Gordimer Gives PBK Address

"I noticed how pale the students are, they must be studying a lot," poet Charles Simic said yesterday prior to reading a poem he wrote in honor of the newly elected members of Phi Beta Kappa.

The poetry reading followed the Sanders Theater procession of the honor society's newly elected 48 women and 68 men in academic dress.

"I hope you'll notice how pale I am. I've been sitting, staring at a blank wall," Simic said. "The poet sitting over a blank page is a panic figure similar to the one in the Woody Allen joke about the person trying to cheat on a metaphysics exam."

In the oration at yesterday's Literary Exercises, the South African author Nadine Gordimer, who received an honorary degree from Harvard two years ago, answered the questions "Who Writes? "Who Reads?"

To the filled lower tiers of Sanders, Gordimer spoke of literature's revolutionary function once a "people's literature" has been created. "Writing can be prescribed as a therapy of industrial alienation," she said.

In America, "the desire for a people's literature is satisfied in the comic book," Gordimer said. "But where I come from the situation is a little different." There are few commonalities between Black and white in South Africa, she said.

"The generations have created among the masses a dislike for the Republic of Letters," Gordimer said. "The writer labors in a vocation which is not open to the public." She said she had been accused by some Blacks of "stealing their lives." In South Africa "there is a distrust of higher education" among the Blacks, as the school boycotts since 1976 suggest, Gordimer said.

Gordimer warned of creating a literature that condescends to "the masses." What is necessary is "the creation of a demand which can only be satisfied later," Gordimer said.

"Once we overcome the contradictions inherent in the term `people's literature,' only then can we answer the question "who writes?", all who have the ability, and "Who Reads?", the people," Gordimer concluded.

Harvard Phi Beta Kappa elects 12 students to the society during the junior year and 24 during the fall of the senior year. In May of the senior year it elects a number equivalent to 12 percent of the senior class. Selection is based on grade point average and letters of recommendation from teachers.

"I never thought four years ago I'd get out of Harvard with a Phi Beta Kappa key," said Courtney Koger '88, a history concentrator in Winthrop House.

The election hooked up at least three roommate groups: a threesome in Lowell, a pair in Cabot, and a pair in Dunster. Lowell House had the most inductees, with more than 20 percent of those elected.

At yesterday's procession, three Harvard faculty members received Phi Beta Kappa teaching awards: Assistant Professor of Mathematics Daniel L. Goroff, Associate Professor of History Drew R. McCoy and Professor of the Practice of the Japanese Language Tasuku Monane.

The Iota chapter of Phi Beta Kappa elected four women as honorary members: Ellen H. Goodman '63, Gordimer, Professor of History and of Women's Studies Olwen Hufton and Muriel Snowden '38. And the Alpha chapter elected eight men: William V. Binger '38, Michael R. Dilland '63, Avram J. Goldberg '51, John C. Harkness '38, Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Literatures Juan Marichal, Bishop Methodius, Thomas W. Rush '63 and Simic.