February 15,1978 Page Five 4-5 COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR Short on talent he ain't

Feedback SAWIKIN style consists of a souther drawl wrapping By HARVEY 's is itself around different characters. In the without question his best record, and it is beautiful "Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Getting it right without unmentioned aspects also the best album of the year. There has Father," Newman's delicate phrasing been an abundance of excellent releases conjures up the vision he intends: recently (Billy Joel's, Linda Ronstadt's, Here lam alone on the plain I hope that any of your readers among Steely Dan's), but this collection of 12 ab- Sun's goin' down faculty members of the Physics the Columbia University in the City of New York | New York, N. Y. 10027 solutely magnificent songs towers above It's starting to rain Department have learned to accept the them all. Papa we'll go sailing. text of an article in Spectator as a zeroth SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & APPLIED SCIENCE Randy Newman, a Jerseyite, has in the Again his voice allows him to approximation the content of an in- of past stuck to such scenes as , 1927, change costume for the title track, a tough terview. If not, I must expect some sharp Office of the Denn Seeley W. Mudd Building and Kingfish. On Little Criminals, however, little saga of the small-time crook whose questions from that faculty, who are Newman sets off on a trip around the world. failure is inevitable, but whose hope lingers portrayed in a recent article on proposals extend to several faculty members in the across the spectrum implied by our official weakened as a university if each of its For example, "In Germany Before the pitifully on: for reorganization of the Engineering Graduate School of Business similar in- name, including courses on applied divisions stood in isolation from all others. War" is his vision of the hollowness of pre- We've almost made it School as being scheduled for wholesale vitations to accept unbudgeted mem- physics. In developing courses of this kind The Engineering School is perhaps the World War II Dusseldorf. In its haunting We've almost made it to the top. inclusion in our faculty. We propose bership in the proposed Industrial we are anxious to avoid unnecessary best example of a division that draws upon final verse: Newman's piano-playing is not what one something much more modest, and I hope Engineering and Operations Research overlap with courses presented in the all of the intellectual resources of the We lie beneath the autumn sky would call virtuoso, but his persistent more realistic. If the Trustees accept our Department. The objectives for this Physics Department, and we want our University, and we hope to keep it that A£y little golden girl and I chords tend to complement his cynical proposal, we will invite a few members of proposal are similar to those noted above. students in Applied Physics to take full way. And she lies very still—we can lyrics, such as on "", the single the Physics Department to accept non- advantage of the strengths and interests of In offering some corrections of the ar- Almost hear the sound of goosestepping from this album. It's a truly funny song, and budgeted membership in a department of The article is also incorrect in the Physics faculty. ticle on our reorganization printed in your its . backed masterfully by a string section that Impersonation of Albert Einstein in Nazi boots . . his one repeated piano riff tends to increase Applied Physics and Nuclear Engineering, that "There are currently no issue of 30 January, 1978,1 do not mean to statement Newman's imagery has never been more the song's sarcasm: neither disappears nor takes over. America:" while maintaining their present budgeted Engineering School courses offered in Approximately one-third of the. courses be unduly critical. The article was powerful than in "Jolly Coppers on Par- They got little hands America, America membership in the Physics Department. Applied Physics at the Engineering taken by nearly eighteen hundred assembled for the Monday edition on the rade," which was suggested by the title of And littleeyes Randy Newman is a musical genius in all Step out into the light We do hope that by including these few School." This misunderstanding probably engineering students at Columbia are basis of a telephone call I received from a Swedish movie: And they walk around telling great big lies. respects; in his simple, catchy melodies, in You're the best dream man has ever individuals in our departmental faculty we arose as an incorrect inference from the taught by faculty members whose primary the reporter at my home on the preceding They're coming down the street The back-up musicians that Newman has his arrangements, and in his vocals . . . but dreamed will strengthen our coordination with the fact that there are no courses in the activities lie outside the Engineering Sunday, and under such pressures the They're coming right down the middle assembled such notables as Ry his lyrics completely steal the show. He can and may all your Christmases be white. Physics Department and increase the Engineering with the formal School. Many fewer students outside of the reporter did rather well. This was a include School Look how they keep the beat Cooder, and Glenn