Youth in society

OUTH have traditionally
been the butt of adult frus-
tration, fear and concern.
They have been treated as spe-
cimens, as incorrigible delin-

quents, as anything but people. ~

There is a general move now to
deal seriously with problems
prevalent among teen-agers, yet
there is little recognition that
teen-agers are mainly what their
environment makes them.

The alarming increase in juv-
enile crime, pre-marital preg-

~nancies, and school drop-outs

cries out for explanation. Who
has the answer? deals with
these delinquencies among the
young. Written by the modera-
tor of the Youth Forums on the
NBC TV-radio networks it docu-
ments young people’s reactions

* to rebellion in their ranks.

Why is VD on the increase?
Why do children have children?
Why do more kids want more
kicks?

Young people tell Dorothy
Gordon, their parents tell her,
and so do recognized authori-
ties in education, civil rights,
medicine and religion. She con-
cludes that “the answer lies in

‘i a a ea ne tame tenis

WHO HAS THE ANSWER?: by
- Dorothy Gordon, Dutton
(1965), $4.75.

YOUTH; CHANGE AND CHAL-
LENGE: edited by E. H. Erik-
son, Basic Books (1963), $8.75.

THE PSEUDO-ETHIC, by Mar-
garet Halsey, Simon and
Schuster (1963), $3.95.

the home, in the house of wor-
ship, in the community, in the
mass media. Until adults accept
their responsibility the youth
never will.”

This is the only answer pos-
sible within the context of con-
temporary American society;
but it is not the ariswer to the
further question — why have
adults reneged on their respon-
sibility?

A far more learned approach:

to youth in society is Youth;
Change and Challenge, a collec-
tion of 13 essays which first ap-
peared in Daedalus, the journal
of the American Academy of
-Arts and Sciences in the Win-
ter, 1961-62 issue.

Nine social scientists, a jus-
tice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
a newspaper man, a physician
and a director of training for
the Peace Corps speak about the
young as they appear to them,
ie. 13 adults (albeit sympathe-
tic and knowledgeable) docu-
ment the youthful condition in
the U.S., Japan, USSR, France.

Bruno Bettelheim, a_ social
scientist, deals with the dif-
ferences between the genera-
tions, and explains not only the
traditional contention between
old and young but the “lack of
‘fulfilment and definite commit-
ment” that defeats the young
man of today as he views “ex-
isting manhood as empty, sta-
tic, obsolescent,” and “the fate
of the girl can be even harder
than the boy’s.”

Joseph Kauffman of the Peace
Corps supports this view when

he says, “If we are to encour-
age and utilize the vast resourc-
es of energy and idealism that
seek expression our leadership
must be of a quality and char-
acter to call forth the necessary
response . . . This means that
goals cannot be specious.”

Other variations on this same
theme arise in all the essays as
serious men discover that youth
change with the challenge.

And all the time perhaps the
American youth have been in-
fluenced by what Margaret Hal-
sey calls The Pseudo-ethic. A
general decline in American
ethical standards sends her to
find the root of the problem,
and she finds Whittaker Cham-
bers and Senator McCarthy
there.

It was “ethical” for Chambers
to lie about Alger Hiss to save
America from Communism, and
then it became “ethical” for.any-
one to lie about anything so
long as America remained
“free.”

“Since anti-Communism as a
domestic issue is the keystone
in the arch of the pseudo-ethic,
one effective way to demolish
that false edifice is to knock the
props out from under the pro-
fessional anti-Communists, be-
ginning with the vulnerable
Witness.” Thus far Halsey is
right, but then she calls for a
return to the Judeo-Christian
principles of morality — those
same principles which proved
ineffective against Chambers in
the first place.

—Florence Rushing.

Somerset Maugham

W: SOMERSET Maugham
died last week at the age
of 91.

A prolific writer, a popular
writer, a stylist, a craftsman, a
polished professional — all these
he has been called, but not a
great writer.

Why not?

His novels and short stories
have been acclaimed and tran-
slated the world over. The sto-
ries are notable for their clever-

mess and wit, the one line ex-

quisite shocker of an ending.
His novels are the kind you
can’t put down. From the open-
ing paragraph you are delight-

_ fully secure, certain that you are

in capable hands, that no wrong
word will jar, nor inept plot-

_ ting suspend belief,

And yet ...not a great writer.

