embraced the language of their disciplines, wrapping themselves up in the security of departmental discourse. Derrida threatens this security, as a philosopher whose literary criticism is more radical and consistent than that of literary critics. Derrida's analysis makes no distinction between philosophical, literary or scientific texts.

He is not interested in finding the meaning or "right interpretation" of a text, but in explaining how, as a text, it increases human understanding, and why human understanding always involves texts, just as it always involves metaphors.

Geoffrey Hartman, a professor of English at Yale, feels that Derrida's importance lies in his "totally nonsentimental secularism." He bas changed the way many people think about literature, encouraging them to consider the whole phenomenon of literary thinking beyond specific works and disturbing the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy, literature, and science .with his textual approach.

But he accomplishes this by disregarding the importance of the content of the individual work. In examining only the rhetorical power and devices of a text, he precludes any moral judgment about it.

Perhaps just such a "non-sentimental secularism" is the most interesting and fruitful way to look at literature and philosophy today, but is it also, as Derrida suggests, the best way to talk about po~tics, scien~ and religion? Deconstruction seems 1nade-

quate for studying the Bible, the speech of a presidential ' candidate, or an article on a breakthrough in medical research. Derrida bas developed a critical method that is primarily manneristic; it concerns the form rather than the content of the text.

Derrida stated in our interview that be is trying to change the code of political discourse so that some topics will be understood as political which have never been seen as such before.

He attacks those who assume that philosophy, literature or speech are free from anthropomorphism and cultural prejudice: value judgments of a political nature are implicit in language. We are tempted to believe that opposites such as simple/ complex, light/ dark, presence/ absence, life/ death represent oppositions in nature, that they are impersonal, "true," and the basis of defining words. Derrida claims that there is no such thing as natural opposition. In "Signature Event Context" he says that opposites are only statements of human preference, which arbitrarily compare two things. They are "never the confrontation of two terms, but a hierarchy and the order of a subordination." We assume that simple is better than complex, light better than darkness: these judgments have shaped the "absolutes" of philosophy into expressions of prejudice and

politics. And, like his literary criticism, Derrida's politics are manneristic. They deal with definitions: analyses of rhetoric taking place after the words are spoken and the action concluded. His theories are not concerned with correcting actual problems or enacting people's desires; in fact, Derrida's excessive selfconsciousness undermines the values and feelings that would generate political action.

The nihilism of Derrida's method of analysis becomes Clearer in view of the theory of truth that underlies his work. Derrida rejects Saussure's theory that a word is a sign expressing a nonverbal meaning or referent, and replies that the connection between language and referent or external truth is only arbitrary, that our oppositions of meaning come from cultural prejudices and do not reflect any natural dichotomy. In "Signature Event Context," he says that "the absence of a referent is a possibility easily enough admitted today ... the potential presence of the referent at the moment it is designated does not modify in the slightest the structure of the mark, which implies that the mark can do without the referent." The possibility of an absent referent is the basis of all speech and writing. According to Derrida, human thought and desire do not produce speech and, perhaps, do not exist. It follows that moral outrage and physical hardship do not produce political discourse because its text may be studied independently of the social context. Derrida reverses Marx's theory that economic conditions produce the superstructure of culture and thought. Rather, the superstructure manifests itself in different metaphorical combinations.

The controversy that surrounds Derrida concerns his style of presentation as well as his radical theories.

His essays have become increasingly literary in form over the last ten years, substantiating his arguments, and seducing the reader with the brilliance of his style as well as with logic. Many people dislike the complexity with which he writes and speaks, and some considered his Heidegger lectures self-indulgent; others felt that his ideas were not worth the trouble it took to grasp them through his maze of rhetoric.

Nevertheless, all of his lectures were well-attended, and Derrida expressed surprise at the number of American students who have adopted his ~schemas" in their own critical method. Derrida himself may be seen as a text, and as such, he, too, may become a dogma.

