'Mosaic'

Where, these days, are the undergraduates of Harvard and Radcliffe writing non-fiction? Cambridge 38 is gone, at least for this year. Comment disappeared months ago. If its last issue is any indication, the Harvard Review has decided firmly against student writing. And now Mosaic, published this month for the first time in a year, arrives on the newsstands with only one of its thirteen contributors a Harvard or Radcliffe undergraduate.

To a degree, the decline of the magazines can be traced to a shrinking advertising market in the Square. But this is only a partial explanation. Mosaic doesn't depend on advertising, and the CRIMSON still flourishes financially; yet neither is besieged by contributors seeking a forum.

A "higher illiteracy" has gripped this community, chocking off what life remained in the "little magazines." What is a "higher" illiteracy? Certainly not simple ignorance. Everyone knows that Harvard students are more intelligent, more serious, better prepared, etc., etc., than ever before. I don't raise a question of intellectual ability, in the common sense of the term, but of the ability--and desire--to communicate, to exchange ideas, to use intellect for something more than exam-time cramming and tutorial papers. The death of small magazines is simply a symptom of the infection of professionalism and careerism is slowly spreading through the College.

A Chance Collection

Mosaic now publishes in a vacuum, and this issue in particular seems little more than a chance collection of stories, poems tracts, reviews, and articles. No single viewpoint or intent infuses all the contributions. True, the magazine is a "Jewish Student Journal" and most of the writers are Jewish, but this is not enough. Commentary is also "Jewish, but much more significantly, it is aimed at a sector of the liberal intelligentsia that considers itself highly aware and concerned, both politically and culturally. Mosaic certainly doesn't need an ideology. Nor should it pick a "theme" for each issue. But if it mush continue to publish infrequently and in a vacuum, the editors should consciously restrict themselves to broad set of concerns, about the College and the nation, which will interest a wide identifiable portion of a Harvard community.

The issue contains two scholarly tracts, two reviews, many poems, and three undefinable articles. These last are particularly interesting. In passing, however, let me note that some of the poetry is very good, especially the translations by Robert Adler from the Hebrew works of Abraham Shlonsky. I can't speak for their accuracy; but Mr. Adler has constructed poetic lines of terse and powerful English.

Mr. Graubard's book review is long, dull, and un-illuminating; Mr. Saperstein's is short and provocative. The scholarly articles--one on Ethiopian Judaism, the other concerning early Jewish views of the philosophy of music--are best left to the scholars.

One of the three pieces which intrigues me is by a Wellesley sophomore, Carol Bosworth. What to call the article is the problem. She terms it "didactic effusions," which would put anybody off. It is really an extended reminiscence, punctuated with a sometimes, bitter, sometimes wise, philosophical narrative. With a good ear for dialogue--and dialect--and a sharp eye for detail, Miss Bosworth successfully evokes her childhood and early religious training. The interwoven commentary is equally precise, chopping up the "effusions" with such pungencies as "Jews are made and not born."

She should have kept the piece shorter, however. Though the writing reflects considerable discipline, the inchoate literary form she has chosen tempts Miss Bosworth into needless digressions. At times the juxtaposition of dialogue, description, and commentary becomes confusing, or worse, simply cute. Occasionally she packs too many images and adjectives into a paragraph. But these are technical criticisms. Here, I feel, is a writer with something legitimate to say and at least a rough knowledge of how to say it.

Graham Blaine, Alas

This issue also contains, unhappily, a chapter from Dr. Graham Blaine's forthcoming book, Youth Our Affluent Society. Now here is a writer with nothing to say. I've never met Dr. Blaine, but I certainly don't like him. I wish he would keep still. His topic this time, as always, is "Sex in the College," and he offers such startling observations as: ". . . Sexual behavior in America is changing. . . Women certainly feel strong jealousy . . . Sexual appetite without specific physical arousal is not naturally as strong in women. . . The Serpent (In Eden) brought about the release of a force within man and woman which is beyond our comprehension and control."

Blaine has an aversion to good taste. He explains the decline of the double standard by noting gracefully that "the girls want to share the fun." He has a similar aversion to logical thought; he elucidates the libertarianism of the 1960's by invoking century-old war horses: the rise of Science, the deterioration of Faith, the pressure for Sexual Equality. In short, here is a man, with all the prestige and influence of a Harvard psychiatrist, who displays the analytic powers of an after-dinner speaker for the Hoboken Kiwanis.

His proposed solutions for the "sex problem" reflect this acuteness of mind: If the kid still believes in God, give him fire and brimstone. If he has absorbed the skepticism of the age, hand him a contraceptive, lock open his bedroom door, and read him the latest illegitimacy statistics.

Blaine represents fatuity where sophistication and sincerity should reign. There is a moral crisis on this and many other campuses. Much painful and complicated soul searching is going on. If the Chief of the Harvard Psychiatric Service had sufficient command of contemporary philosophy, sufficient understanding of the Freudianism he popularizes so crudely, he might serve as a legitimate preceptor for this community. Instead he spouts mindless cliches, offers frightened and frightening prescriptions, and debases an issue which is far more profound and serious than the good doctor, I fear, will ever realize.

The Complex Mr. Epps.

The most befuddling, and interesting, article in this issue belongs to Archie Epps, assistant dean of the College and a tutor in Leveret House. He is a complex person, at once an Establishment Negro and a vigorously anti-Establishment rebel. The jolly conductor of the Leverett House Glee Club is simply not the same man who writes bitterly about the death of Malcolm X; nor are wither of these the scholar who wishes to "treat Negro history as a problem of social science."

Mr. Epps knows many worlds, and his sensibility and intelligence--both prodigious--are fragmented. His mind is made up of many unconnected facets and regions, and it gleans insights as a piece of quartz catches the sun--in glints and flashes. All of his writing seems to me a Promethean effort to focus these glints and flashes into steady ray. When he succeeds, the results will be overwhelming, for they will represent that rare synthesis of intelligence and experience which marks the work of all significant social scientists and critics.

Mr. Epps has not yet approached success. His writings on the Negro revolution mix, in a very mechanical way, the jargon of Sociology and the rhetoric of moral imprecation. There is no fusion of technique and sensibility. This piece in Mosaic seems to me no less mechanical synthesis of literary allusion and Profound Truth.

He discusses the difference between the reality of the academy, "veritas," and the more savage, yet humane, reality of life "outside." That is, he delves into the old Ivory Tower issue. This could have been very exciting, for that issue is, I feel, at the center of Mr. Epps' existence. He could have brought into relief aspects of it little explored, or even perceived, by less aware and less experienced writers. Instead, Mr. Epps has eschewed analysis and investigation for classification; he has embalmed some rather ordinary insights in the eloquent, but not quite relevant, words of Yeats and Arthur Koestler.

The essay has a crystalline quality; it is dense, sharp well polished--a verbal statue commemorating in abstract from the general contours of Mr. Epps" thought. In abstract form, unfortunately, his thought looks much like anyone else's thought. He has reached for the sublime and come up with the ordinary. And, saddest of all, the essay often approaches the cryptic, and inevitably becomes a puzzle to the reader. Instead of moving him, it leaves him either confused or complacently proud that he has figured it all out.