MacLeish Stresses Dissension in Books

The value of the printed book as a medium for dissent was emphasized by Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, in an article in yesterday's New York Times Book Review Magazine.

In an introduction to a critique of the eighty-fifth to ninety-fifth Cantos of Ezra Pound, MacLeish deplored the tendency of modern mass communication to express only the obvious, because of the need to cater to the "mental mass." The recent gains of such mass media might indicate the death knell for the printing press, he continued, except for the growing importance of books for expression of dissent.

The dissenter, which MacLeish defined as "every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself," has nowhere else to go but the printed book to set forth his dissent, MacLeish concluded.