Derrida does not discard the basis of Western culture merely to build another in its stead: he describes his deconstruction as a process that has no end. But one wonders at the practicability of this aim. As other critics take up his method, he may be swallowed by the system which he attacks. H man always needs metaphors and structures with which to think, it seems, judging from his reception at Yale this fall, that Derrida bas become the latest one.

Leslie Anderson is a senior in Saybrook College.

7

the new journal, October 20, 1977

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11

Albert Innaurato's Gemini Albert lnnaurato, a 1974 graduate of the Yale School of Drama, took the New York theatre by storm last season in opening two of his plays off-Broadway within a week to great acclaim - both popular and critical.

The Drama Desk nominated both works for its "Outstanding New American Play" award and Innaurato received an Obie for "distinguished playwriting." The first of the plays to be produced, The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie, featured James Coco as the terrifying and pathetic Bennoa five hundred pound adolescent so pained by family life that he decides, as he says, to eat himself to death.

Seated on a high platform at center stage, Benno serves as interlocutor in the grotesque scenes from the domestic tragedy into which he has been born. Horrifying vignettes from his South Philadelphia home alternate with Denno's wryly amusing monologues, in the first and third persons, on his attempts to escape his obesity, family, and environment. Only after being forced to perform fellatio on three classmates, who then stuff his mouth with broken glass and dogshit, does Benno experience his "trans-

figuration." The play ends as he. castrates himself with a cleaver; . ¡ Gemini, Innaurato's second play to open in New York (and his first to move to a Broadway location), shares with Benno a savagely humorous ¡ sensibility, an oppressive South Philadelphia background, and a homosexual theme (although lnnaurato mutes this last element in Benno, making it one more metaphor of Denno's psychic isolation). But Innaurato's method has changed.

Instead of the dexterous mix of domestic realism (in the family scenes) and poetic stylization (in Denno's arias of agony), Gemini features an only occasionally heightened naturalistic style. Although a few characters are allowed moments of poetic reminiscence, the language and techniques of situation comedy dominate the play. Benno Blimpie's tragedy is Francis Geminiani's muddle.

Gemini takes place in the fenced-in cement backyard shared by two row houses in South Philadelphia.

(Christopher Nowak's realistic tenement setting instantly brings to mind the stage slums of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End. In one house lives Fran Geminiani, a lower middle-class Italian father, and his son Francis, at home from Harvard for the summer vacation. The other is occupied by Bunny Weinberger, a big-breasted, foul-mouthed, wise-ass Irishwoman whose Jewish husband abandoned her

long ago, and her obese son Herschel, ' a public transportation maniac who, despite a high IQ, acts retarded. On the eve of Francis Geminiani's twenty-first birthday, two waspy and wealthy friends from college, a sister and brother, pay him a surprise visit.

Ashamed of his home, his father, his neighbors, and his own ambivalent sexuality, Francis couldn't be less pleased.

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continued from page 5 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - next few months. to the infighting to be tough. But to Indeed, descriptions of Gray's perexplain away something controver"On the day the strike began, retired Associate Secretary George Vaill sonality further make her suited for sial - to the faculty, to the alumni an acting Presidency which is prihow would she do it?" asked in jest if he should join a picket line. 'No George; replied Gray, marily concerned with budgetary This kind of testimony, criticalas issues.

In her dual role, she acts as a well as supportive, is the talk which 'but you could go home and make us some cookies.·" "super Provost." goes on in a Presidential search.