Frey ancTJoe Walsh of take us to the sunny southern sidewalk of Get Little Criminals. Do it right now. likelihood of complementary development designator "Applied Physics." In fact we Engineering School take courses from our complex story, and she got most of it right. Why, they're as blue as the ocean. the Eagles. Newman uses them to their "You Can't Fool the Fat Man;" to the early Besides being a mixture of consummate of our two faculties. have in the School of Engineering and faculty, but we hope in time to increase Peter Likins fullest potential, does with morning decay of "Baltimore," to the quiet musicianship and chuckling Jersey poetry, Unmentioned in the article is the plan to Applied Science a wide range of courses this number. Columbia would be greatly Dean, School of Engineering Newman's skill at projecting different as he his or- moods is not confined to his lyrics, brilliant chestration. On "Texas Girl", for example, loneliness of "Old Man on the Farm." He it stands as proof-positive that music is not the piano stands alone in foreground, even tells us about "Sigmund Freud's only as good as ever, but a lot better. Calling for the protection of coal strikers's rights though they are. His distinctive, gritty vocal the As New York residents are well aware, companies are willing to resort to defend The health and safety hazards, for district-wide strike committees by mass the past few years have witnessed savage their profits was demonstrated once again example, which are so common in the meetings of the miners; spreading the cutbacks, layoffs, and the elimination of supernatural by the murder of Mack Lewis, a retired mines, will not be eliminated by the good strike to as steel; mix, novel related Bad Collins industries, such vital social services in the city and miner, shot five times by a hired gun- will of the coal bosses. Defeat of the strike calling upon labor to "hot cargo" collection nationally. In the name of "balancing the slinger of the Diamond Coal Company as threatens the very existence of the United (refuse to handle) scab coal. These By TOM SOTER Dover Books, which published a "the novel in which we may feel Collins as years before and Collins himself, forced to of Collins' ghost stories a few years ago, has budget" and "responsible spending," he talked to pickets at a struck site in Mine Workers; it would also represent a measures can bring the bosses to their Armadale, by Wilkie Collins (Dover, 595 pp., imaginatively at his farthest out." The story take drugs for a nagging affliction, was thousands of jobs have been lost and Eastern Kentucky. Far from being cowed serious demoralizing influence on the U.S. knees. $5.00). now come out with two more oddities. One is deals with two young men named Allan hardly as alert as he needed to be for the volume, while the millions in wages and pension funds have by this savage attack, the miners have labor movement as a whole. We of the Spartacus Youth League, a Little Novels, by Wilkie Collins (Dover 244 a lacklustre short story Armadale—both destined, through actions complicated plot constructions that were his other is full-length novel. Both are literally been ripped out of the pockets of escalated their activity, dispatching But more than ever the miners' nationwide socialist youth group, pp., $3.00). a committed by their parents, to repeat the trademark. their original magazine the working class and poor. And the one roving picket squads to extend the in- militancy is needed to win this strike. The wholeheartedly support the miners strike. "Among English novels of the present reproduced from past. There is a conniving villainess, Lydia Little Novels was released in England in force which has the actual power to deal a fluence of the strike by shutting down Miller leadership of the UMW has As partisans of the working class on day," said Victorian author Anthony pages. Gwilt, and a naive hero, and also a great 1879 but never in America. Its title is the novel, is book decisive blow to the capitalist offensive— other industries in an effort to undercut the demonstrated its allegiance, not to the campus, we champion the traditions of Trollope in 1876, "and among English Armadale, a about deal of effective atmosphere. Although plot something of a misnomer, .though it is in fatality— but the the working class—has thus far been effects of company stockpiling. 194 interests of class struggle, but to ham- labor solidarity and militancy practiced novelists, a great division is made. There not sort of fatality that contrivances are frequently evident, some ways appropriate since it implies a Here, shackled by its pro-capitalist misleaders, militants were arested when nearly 500 mering out a modus vivendi with the by the miners. Thus we were the only are sensational novels and anti-sensational; besets Thomas Hardy's characters. it Armadale is fun partly because of and gentleness that is suited to many of these is unreal—and therefore from Meany to Shanker to Gotbaum. miners converged on a coal dock in Rock- bosses at the expense of the miners. Since campus organization last year which sensational novelists and anti-sensational; more more partly in spite of them. "It has no merit short tales. Collins, however, was a novelist, to tolerable—and the sense of gloom that The major exception this rule port, Indiana to prevent the transference