Further Mention
The new Encyclopaedia Britannica is about as big an editing job as one can imagine. No fewer than 4,277 scholars, scientists, and other authorities are involved, and more than half hail from outside the United States. Articles come from 131 countries, from every continent, and from the islands of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. In the 30 volumes, 43 million words, costing $32 million, the aim is to supply factual information quickly, bring a new coherence to major articles, and significantly enhance the educational function - to enable and encourage systematic study in any field. Divided into three sections, the titles are Micropaedia: Ready Reference and Index;Macropaedia: Knowledge in Depth; and Propaedia: Outline of Knowledge - Guide tothe Britannica.
One of the masterminds behind the articles ranging in length from 50 words to about 250,000 is Warren E. Preece '43, vice chairman of Britannica's Board of Directors. The Chairman is Mortimer J. Adler, who succeeds Dr. Robert H. Hutchins, retired. A native of Glencoe, Ill., Preece has served as editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica since 1964. In this capacity he played an important role in the design and creation of the new set. He directed a staff of 360 editors, staff writers, and researchers, many of whom he recruited personally, and worked closely with 4,000 scholars scattered about the world. Figures stagger the imagination: 24,000 illustrations, review of more than a million photographs and thousands of paintings and drawings, 2.5 million manhours over the 15-year period of creation; editorial output 400,000 words a week (the length of five non-fiction books), and occasional output of 750,000 words per day.
With stunning modesty Preece hopes that the 30 volumes and 43 million words may be "adequately useful."
In "The Real Inside Dope on Flaubert and Maupassant" (New York Times, Oct 21) Francis Steegmuller '27 reports that French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a student of the two literary giants, is "fascinated by the question" .whether "Maupassant was not only Flaubert's pupil but also his son." Steegmuller is reluctant to endorse Mark Twain's observation " 'Tis a wise Frenchman that knows his own father." Nonetheless, Steegmuller, author of literary biographies of Flaubert and Maupassant, is "struck," as he himself puts it, by the frequency with which Gallic paternity is questioned even when grounds for doubt have to be invented.
Samples: Was Talleyrand (1754-1838), the French statesman, the father of Delacroix (1799-1864), the leader of the French romantic school in painting? How many illegitimate children were engendered by Maupassant who lived only 43 years? No one can be sure that the bizarre, exotic, and ironic poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), the name taken by Wilhelm Apollonaris Kostrowitzky, was the natural child of a Polish mother, for his father may have been an Italian army officer, Francesco Flugi d'Aspermont. How about the legitimacy of Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), avant garde writer, artist, film maker, and designer? One of the stories about him is that his father was an Arab or a Hindu, based "purely on Cocteau's cast of countenance and the fact that he had an uncle in the foreign service."
In reviewing the facts about Flaubert and Maupassant, Steegmuller suggests "the real inside dope" is that Flaubert could have had only four days and four nights in October 1849 when he might have cohabited with Laure de Maupassant. Mr. Giscard d'Estaing continues to be fascinated about just what Gustave and Laure were doing during those 96 hours.
The Visiting Fellow for the Center of Democratic Institutions, Laurence Hewes '24. is author of Rural Developments: World Frontier, (lowa State University Press, 186 pp. $8.50), a book evolving from the conference at the center August 1971 which discussed the combined subjects of world population growth, expanding world needs for food and fibre, and environmenttal consequences. Attending, in addition to the center fellowship, were 15 specialists in agriculture and rural conditions, all of whom had had considerable experience in LDC (less developed countries). The last five chapters (pp. 82-164) are Hewes's own work and thinking.
Many facts are sobering. The less developed countries have a current population of about 2.5 billion in a world population of 3.5 billion. By the year 2000 the LDC populations may exceed 5 billion and the developed regions population may be declining. It is feared that the world may be facing a dismal picture of mass starvation, but Hewes discounts it, and his point of view is guardedly optimistic. We must alert ourselves about how LDC villages are becoming more and more conscious of what they are missing and more and more unhappy and restless, if not out-raged. Westerners with gas-guzzling eight-cylinder automobiles, air conditioning, TV, expensive clothing, and rich living seem reluctant to grasp how great are the gaps between luxury and poverty, obesity and emaciation, health and disease. If the LDC continue to be deprived, the outlook could be darkened with impending revolution. Small gains may only whet LDC appetitites for equality. It is regrettable that so little has been done about solving problems, present and future, concerning soil, water, and climate, and their interaction.
The Hewes chapters pay particular attention to rural developments in Latin America, Asia, and Africa and to alternate proposals for regional integration in the basins of the Lower Mekong, Amazon, and Congo. The marshalling of facts about rice, sunshine, trade laws, economic integration, droughts, irrigation, famine, and river power are impressive, based on Hewes's career as an agricultural economist on regional, national, and international level; for the United States Department of Agriculture, and for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
Ask almost any member of the Class of 1926 if he has recently seen his classmate Gully Leason. Filled with laudable class spirit, he replies "Not recently, but I remember him well. A terrific guy!" The remark may be chalked up as "inoperative," for in these H2O Sluice days one is tempted to sweeten all unpleasant facts wit juicy jargon. Now hear this. Gully Lenson is not now, has not been, and never was a members of the Class of 1926. He is simply a figment of the imagination.Here's how. The editors of the Aegis found themselves with an awkward blank space and conjured up a mythical figure, Gully Lenson, whose Christian name was probableplay a on words. A story by Kenneth Andler '26 Lenson, appeared in the June 1972, of Yankee magazine and so pleased 1926 that it was sent to all class members. This story with a new title chosen by Judson Hale '55 "To Have Been or Not To Have Been' is reprinted in A Treasury of New England Short Stories published last month by Yankee at $6.93