Associates close to Brewster when he ----~----------------------~------"Kingman was a pragmatic opportunist," notes Sam Chauncey, who was an Acting President - and the worked with Brewster through his leading candidate for the permanent As long as Hanna is running the would have been harder for Brewster entire tenure here. "He saw an idea to cut than for any of his successors. job - report it was even tougher. house that Kingman built, a comand said, 'Go do it. rm on the "Hanna keeps reminding people parison of her manner with his way So Hanna Gray is on a tightrope. bandwagon.' Hanna is a logical that the deficits do not reflect poor of running things is proper. It's not No one knows the effect of any rationalist. She is analytical and performance. Yale's overspending has yet entirely her show. As ever, the Presidential action on Yale's fundmethodical, like a surgeon." pressure of the Presidential search not been waste," says Charles Lord. raising. Alumni who deferred giving And those qualities - as Chauncey to the Campaign until Brewster "The market didn't stay the way it may have put a damper on the way and others have defined them - fit was going. We're no longer willing to Gray runs things. But the comparison resigned can now say they don•t like the times. The age of austerity at Yale Gray. When a permanent President is wait for external events to balance between Gray and Brewster is as would frustrate a dreamer like our budg"!t." much a product of the times as it is appointed they can excuse themselves Brewster. These days call for a "Everybody is for cutting back," of their different personalities. by demanding to wait and see what different kind of innovation, of ways One event last year made the notes Deputy Provost George the new President's policy is. But not to build, but to extricate Yale Langdon. "But every department comparison quite clear. In a televised excuses or not, Yale's uncertain from a fmancial mess. Gray seems wants things cut far from them.

And news conference in HGS a smiling financial future - and its totally likely to leave the acting Presidency undefined Presidential future - will if you start to take away some T A's Kingman Brewster was there to with Yale in a lot better shape than it be hard on the Campaign. The in history, that's an explosive issue announce the appointment of Frank was when she took over. with the Yale College Council. SomeRyan as athletic director. When the problems of a Presidential search are Doubts about suitability are also where, though, we'll have to give up a bright lights went out, though, it was toughest for those campus officials apparent, especially within the lower big piece here or there. •• whose names are on the list. Public Gray's turn. She was the one to tell echelon which doesn't work with Mrs. discussion of policy demands cerus Yale is entering an age of austerity.

If internally the Administration's Gray every day. tainties. The only certainty of the biggest challenge is to formulate an Does her newness to that office "God, she's hard to talk to. She is. effective budgeting process which wiU moment is that Yale does not have a upstairs in Woodbridge make it easier I can't get anywhere. You try to have President. for Hanna Gray to say "no"? Some preclude unforeseen deficits, the a little chit-chat, and you can't get biggest problem on the outside is officials think that with Gray in charge, it wiU be easier for Yale to convincing Yale's constituencies of the through.

"It's fine when Gray has to make balance this year's budget. severity of its problems.

L Mead Treadwell II is a senior in the tough decisions; a more gre"It's very, very hard," says Deputy "How could Brewster possibly not Silliman College. garious person might be too exposed feel a very strong bond with people Provost George Langdon. "For a long time we've lived on the theory that who went through the late sixties with bigger is better." him?" asked one official in response.

Gray has the chance to make some But Gregory Campbell, Mrs. Gray's assistant, contradicts the idea that the cutbacks where Brewster, with political ties for fourteen years, best way to fix Yale's difficulties is to label it as an immediately curable couldn•t. "Hard, unemotional, ruthcrisis. less decisions are impossible to make "Sliding into a war is the opposite which hurt people you've been of a rational process," said Campbell, through tough times with," says one who is also a European historian. official. " We do not want to make light of But Gray demurs. "I don't think financial difficulties which are obthat long years of political ties cut viously real. On the other hand, we one way or the other. A person who do not want to exaggerate like has been here longer might have deb~ to call in."

Chicken Little. Our policy is just consistency, based on rational analy"So much of the decision making depends on process," she notes. sis on a continual basis."

Perhaps Mrs. Gray has an advan"Personal or individual consideratage. Her administration, detached tiohs usually have less of an effect. •• from its constituents by the pressures But the discussion continues: Gray of a Presidential search, can begin to is hardly an outsider. She has been here - and a part of the budgetmake some of those hard budgetary making process of the Brewster decisions which ruffle people's administration - for almost three feathers. Yes, art schools want funds cut fairly - away from their disciyears. But the types of programs meeting tuesday, oct. 25 9:00 which, in the long run, may face pline. But the immediate ranking of saybrook atheneum room cutbacks are the things such as priorities, and making the best of Yale's strengths, may require harshcounseling and decentralized dean•s ness ... a harshness that Gray can offices, costly academic programs which were added during the Brewster handle. These are the budget deyears. And these are the things which cisions which must be made in the

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the new journal, October 20, / 977

David Hockney x David Hockney x Curt Sanburn David Hockney by David Hockney Nikos Stangos, editor.

