Hanover Browsing
LIVING NOT FAR FROM HANOVER is a young novelist named Pierre Sichel. In one of the toughest times in publishing history he succeeded in getting Reynal and Hitchcock to publish his 629page first novel called Such As We. There are a few unmistakable signs of its being a first novel but on the whole it is surprisingly mature and I found it absorbing reading. He writes of a generation that shocks its elders: young, cynical, ruthless, but with an honesty most of our ancestors never knew. His picture of life in America is certainly not an alluring one. His heroine, Elaine Chickering, daughter of a Yale All-American, Tremaine Chickering III and the gaudy but sluttish Paula, runs the gamut of emotions not from a to b, but from a to about m or n. When she reaches 21 she knows all there is to know about sex, but she hasn't the vaguest idea how to find dignity, serenity and wisdom in life. There is a vicious world pictured here which makes Europeans wonder at times about our starry-eyed belief that our destiny is to lead the world into a new chromium, streamlined morality. How can we attack Communism, Socialism, and atheistic materialism which thrive on reaction, when so many of us are like Trem, Paul, Paula, and Elaine? They represent a group which runs a great deal of America. They actually ran the country into the ground in the early twenties (remember the Harding regime?) and if we are not alert they will do it again. Already the G.O.P. is sharpening its knives for the massacre of another progressive. They spawn communists the way Franco does, and I'm sure the author was not out of line when he makes Paula a great admirer of Hitt and Muss, who ran the trains on time. This is not a pretty story but it is an honest one and holds the reader's interest. The author reveals an amazing knowledge of certain facets of the female psyche. Incidentally, a Dartmouth Carnival is featured in one episode. I think you will find this entertaining, though it will infuriate some of the elders.
Lew Stillwell came into the bookstore the other day and asked for a copy of the American Odyssey. I interrupted and said, "You mean The American Iliad, don't you, the Civil War thing?" This proved correct and I have the book before me. It is the story, as you probably know, of the Civil War from Fort Sumter to Lee's surrender as "narrated by. eyewitnesses and contemporaries." It is a long book of more than 700 pages, enlivened and made clear by remarkably good maps. I have seen none better in making Manassas or Antietam unroll like a clear and accurate film. The authors—well-known authorities in their field, Otto Eisenschiml and Ralph Newman—have done an excellent job in weaving together a completely living and fascinating picture of the Civil War as men (and women, too) knew it at the time.
And speaking of the Civil War, Ben Ames Williams '10 has given the Dartmouth College Library the maps, genealogy table, his note books, and a corrected typescript of his long novel HouseDivided, which in my opinion is the most considerable work of fiction yet written by a Dartmouth man.
A clear explanation for the layman of Russia and her apparently strange antics is provided in Sir Paul Dukes' Come Hammer Come Sickle! The book sets out to explain why it is that contacts between the British and the Russian peoples are in every case friendly but their official relations with the Soviet Government encounter many difficulties. The book explains a lot for the American as well. It is issued by Cassell of London.
Those interested in the arts will find something in a book of tributes to the late Paul Rosenfeld just published by Creative Age: Paul Rosenfeld: Voyager in the Arts. Contributors include Edmund Wilson, Lewis Mumford, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Aaron Copland, Mark van Doren, Llewelyn Powys and his wife Alyse Gregory, E. E. Cummings, Dorothy Norman, and many others. Van Wyck Brooks calls Rosenfeld "the best-loved critic of his generation" in the fields of music, writing and painting. Not one person in Hanover to whom I mentioned the book had ever heard of Rosenfeld. Such is fame among the esoteric. That the book is more impressive than a statue, as Van Wyck Brooks claims, might depend, I should think, on the sculptor, but in any case it is'a fine tribute to an able critic.
I hope the intellectually curious among you will find a book called The Journeysof Celia Fiennes, published in 1947 by the Cresset Press in London. Celia, the daughter of a Cromwellian Colonel and an independent and original soul, gives a graphic picture of what England was like 250 years ago.
FASTERN INTERCOLLEGIATE RIFLE CHAMPIONS: The Dartmouth sharpshooters who took the Eastern League trophy in their first year of competition include, first row, I. to r., Jerry Staton '51, Dick Robie '50,Sgt David Dickson USMC, coach, Hal Stahmer <51, Giles Hamlin '51. Back row: Don Pamel '51, Bill De Vaux '51, Saul Kwartin '48, Bob Koski '51.
