329

The Yearbook, at long last, has been weaned. In past years, the people at 52 Dunster Street clung as compulsively to a dull, comprehensive, list-everything format as to a mother's breast. Annually, the editors let the Yearbook organize them, instead of exerting a creative influence, and the end-product portrayed the Ivy League College of University Hall brochures instead of the Harvard that any senior knows.

Now with 329 comes the Great Leap Forward (well, it is, at least, a hop; and the direction is distinctly ahead). Confronted with the perennial dilemma-cover many things superficially, or fewer things well-cover editors have opted for selective excellence. Unfortunately the standard is still elusive; execution and content are only occasionally memorable. But the general change in format, the attempt to write longer, more thoughtful, more critical essays on selected topics is, without doubt, an important and much-needed innovation.

Indeed, the most damning indictments of the old forms are the lineal descendents of umpteen previous Yearbooks retained in 329. Specifically, the House "vignettes" struggle to sustain the customary level of mediocrity (although Richard Kimmel's drawings of the Masters are superb). The catalogue of house activities, the pats on and knives in the backs of the Masters, the listless recapitulation of the style peculiar to a particular House ("An eighteenth-century atmosphere has always clung about Adams House like a pervasive, occasionally smothering mist"), should be abandoned. Why not a unified essay on the House system, the Masters, House sports, or resident tutors?

In contrast to their acceptance of the usual pap about the Houses, the editors have consciously tried to give more substantial profiles of Faculty members than in volumes past. Traditionally, the writing about the Harvard Faculty in undergraduate publications has taken three forms: dust-cover summaries which regurgitate schools attended, books published, and hobbies; interview transcripts which splice together quotes with transitional comments; and critical essays in which the writer combines biographical and interview material with some knowledge of the man's field to establish a point of view outside the man himself.

The Yearbook's treatment of the Faculty in the past has been dismayingly dust-coverish. But this year the little, posed picture and short inconsequential recital of facts has given way to more sophisticated profiles, both pictorially and substantively. Most writers have adopted the interview transcript technique with varying degrees of success in grace and content. But this method usually seems artifical and makes the man unreal, since it often discusses him in a vacuum. Somehow a teacher doesn't seem truly intelligent or particularly worth knowing until the author can maintain an objective tone and a critical stance. Of fifteen profiles, only three-Andrew Weil on Jerome Bruner, Michael O'Hare's defense of Jose Luis Sert, and Nancy Tobey on Len Gittleman--reach the third level.

Similarly, the method and intent of feature writing, like the profiles, have been altered by this year's staff. The articles on the Harvard Undergraduate Council and the Doty Report debates are typical of mindless scissors and paste summaries of news releases and CRIMSON articles which have so often strangled Yearbooks. Neither author has bothered to master (rather than repeat) the details of his subject and write an interpretive piece.

But in 329 such articles are not representative. Rather than boring rehashes of past events, features in the yearbook analyze or argue: "House Drama: A Play wright's Remedy," "Why Virtuosos Survice at Harvard, Or Do They?" "Harvard's New Radicals." One may of course find these sloppily written or insufficiently argued. No longer, however, can they be summarily dismissed as superficial and bankrupt.

Typical of the features in 329 is Faye Levine's, "The Girls Who Go To Harvard." Like most writers in 329, she has picked a significant but manageable aspect of the "Harvard experience." And like most writers, she hasn't quite succeded in satisfying the expectations which she herself has encouraged.

Her essay is didactic: "we are not longer content with some quality, Harvard." And her thesis, which could be the theme of this, the first Harvard-Radcliffe Yearbook, is simple: Cliffies must resolve their ambivalent position in the college community as girls, and girls, who go to Harvard. But Miss Levine's utopia rings false: "we want football tickets, travelling fellowships, representation on educational policy committees." Hers is a world of things, not emotions, desires, or values (and, except for fellowships, they are rather small things at that: "we want a graduation ceremony that is part of Harvard's.") Her tragi-comic, feminist pleas for equal status ("and Radcliffe, oh Radcliffe, how long...") bear little relation to her conclusion that Radcliffe girls leave after four years feeling that they" were never part of something." Many, many people at Harvard are no different.

329 is full of intelligent attempts at essay writing and imaginative touches (like the marvelous montage, "The Harvard Architectural Museum"). But the final impression is of a rushed job: the sections on Presidents Pusey and Gilbert are just tired speeches, obviously stuffed in at the last moment to full a copy gap; typographical errors abound (Stanley Hoffmann and Myron Gilmore must have been amused at the spelling of their names); and much of the writing is loose and imprecise, like a first draft.

Admittedly, a yearbook is a difficult form. And the editors of 329 have wisely shifted their emphasis. But they must now shift the quality of the yearbook. One of their best innovations, a photo essay on the staging of "Danton's Death," reflects their problem. Like so much in 329 execution does not equal idea; the picture sequences are unfocused, the text uninspired. As the author writes,

Work on a play begins with the arduous process of casting. Preliminary blocking is done in a practice room with tape on the floor to guide the actors. of Particular importance are the exits and entrances. The sequence of movements must be clear: yet vivid and illuminating.

It is nor unreasonable to expect more from Harvard students.