Harry Abrams, publisher, New York.

3 I 2 pp., illustrated with 434 illustrations, 60 full color plates, $37.50

Although he has been in love with and apparently made love to Judith Hastings, the attractive Radcliffe overachiever, Francis now rebuffs her amorous advances. Once he explains that he has developed a crush on a Harvard sophomore (male), Judith quickly recognizes her brother Randy as the object of Francis' affections.

When this threesome is left a lone onstage, the play often threatens to become serious; but the hilarious inanities of Herschel and the older generation diffuse the tensions of the central situation. Staged asthma attacks, threatened suicides, and slapstick pratfalls combine with Innaurato's lively and witty dialogue to turn a potential sexual nightmare into a rambunctious farce.

Unfortunately, verbal pyrotechnics and stage stunts also obscure the forward action of the play. John Gielgud once noted, in connection with his production of The Importance of Being Earnest, that it is important for a director to learn how to prevent the audience from laughing in too many places. Innaurato and Peter Mark Scrufter, the director of Gemini, must share the blame for allowing the play to become more about the personalities a nd past histories of the older people than about the present frustrations faced by the youngsters. Danny Aiello, as Fran, Ann DeSalvo, as his mistress, and Jessica James, as the blowzy nextdoor neighbor, turn in the strongest performances of this production and in doing so throw the play off balance. Despite the fact that the play centers on the figure of Francis, the character is underwritten by lnnaurato and underplayed by Robert Picardo. Each of the older characters gets at least one Benno-like aria in which he explains how he understands himself and his friends.

The younger generation must do without this dramatic luxury. Francis moves from brooding to quipping to cake-slinging without ever giving us a glimpse of how he thinks. Consequently, a few good speeches and a lot of good fun hang on a very thin plot line.

And the fun is very good indeed.

At the end of their first evening in town, Judith and Randy are treated to a spaghetti dinner on a folding table in the backyard. Each character approaches his meal differently; the emotional entanglements of the day have affected appetites in a variety of ways. But everyone eats - except Lucille, Fran's widow lady. Lucille is not hungry. Lucille will just "pick."

And pick she does; like one of Hitchcock's birds she swoops down on everyone else's plate, retrieving

now some pasta, now a little salad, now a piece of bread - repeatedly refusing a plate of her own. Anne DeSalvo, who won an Obie for this performance (as did Aiello for his), plays the scene hilariously but, like many other such wacky moments in the play, a bravura turn interrupts the flow of the action. DeSalvo also creates the play's most compassionate moment as she lectures Judith on homosexuality. Having a son at Yale "where they turn out a Jot of queers, along with the doctors and lawyers," Lucille feels that she can advise the younger woman on the love and understanding that Francis needs. In a somewhat fantastic fashion - and with a great deal of sentimentality the older generation appreciates Francis' uncomfortable predicament even better than Francis or his contemporaries.

The play's ending, like the play itself, begs all serious questions. In the off-off-Broadway productions done at Playwrights Horizons and the Performing Arts Foundation Playhouse, Gemini concluded with Francis alone at his bedroom window, playing Callas as he had at the opening of the first act. Judith and Randy having departed with minimal hopes for a resolution to their dilemma in the fall, Francis settled back into discontented isolation. In what may have been conceived of as a pre-Broadway "jollying up," the play now pauses where it once ended; after fifty seconds of soul searching Francis now asks himself that classic question posed by every potential heel from a boy-gets-girl film comedy: "What am I doing?" A few joyful screams to the neighbors serve to recall Judy and Randy in enough time for Francis to join them on their trip back home, where our hero presumably will work out some solution to his identity crisis. Although this is by no means a completely happy ending, the hoopla that accompanies it drowns out any objections that might be raised. Once again, the formal demands of comedy overwhelm the problems that the play raises.

