Further Mention

The 1941 Dartmouth graduate, Charles B. McLane, who captained the ski team and served with the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division from 1941 to 1944 and with the Psychological Warfare Division in Europe as an intelligence officer from 1944 to 1946, turned later to conventional studies at Columbia University, where he earned an M.A. in 1949 and a Ph.D. in 1955. His graduate work there centered on Slavic literature and Soviet politics following World War II. He emerged from the confined life of a library to a somewhat less confined atmosphere at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow where he served as cultural attache for two years (1950-1952). In much more expansive activities he has travelled widely outside Russia in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Before joining the Dartmouth faculty in 1957 as Professor of Russian Civilization, he taught Russian history at Bard College in Annandale, N.Y., and government at Swarthmore College from 1954-1957. In 1959 Dartmouth awarded him a concurrent appointment as Professor of Government.

Mr. McLane is now in the full flush of such extraordinary experiences and training as he.labors on his full-length investigation of Soviet Third World policies in the global setting, eventually to find fruition in a book to be entitled Russia andthe Third World. It will be the fourth volume in expansion of the three-volume series recently published by the Central Asian Research Center in London. Dealing with a new but expanding field of international studies, it carries the title of Soviet-Third World Relations. Distributed in this country by the Columbia University Press, the three volumes are concerned with Soviet policies and actions towards different geographical areas of the emergent nations in what has been called the Third World. Volume One centers on Soviet relations with Middle East nations; Volume Two, on nations of Asia; and Volume III, on African nations. The entire work has the merit of being not only detailed but also comprehensive in its survey of the USSR's political, economic, and cultural relations with the countries of Asia and Africa since 1955; the extent of Soviet aid; the amount of trade and arms transfers; and the variations in Soviet political attitudes as revealed in Russian commentaries on individual states. Such productivity, made possible by the grant of a full year of absence from Hanover classrooms with full pay, gained much momentum by intensive studies at the Central Asian Research Center in London, at Chatham House, the London School of Economics, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Leon E. Williams Professor of Art, Dartmouth College, and the lecturer at more than 20 American museums, galleries, schools, and unities John Wilmerding, author of five books on American painters and painting, has edited another with an introduction. It is The Genius ofPainting with 64 color plates and 270 black- and-white illustrations running to 352 pages, costing $24.95, and published by William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York. Its thesis concerns the revealed pattern of periodic dependence by Americans on Europeans and in the early 19th century the emergence in this country of a strong new spirit of native painting challenging the decadence of European civilization. By the 1830's the American wilderness had become the overriding obsession of many American artists who responded to the wild and unexplored grandeur of the country and reflected a new national self-confidence and pride with the opening-up of the Continent and later the settlement of the West. Despite the popularity and influence of French Impressionists, the century witnessed the establishment and confirmation of a national artistic identity. The 19th-century obsession with the environment gave rise in the 20th to the exploration of city life and urban problems. In brief, alternately rejecting and imitating European styles, American painting has gradually but unmistakably defined its own special character.

The subject matter of chapters and the names of contributing scholars follow: 1. "Colonial Art," R. Peter Mooz (Teaching Associate, Winterthur Museum); 2. "The First Half of the Nineteenth Century," John Wilmerding; 3. "The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century," by Richard J. Boyle (Curator, Cincinnati Museum); 4. "The Forming of the Avant-Garde 1900-1930," by Irma B. Jaffe (Professor, Fordham University); "The 1930's and Abstract Impressionism," Harry Rand (Teaching Fellow, Harvard University); "From the 1960's to the Present Day," Dore Ashton (Head of the Department of Art, the Cooper Union).

When Columbia Pictures start shooting FromNoon to Three on location in the South West early next year, the bearded Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright from the Bronx, Frank D. Gilroy '50, will be happy to have realized four of his life-long ambitions. He has written and published a Western novel. The novel is being filmed. He has written the script. He is directing the film. What is emerging is different from The Subject Was Roses and other New York contemporary based Gilroy plays. "From Noon to Three," to quote him, "is a period western with a hitch. You could call it a possibly-true story of an outlaw and a lady he meets while waiting for the outcome of a robbery he is forced to miss. The book's blurb says that 'their love knew no bounds,' but that's said with tongue in cheek." He adds, "The project is every Bronx boy's dream come true. I've always enjoyed reading westerns and enjoyed playing occasionally hookey from the De Witt Clinton High School to see them. The book was fun to do. Even Pulitzer Prize winners need to have fun."