The Freshman Review

Like newborn colts, just experiencing first impressions, the contributors to the first Freshman Review wobble through their first fearless but awkward steps. As Archibald MacLeish says in his extremely frank foreword, "There is nowhere . . . the signature of incontestable talent." The stories are in many places rough and virtually formless, yet they are, at least, frank and unhesitantly autobiographical.

Typical of this naivete is Mike Mann's story of a high-school tennis player and his girl. Mann withholds few details of malt-shop and classroom courtship and consequently manages to portray a few scenes and feelings in high school life rather accurately. Mann's autobiography, however, begins to drool a little at the mouth; if he had left out much of the diary-writing at the end, he might have seemed much less involved and his story might have had more punch.

T. Alan Broughton, the author of the best story in the Review, comes much closer to good form in his three-part story of death on a farm, as seen by a small timid, and asthmatic boy. All of Broughton's characters are distinct; his descriptions are fine; and his point comes across without didactic elaboration. His dramatic tension is unusual for college writing, although he leans slightly on an episodic organization.

Joe Walker's story on the inner turmoils of a mid-western freshman is obviously as sincere as anything in the issue, but it fails because his narration seems affected. Marie Winn's "Day of Wrath" is one of a current genre of back woods revival stories. Although her approach is not original, she does succeed in infuriating the reader by obscuring the action, meanwhile saying that she at least knows what is happening. Faulty narration can be employed with good effect is psychological writing, but Miss Winn only leaves one wondering if she herself has a clear idea of what occurs in her story.

Although 58's poetry is one the whole unexciting, A. E. Keir Nash's "Der Blaue Reiter" uses some very effective imagery in portraying the imaginative travels of a little boy on a wooden horse. Sallie Bingham seems to take a rather ambivalent attitude toward "The Young Girls," who "love in prudent silence on the frozen ground." Some allusions which bring to mind the Seven Dwarfs ("And start to work with soap, and heavy towels . . .") weaken the poem considerably. In his poem about Perseus, William Teunis describes the gods as "con-vanished," so it is somewhat jarring when they reappear "slamming the doors and pushing out the windows!" (His exclamation point.)

The tone of L.C. Austin's extended dirty joke does not change, but one wishes it would, for his poem on Nat. Sci. 3 is horrible, not only in conception, but in expression. Mr. Austin should discover the distinction between serious sensuality and blatantly lewd writing. In contrast, Anne Adams writes of Adam and Eve, seriously and with some success.

Jeff Murray's illustrations are appropriate, being as grotesque as much of the magazine. Nothing, however, could equal the absurdity of the lead editorial, which attempts a few clumsy jokes and then lapses into a description of editorial frustration. The editors do manage, however, to recommend a second edition to the class of '59, feeling that freshman writing should be given a chance to see print. Some of the work is entitled to it, and '59 might well follow this advice, if they can find enough talent, and support.