A Fluxus Ruckus

Flatigiojus Flubdubbery

I WAS FLUMMOXED BY THE ARTICLE on Fluxus ("The Stuff of Art," October). The effluvium created by the exhibit ought to create a fluvius of comment and perhaps enough flotsam to fill the Hood Museum. Certainly alumni contributions ought to fluctuate downward if funds are fostering the cataloging of excrement of roaches, mice, and people.

I would suggest that Fluxus, its recognition, its elevation to "art," its collection and preservation are nothing but the finest form of flumadiddle.

PORTLAND, MAINE

I HAVE READ WITH DISMAY YOUR October lead article about something called "Fluxus" art.

Professor Churchill Lathrop taught me that there are at least two basic tests of fine art:

1. Is it created from the best available materials?

2. Is it capable of enduring for centuries?

Those tests are failed by the crudities now being dumped on the Hood Museum. The Fluxus creations are literally "crap."

Over the years, I have had some success at convincing directors of the Hood Museum that Dartmouth should be the depository of great northcountry art-both old and new. But just about the time I succeed, these short-stayers depart for Harvard or the Getty Museum. And now we seem to be left with junk art!

It is a fact that Ivy League colleges almost never produce a visual artist whose works will endure. More "Fluxus" art-preaching that anyone can be an artist-will perpetuate that shame.

VERO BEACH, FLORIDA

FLUXUS SHMUCKS US.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Won Season

ALTHOUGH JIM COLLINS '84 clearly set out to discuss men's soccer at Dartmouth in his article "The Lost Season" (October), he was remiss in not noting the recent World Cup victory of the United States Women's Soccer Team in his discussion of the state of soccer beyond Dartmouth. ("Perhaps that's a reason for America's poor showing in international World Cup Soccer.")

Even if such an event weakens his argument (or are women, even privileged ones, hungrier than men?), it is far too great an accomplishment to go unmentioned.

LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Listen Up

THAT WAS A SPLENDID STORY ON Lee Pelton, the Listening Dean (October).

The author, Tig Tillinghast '93, editor of The D, is not only a talented writer, he is a perceptive observer (i.e., Pelton's "appearance of listening can co-opt even the most anti-administration protester.").

If Tillinghast is a sample, the English Department must be doing something right. Cheers!

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Olympians Belittled

IT IS BETTER TO HEAR CHEERS FOR those who reach goals and for those who reach for goals. How about some honest perspective from Jonathan Douglas '92 ("Sporting Eye," October)? His Olympic sound-bite recognizes the outstanding medal-winning accomplishment of my friend and classmate Dana Chladek '85 (Bravo!).

However, the tone of Mr. Douglas's article suggests the failures of Jim Moulton '84 and Bob Kempainen '88. Let's hear the rest of their stories. Mssrs. Moulton and Kempainen overcame injury and adversity in order to make the Olympic team. And their Olympic performances were excellent. To state that Moulton came home "empty-handed" and that "the rigors of international competition proved too much for Kempainen" belies the Olympic and Dartmouth spirit of competition.

These athletes should be praised and honored for their resolve to sacrifice, to train, and to bear the burdens of elite competition. They all represented the U.S.A. and Dartmouth College as superior athletes striving for what few of us ever dream, and what even fewer ever attain.

Congratulations, Dana, Jim, and Bob!

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

Mr. Plutonium Corrects

THERE WERE ERRORS IN MY story in the October issue ("The Prophet Plutonium"). Our minds are a Coulomb Interaction with the protons of the Plutonium Totality, hence the brain is a parabolic mirror with a focal point in the brain, that focal point being one atom. That is the reason animals need to sleep; because this focal point needs fine-tuning back into position, it gets out of focus. That is the reason the brain is shaped the way it is—like a parabolic telescope, in order to receive the signals, the photons from the protons. This focal point of the brain, which I call the locus, is the explanation for intelligence.

My name at birth was Ludwig Pohlmann, not Polmann. I arrived at Dartmouth November 1988. My name at Utah State University in 1979 was Ludwig van Ludvig. The Plutonium Atom Totality (PU, not PAT), is very easy to recite. An electron is not a ball, it is an infinite number of dots—called the "electron cloud." PU asserts that one of those dots of the last electron, the 94th electron, is the sun, another smaller dot is the planet earth, and tiny dots on that larger earth dot of the electron cloud are you and I.

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Wrong Brothers

WHILE BROWSING YOUR October issue, in particular "The Listening Dean," I was delighted to happen upon a photo of four of my brethren sitting atop the east porch of Kappa Kappa Kappa. However, the caption reads, "One of the Dean's first challenges is to bring houses like AD back." Although the picture does not bear much significance to the article other than to provide a visual aid of a fraternity (and a splendid one at that), like any mistake found after publication the caption should be corrected. As a service to those Kappa alumni in the photo their names might also be mentioned. They are (from left to right) Stephan Chase '85, Mark Behnam '88, Tom Major '87, and Rick Dwight '88.

WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS

Inspiration

I JUST PUT DOWN THE SEPTEMBER issue of our magazine—the best issue I've read in 50 years. Such an exciting reminder of what the "real spirit" of education is—never mind defining it. But breadth of vision, energy to follow an ideal, incorporation of learning in one's actions. You have inspired me.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

READING THE COVER OF THE September 1992 issue beyond where my knowledge readily applies, the feeling I had was misplaced. Modifier.

I believe the sentence should have read, "Taking their lives beyond where their knowledge readily applies, a few Dartmouth people have made choices that have made all the difference."

Am I correct, or am I beyond where my knowledge readily applies?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

DIDN'T YOU MISREAD FROST'S poem? The poem doesn't say that two roads actually and in fact diverged and that "I" took the less traveled one, the presumably riskier venture. The poem says, instead, that there is (or I can perceive) little difference between the roads—but that, as time goes by and I look back on the choice, I will magnify the difference-i.e., only later will I be able to claim that I deliberately took the bolder route, but at the time of actual choice, I could barely distinguish one from the other.

This is a cunningly simple and brilliant poem about the self-deceptions of memory: how exaggeration creeps in, without conscious intent to fib. It's what lies behind all "war stories."

Don't thank me for this enlightenment. Credit is due to Professor John Finch. He gave us sophomores this interpretation more than three decades ago. In reading Frost this way, he raised Frost from a Kipling- or Norman Rockwell-like utterer of tired moralisms and boosterisms to a poet tapping the roots of human motivation.

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

A CAREFUL LOOK AT THE POEM will show that the speaker (1) did not take the road less traveled, as three times he indicates that both roads before him were just about the same, and (2) he doesn't say he did. He says that he will say he did, at some distant point in the future. But he's already told us that the roads were practically identical. So he will be lying.

Why would he want to do that? Well, perhaps he is preparing an excuse for a life of anticipated failure.

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

Another Jonathan

ANDREW DANIELS' "THE ROAD Less Traveled" essay on the foreshortened life of his brother, Jonathan Daniels '86, was powerful. The subject was an impressive young man, he was a son of whom Dartmouth should justly be proud, and the loss was solely in what might have been had he come down from his high places.

A parallel struck me...the life of another Jonathan Daniels who, while he probably did not climb Mt. Monadnock when he was three, nevertheless lived in the shadow of that same mountain; and a school in that same shadow, in Keene, bears his name. This other Jonathan Daniels was a seminarian, he too could not abide the inequity and imbalance he perceived, he left the prospects of a budding career to be a civil rights activist in the deep South, and there, also in his mid-20s, he met a violent and untimely death.

The essay was marred, however, by misinformation. Jonathan was not David's son but Saul's: perhaps the author was thinking of David's son, Absalom, whom David also mourned after a violent and untimely death; and David's lamentation was not solely or even primarily for Jonathan, it was for the anointed king, Saul, and only secondarily for Jonathan.

Does the fact that this goof was not corrected indicate a simple editorial slip, or is it attributable to the depth to which the pursuit of the liberal arts has sunk such that prominent and elemental facts that form our civilization's title papers have dropped from common knowledge?

CHARLESTOWN, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Egregious English

SINCE WILLIAM NELSON TURPIN so clearly enjoys laughing at President Freedman's "egregious" Latin ("Letters," September), it seems only fair to point out that Turpin himself has a problem quoting English. The couplet he takes from Alexander Pope should read:

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring.

Unfortunately, Mr. Turpin writes, "A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or else taste not the Pierian spring," neglecting the contraction "dang'rous" in line one (which spoils the meter) and—most egregiously!—inserting the word "else" into the second line. Maybe Mr. Turpin should have heeded another of Pope's famous lines—something about "Pride, the never-failing Vice of Fools."

AUSTIN, TEXAS

One Dirty Room

EVEN THOUGH YOU DID NOT identify the photograph on page 80 of the Summer issue as my freshman-year dorm room, by using it without my permission you have exposed me to much ridicule and embarrassment.

I have received a number of unflattering letters and calls from classmates and the New Hampshire Board of Health.

My wife will attest that I am a fastidious person, and I should like to state for the record that said photograph must have been taken at a time when my maid had the day off.

CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA

The Shop

My WIFE AND I MADE OUR wedding rings together in the now-defunct metal shop, and I remember each step of the process. It was a valuable part of my Dartmouth experience, and much more memorable than most of my "academic" course work.

CORAL SPRINGS, FLORIDA