As its successful run on Broadway indicates, audiences certainly find Gemini more palatable than Denno Blimpie. It is a funny play finely acted. But for those of us who have enjoyed the broad, grotesque strokes of Innaurato's previous work including his collaboration with Christopher Durang on the Yale Rep's Idiots Karamazov Gemini cannot help but be disappointing. lnnaurato has diluted his style, his humor, and his subject matter to produce a naturalistic, sit-com, bisexual-chic hit.

Michael Cadden teaches at Yale.

The name David Hockney is batted about by friends of mine with the same exclusive tone of voice used on cocaine and lofts. It sounds c.s though they've got the corner on something vaguely classy, deliciously decadent, and impossibly inaccessible to anyone else. Well, in fact, David Hockney is a very good painter, and the publication of his autobiography/ catalogue raisonne, David Hockney by David Hockney, should cleanse Mr. Hockney of the pop-kitsch-faggotmedia-event image thai his trend cultists would have you and me believe.

The text is an edited version of twenty-five hours of taped conversation between Hockney and his editor Nikos Stangos. Hockney's rambling, loose-weave narrative is informal and informative. The tone is pleasantly erudite and modest. We hear about nearly all of the 434 paintings, sketches, and prints included in the book, representing the great body of his work since 1957. All of this is set against a dense background of illustrative detail: anecdotal portraits of friends, comments on other artists, musings on art, and forecasts for the future of Hockney's own work. I haven't seen as warm and comprehensive a view of a living painter since Frank O'Hara's monograph on Robert Motherwell.

Hockney's art resists easy classification. The artist explains that he was "slightly interested in photo-realism," but m ore interested in an "interpretation of the photograph;" he explores the flatness of objects in a photograph and extrapolates from the photographic process an original kind of figurative modernism in painting.

The result: Spatial planes that blink into color fields and figures that slip out of three-dimensional representation, reappearing as flat signs of unusually articulate color. This free play between figurative, photographic, and color field painting is one of the bases of Hockney'-s art - "eclecticism can be a synthesis." The reductive thrust of modernism in Hockney's work holds the precision of representation in a delicate, sophisticated balance.

This is a ll very ambitious, yet the paintings are proof of his success.

Simplicity and water-like clarity (look at the famous pool paintings) belie an unfolding complexity of image and paint. In "Portrait of an Artist" ( 197 1), a dense and silent work, the taut images eventually disintegrate, letting their colors float free . It is an exhilarating sight.

If only because of the inaccessibility of much of Hockney's work (most of it is in private collections; MOMA has a single drawing), this book is invaluable.

David Hockney by David Hockney places Hockney's art in the public domain. It is a comprehensive and lively record of a living artist's work and life. His prices will probably skyrocket as a result, and controversy will persist.

Curt San burn descends from his loft to talk about art.

The British Art Center will be exhibiting Hackney's works in February, 1978.

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15

blathering on a joint of his $50 a bag weed and tried calling his dealer friend about it - he was knocked cold while leaning forward to catch the last streamer of smoke from the roach. "That's it!" he bellowed, the small gash above his eye annoying him somewhat. "I'm just going to glue the fucker down!" and so saying he produced the tiny tube and we had a grand time gluing objects all over the house.

But this story is not about Krazy Glue and the only reason I mentioned The Hardware is that I'd never had a pushbutton system before and I felt it was long overdue. Christ! This is 1977 and I knew that some cheap piece of crap wasn't going to cut it in our household.

But I liked the slabby look of the Trimline and the pushbuttons (although not the squared keyboard-type I had expected) had a terrific solidstate look that reeked of efficiency.