Maugham’s writing covered a
span of 50 years. His youth was

_ passed in those unbelievably dis-
_ tant

years before ‘the First
World War. The years of Ed-

wardian elegance, of precious
_ Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde,
_ Frank Harris, George Moore,

Beardsley and the Yellow Book.
The years too of black despair-
ing poverty in the London
slums. His experiences as a

“young doctor in the charity -

wards of a hospital furnished
material for his first novel, “Liza
of Lambeth.”

During the First World War
he became an intelligence of-
ficer. One of his missions in-
volved a trip to Russia. His job
was to make sure that the Bol-
sheviks did not come to power
and that Russia stayed in the
war. “It is not necessary for me
to inform the reader that in this
I failed lamentably,” writes
Maugham, “and I do not. ask
him to believe me when I state
that it seems to me at least pos-
sible that if I had been sent six
months before I might quite
well have succeeded.”

However, in seeming contra-
diction, Maugham wrote in “The
Summing Up”: “We live now on
the eve of great revolutions...
For my part I must can-
didly say that I hope the pres-
ent state of things will last my
time. But we live in an era of
rapid change and I may yet see

the countries of the west given
over to the rule of communism.”

For most of his life Maugham
travelled widely. Stories of the
South Seas, China, Southeast
Asia, reflect his wandering. He
was happiest, he tells us, as an
observer, a listener, a non-par-
ticipant in either emotions or
events.

. Perhaps Maugham answers
my question best himself:

“My sympathies are limited
...I am not a sociai person. I
cannot get drunk and feel a
great love for my fellow men.
Convivial amusement has al-
ways somewhat bored me...I
do not much like being touched
and I have always to make a
slight effort over myself not to
draw away when someone links
his arm in mine. I can never for-
get myself . . . I.am incapable
of complete surrender. And so,
never having felt some of the
fundamental emotions of nor-

-mal men, it is impossible that

my work should have the inti-

macy, the broad human touch ©

and the animal serenity which
the greatest writers alone can
give.” —Monica Whyte.

“When will it be over?”

-Sholokhov

By WILLIAM DEVINE
Tribune Staff Correspondent ; q
MOSCOW

Mean SHOLOKHOV obviously got more fun
out of the press conference than we did.

‘
fr
tf

‘1

3

The 60-year-old Soviet writer (Quiet Flows the k

Don), winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature, jq
was the centre of attention of scores of newsmen when |

he stopped off in Moscow last month on his way to fe

Sweden to receive the award.

he handled questions on a wide range of subjects.

Examples: Question: What kind of books do you | :
good ones. Question: If you 3

read? Answer: Mostly

were a journalist, what would you ask Sholokhov
Answer: When will this press conference be over?

Sholokhov’s white hair and moustache show his.
60 years. But his ruddy complexion and clear, twin-

kling eyes are those of a man much less his age. A
is the youthfulness of his carriage and movements—
possibly because writing books seems never to have

interfered with his favorite hobbies of hunting and

fishing.
I once asked a friend of mine who follows literary

developments if there was much controversy about |
Sholokhov’s. works, “No,” he ‘replied after a few mo- ®
ments of thought, “I don’t think so. Sholokhov’s place {
is such that his works are ©

in Soviet literature now
just not the subject of controversy.”

But Sholokhov the man is not uncontroversial,
One reporter asked what his attitude was to the

winning of the Nobel Prize by the late Boris Paster- v

nak, author of the controversial Dr. Zhivago,

Sholokhov recalled that the first Russian writer
to win the Nobel Prize had been Ivan Bunin, who was
an emigrant living in France at the time. Pasternak,

“he stated, had been an “inner emigrant.”

“T am proud,” he said, “that I am the first winner
who is not an emigrant of any kind.”

Another reporter asked -if he still felt Pasternak | )

was a poet for old ladies, as he had said in 1958.

“Nothing can influence my
replied. “I still think the same.”

_ What about the works of Alexander Solzhenitsin,
author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,
which describes life in a concentration camp during
the Stalin personality cult?

“Not all memoirs,” said Sholokhoy curtly, “can be
regarded as good literature.”

What about modernism? “I am_ not against
modernism and innovation, but I am for reasonable,
cautious modernism.”

Are Soviet writers free to write whatever they
want?

“No one is forbidden to write about anything.
But the question is, how to write, I stand for those
writers who look honestly into the eyes of Soviet
power and publish their works here and not abroad.”

He seemed to enjoy himself as for half an hour /

opinion,” Sholokhov |

January 7, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page

6