However valid or ridiculous these generalizations may be, a novel appeared in 1944 which is probably the most deadly earnest work ever written about undergraduate life. This is Not To Eat, Not For Love, by George Anthony Weller '32. Weller attempts a serious treatment of the problems and complexities that beset an undergraduate mind, but his attempt to achieve a style somewhere between Joyce, Proust, and Ezra Pound is so obvious and consequently distracting that any perceptive statement is distressingly blunted. Weller also portrays his psychologically disturbed hero, Epes Todd, with such embarrassing earnestness and intensity that it is impossible for a reader to associate himself with Todd to the extent that Weller demands. For example, Epes Todd writes what we are to believe is an exceptionally brilliant if not conventional set of answers to an hour exam. The grader makes a series of picayune and absurdly literal comments on the exam and give Todd a D. The reader is expected to cry out against the injustice of such treatment--the submission of a great mind to a small mind, the curbing of genius by academic procedure, etc.--when his first, last, and only impulse is to laugh.

What is more than the diplomatic service, less than the Law School, and a fifty-five is nominated for Overseer of Harvard College?

But in a sieve I'll thither sail.

Rotterdam, Veeridam (ah, but the crew is cranky), Grande Dame (the liner she's), Rooseveltdam, Hotdam, Goddamn. Aphasia, Valeteria (founded in 1926), Ablaut, Umlaut, Nein and Ja (freight only).

4:33 A.M.

Shall I? Manager sans avoir falm faire l'amour en tout temps.

No. I'll go and see John the Founder, if I can do so without en-count-er-ing John the Yardcop. . .

Something approaching the importance which undergraduates attach to their studies and to extra-curricular activities is depicted in Weller's book, however. Brant, the young, troubled assistant professor going nowhere, and unable to "find" himself in the role of an educator, is pictured with a right amount of pity and disdain. Plainly, the great value of Not To Eat, Not For Love is that is treated the Harvard undergraduate not as an adolescent facing an adolescent's problems, but as a man facing problems involved with particular environment and situation. Although the novel's excesses are many, it was the first serious suggestion that a Harvard education had more to do with life than four pleasant years as a "college boy."

Probably the two oddest books over written about Harvard were also published in the 30's. Why their authors chose Harvard to be the location of the stories will always be shrouded in mystery. The first of these, Harvard Has A Homicide by Timothy Fuller, was published in 1936. It might well have been called The Count Turned Sleuth At Harvard. Jupiter Jones, the clever-thinking fast-talking, Fine Arts post-graduate, discovers a murdered professor, and pockets one of the clues. After successfully matching wits with the Cambridge police (which at that time seemed to be no very difficult task) he apprehends the murderer. The villain, of course, in not a Harvard gentlemen but a seedy, dissheveled little man with a foreign accent--who for all one known might be Oscar Maironi thirty years after.

Athletic Success Story

Fuller At Harvard by Robert S. Playfair is one of those athletic success stories which boys under sixteen are usually subjected to. This is one of the few, understandably enough, which has been written about Harvard athletics. Hank Fuller, son of the past football great, Toby Fuller, has the curse of his father's gridiron fame upon him, and suffers indescribable anguish when he proves himself an utter clout on every sort of playing field. In time, however, he overcomes what appears to be only a psychological condition, and wins the Yale hockey game with brilliant playing. This epic contains the usual amount of back-slapping, athletic "horse-play", and fighting for the team which such works usually offer.

These two books are interesting, for they represent decided throwbacks to the turn of the century at a time when the dean of observers of the Harvard scene, John Marquand, was levelling his sights on the Yard. Despite the accuracy and perception of many of Marquand's comments on the nature of Harvard, his viewpoint has certain limitations. Marquand's Harvard is that of the pre-World War II days: Harvard as a veritable breeding ground of class-consciousness, and the very soul of New England social-financial distinctions.

It is probably true that Harvard is still regarded in certain New England homes as "really the only possible place we could send our boy," but this is a reflection of an atmosphere, not of Harvard, but of those certain families and homes. Naturally Marquand is aware of this distinction, for he is not writing exclusively about Harvard, but about a small segment of upper and middle class New England.

Marguand's Satire

Nonetheless, Marquand has undoubtedly been greatly responsible for some outdated and rather absurd popular conceptions about the interests and caliber of the post-War Harvard undergraduate.