SNETCO seemed to be letting me know that if it weren't for geeks like Ralph Nader, flapping their wings about mindless safety precautions, I'd have the relays and switches right up front, the bare metal contacts awaiting my touch. The receiver and keyboard were integrated on one unit on my new Trimline Totalphone, and with a digital dexterity normally found only in accordion players one could actually manage the whole procedure one-handed thereby permitting the simultaneous operation of calculators and other electronic equipment indigenous to a typical household of the computer age. Between classes and Star Trek reruns who has time to squander?

The really impressive feature of the Totalphone service is that your unit looks no different from those used by plebes who might as well be talking to you from the Bronze Age. The hold button feature is enough to intimidate these clowns. ("Sorry Waldo - other line") With a quick punch of the right index you are hooked up to the Mongo Mother Computer --,- the Big Ear that controls half the world (if ya can't beat 'em ... ) and by using all manner of codes provided by the SNETCO Totalphone info pamphlet you can do it all - from launching a salvo of ICBM's to lighting up the Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

The service also allows you to hold three-party conference calls and forward calls to another number while you're out at the condensers or at droid maintenance.

The most up-to-date feature of the T -phone is the speed call. By the deft use of one of the extra buttons on the keyboard (you know - the ones with the tic-tac-toe board and the Egyptian symbol for Ankh) you can program the unit to ring up to eight numbers (alas, not simultaneously - a technophile such as myself must simply make do) by depressing a single key.

Of course, one must accept such atrophied numeral retention as a natural consequence of the convenience, but we've done quite well over the last two decades without legs or digestive systems, so no great tragedy.

Well, I justtapped the number seven and the button with the sigma notation symbol on it which tells you how you're feeling (galvanic skin response costs onlv an additional two

doilars a month) ~nd with a click or two more I will have the horoscope for today. I am completely pleased with Toto - he screens out annoying calls and his reassuring hum is a mainstay when I feel I am misunderstood by the fallible human world.

With all of the options available in the complete package, I have no need for the telephone function, so I'm having it disconnected. Toto and I have no use for the others.

- Geoff Pie/

You have 34 seconds to finish this article: begin.

In 1701, old El~m never guessed that by 1977, Yali~s \\jOuld need or want to learn how to tead, or he might have decided to' scrap his library and set up a trade school. But in the epoch of fast foods and one night stands, it was inevitable that speed reading would enter the Ivy League.

You must have had one of those innocuous yellow flyers from Evelyn Wood slipped under your door by now. Since they offer no information, besides a promise to make you the fastest kid on the block (at least as far as reading is concerned), the only way to find out the true story of Evelyn Wood (this sounds like a porno flick) is to visit the Holiday Inn (maybe this is a porno flick) for a free session.

At the introductory meeting you will be quoted a $300 price for seven meetings of several hours each. Before cashing in your food rebates, you will do well to consider a few points brought to light by recent Wood graduates.

The most frequently mentioned criticism (200 words) of the course is that Evelyn Wood offers you nothing you couldn't learn yourself. According to one Yale source, "any well-written book on speed reading offers virtually the same course Wood does, at a fraction of the cost. I only wish I had known this last year." The teachers are not special; after the seven week program many participants felt qualified to teach the course.

Nor is reading speed increased as dramatically as the advertisements claim. Though satisfaction is guaranteed or your money back, proving that you have managed not to learn anything is difficult. reading tests contain such easy passages and questions - that only the simple-minded could fail to improve after learning the rudimentary Wood skills. When reading is of a more obscure nature, Evelyn Wood offers as little help as your class notes. Just try flipping through the Principia Mathematica in an hour or two. .

Some Woodsies (Old Woods?) even claim that Evelyn Wood teaches very little reading; hours are spent on such extraneous items as notetaking and newspaper editing. (We hope that the board of the Daily News is reading this.) The fact that the course's syllabus includes these items indicates that Evelyn Wood doesn't have too much to teach.

In the face of these criticisms, there are those who hold Evelyn (400 words) Wood speed reading to be an invaluable part of their education.

