The Late George Apley, whose narrator is the perfect embodiment of the kind of Harvard man that Marquand has been satirizing for the past twenty years, explores with amazingly sustained deadpan humor the narrow social sensibility that one usually associates with the "Old Grad" type. Clubs, the "Pudding," and afternoon tea at prominent Boston houses are the essential activities of George Apley at Harvard. With very minor variations, this type of society is the one that Marquand writes about when, as in Wickford Point and Sincerely, Willis Wayde, he turns specifically to Harvard. It would be silly to base a general criticism of Marquand on the fact that he does not give an entirely accurate picture of the contemporary undergraduate; he is writing about the Harvard that he knew.

The two most recent books that have devoted any considerable space to Harvard are John Phillips, '46 The Second Happiest Day and Faithful Are the Wounds by May Sarton. Phillips, who (as everyone will tell you confidentially) is Marquand's son, takes a closer look at the institutions which Marquand satirizes. But final clubs and social prestige are still the main thoughts of his Harvard students, although they have a far broader outlook than the George Apley type. Phillips plainly has an acute understanding of the kind of Harvard man he depicts, and has probably written the most valid and sympathetic description of the vanishing "Club Man:"

Spiritually Fuzzy had never left Cambridge. His was the narrow, complacent, unenergetic attitude for which a Harvard man is criticized. It was not aggressive, or positive; it had nothing to do with that disquieting intangible known as campus spirit. It was particularly dangerous when Yale men were at hand, since Fuzzy Eaton felt that all Yale men were fundamentally hypocrites.

Faithfully Are the Wounds is a disturbingly bitter indictment of the effect which a quest for "security" might have on the Harvard faculty and students. Although its location is Cambridge, the book is not so much a characterization of Harvard as it is a eulogy of a magnetic past member of the faculty. Sarton is concerned less with the Harvard scene and more with the struggle of a liberal mind in a time of national crisis.

Chronic Shortsight

When one views the great variety of literature and sub-literature that has been written about Harvard over the past 50 years, there is one common quality that is glaringly apparent. That is the inability or unwillingness of any of the authors to consider fully a Harvard student's raison d'etre--the process of acquiring an education. Although this gap in the authors' perspective is somewhat disturbing it can hardly be taken as evidence that all the authors think learning is outside the sphere of the Harvard undergraduate.

Probably the best explanation for this chronic shortsight is simply that a studying undergraduate is an awfully dull subject. A student closing his book of Greek paradigms is far less interesting than one who goes to the club to break beer bottles, or one who goes down to the field to slap backs