Some, like David Kelley, Wood '77, Jay Morgenstern, President ABC/ Dunhill Music, INC. has recently claim the $300 fee provides an incentive unavailable by purchasing a successfully concluded negotiations $3.00 "how to" book. Others accede for the acquisition of Lambert and to criticisms of the instructors and Potter's interest in One of A Kind format, but counter these by asserting Music. that you do indeed learn a new skillIncluded in this prestigious catamore than can be said of many Yale logue are the Glen Campbell hits, offerings at $600 a shot. Reading "Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in speed is definitely increased (273 L.A.)" and "See You On Sunday," words - you're losing ground!). the score to the motion picture There may be some loss of compre"Tunnelvision," Kiki Dee's "Once A hension, but not nearly as much as in Fool," Tavares' "It Only Takes A "skimming" the material without the Minute," as well as the songs "You benefit of speed-reading skills.

Brought the Woman Out of Me," So we are left with a rather faulty ••Baby Don't Be Giving Me Up," "My expose: the course does what it Ship," and ••stood Brothers" among claims. I've garnered these opinions others. from people who took the c~urse, people who wish they had known all of this before plunking down the $300. Yet no one wholeheartedly FROM PUFFIN NEWS - PAPERregretted their investment, and no one ' BACK BOOKS FOR CHILDREN was dissatisfied enough to demand a FROM PUFFIN: refund. Like any other course, speed reading involves some work, some Everyone knows what Penguins disappointment, some learning. Look and Pelicans are, but what, exactly, is at it this way - after having learned a Puffin? A puffin - like a Pelican absolutely nothing from good old is a dignified bird with curious habits Psych I Ia, did you ever try and get When in flight, the Puffin always your money back? seems to have a very large head. On 600 words. It should have taken land, it struts around in an erect pose you exactly 34 seconds to read this with a contemplative, almost comical article. Please answer the following look. The summer home for millions questions: of Puffins is the Westman Islands.

There are Puffin colonies on thirteen I) When was Yale founded? of the islands when they take up a) 1977 residence in early spring. The Puffin b) 1701 lays only one egg each year. c) 344 words ago

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

2) The law of excluded middle is

a) False b) None of the above c) found in the Principia Mathematica d) irrelevant to this article 3) You learned nothing from Psych Ita because a) you were dropped on your head as a child b) you dropped the class after 2 weeks c) you haven't taken speed reading d) False -you did learn something from Psych II a, and you are smarter than the staff of this magazine 4) Old Woods are a) somewhere near New Canaan b) a brand of Scotch c) graduates of a speed-reading course Answers will be found on -page 19.

Nick Defeis

3432 Yale Station When we returned to New Haven after a long hot summer (see Friend of Infamy, p. 2), we found our mailbox overflowing. The following items constitute a mere sampling:

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• From ABC Records: With several national AOR stations, retail outlets and members of the press showing a substantially increased interest in Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, the group is embarking on a series of concert dates throughout the West this fall.

Petty and the Heartbreakers will be the opening act for Be Bop Deluxe on all six dates.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• FROM POCKET BOOK NEWS: DR. CAMMER'S FREEDOM FROM COMPULSION IS COMPELLING! Do you recognize any of these people?

• The hostess who rushes to empty the ash tray as soon as the cigarette butt appears in it ...

• The excessively tidy-clean man who avoids sitting down at a party because he refuses to crease his trousers or jacket • The list maker so much in obeisance to his list that if asked to take off for a movie he answers with a vacant gaze because this is not on the list (Ed. see Friend of Infamy, p.

2. paragraph I)

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• August 3, 1977 Dear Lori, Since the first weeks of school promise to be wild and wooly, I wonder if we should begin to make plans for the first issue of The New Journal ... At this point I have a few ideas of the I'm-not-going-tojump-up-and-down-but-it-might-beinteresting class.....

L.J.D.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Address all propaganda, letters of inquiry, solicitations and correspondence to: The New Journal. 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520

Haste ria Restaurant and Pizza Stop By, or Call in Your Order 1004 Chapel Street 777-4322 363 Whalley Avenue 865-2811

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