his election, in which he brought the class refused to cross the picket lines set up by sensational readers and anti-sensational. beyond melodrama," said T.S. Eliot in 1932, and his writing technique relies a great deal pervades Hardy novels like nationwide—and therefore a potential of coal from rail to barge. And since nearly enemy into the union in the name of Columbia campus workers during the The novelists who are considered to be anti- Jude the "and it has every merit that melodrama on the Victorian novel's massive length. the example for the whole working class—is 50 per cent of coal operations in the U.S. "democracy"—to his breaking of three TWU strike. sensational are generally called realistic. I Obscure or Tess of D'Urbervilles is can have." Consequently, these attempts at short absent. the coalminers. The militant strike they are non-union, the striking miners have major wildcats—to his scuttling of the The fundamental lesson of the miners am realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is It's unfortunate that one can't say the stories are feeble and exhibit only the ghost are now waging in the face of scabs, picketed these sights to keep scab right to strike in the 1974 contract, Miller's strike is the need for a workers govern- generally supposed to be sensational." But, like many of Hardy's short stories, same about Dover's second discovery, Little of Collins' great powers of construction. Armadale deals with supernatural gunthugs and to some extent even their operations shut tight from Tennessee to "new"regime has brought the UMW to the ment to end the vicious system of That he certainly was—and the success of a Novels, which might better be titled "The Most are predictable, some are effectively leadership, stands element—the fulfillment of a own as a formidable Maryland. brink of disaster. capitalist exploitation once and for all. The his third novel The Woman in White in 1860 is multi-faceted End of the Road for Wilkie." Collins was evocative, none are terribly good. The best to dream—and of destiny. obstacle Carter's goal of a domesticated The miners are fighting for the right to A new leadership, based on a class- Spartacus Youth league is building a youth generally considered the starting point of the power near the end of his life when he published are "Mr. Percy and the Prophet"—which working class. strike—the only real safeguard of any struggle program, is needed. Such a organization dedicated to this goal Collins' career. It is, as critic J.I.M. Stewart pointed out, this volume; Dickens had died over ten has some chilling moments, "Mr. Cosquay The ruthless measures to which the mine gains wrested by miners from the owners. program would include: election of Spartacus Youth League Woman is a classic of its type, with larger- and the Lady"—which contains a few nice than-life villains, fast-moving events and, twists, and "Mr. Lismore and the Widow"— most importantly, a complex plot that twists the only truly surprising story in the bunch. Naive evasion is not the answer to this question and turns through corridors of coincidence The detective short story and the ghost and logic until it reaches its satisfying tale were better handled by Poe in the 1830's Much of the recent debate on military help-mankind. The former position has Then, to illustrate this fallibility, he might today be living under the swastika. conclusion. With The Moonstone, it is and '40's and Conan Doyle in the '90's, and funding of scientific research has been become less and less popular, and is rarely pointed out that "when Faraday was No one wants blood on their hands, and it probably the only one of Collins' novels that coincidentally, Doyle's Sherlock Holmes vibrant and confused. Vivid images df portrayed with the grandeur of a Galileo looking at electromagnetic in- is hard to argue with the contention that an will achieve any kind of literary im- made his appearance not long after Little

well-intentioned professors duped into pursuing truth, whatever the effect on duction ... in 1830, he didn't foresee investigator must consider the ultimate mortality; it is also the only Collins novel Novels took its bow. If nothing else, Collins' becoming the accomplices of blood-thirsty Catholic society. The problem with the radar." One can almost feel the heads effect of his research on humanity. But the that, as T.S. Eliot has said, "closely ap- book indicates the foundations on which generals are everywhere: remember poor latter approach, however, is that even if shaking in condemnation of this foul place of this difficult calculus has been proaches Dickens." Doyle and his successors were to build. Lord Rutherford and Hiroshima. Yet even one ignores the educational issue of how misuse of honest research. One can also see usurped in the public literature by the Not coincidentally, Collins' and Dickens' Perhaps, however, realist Anthony after the reflections of countless amateur we are supposed to train physicists to those heads buried in the sand. They have imperative that one must never personally careers are closely intertwined. They met Trollope summed up Collins' great virtues ethicians, the hard moral issues involved predict history, one finds that few ad- avoided the issue. What if Faraday had contribute to one's nation's military during production of the former's 1855 play and flaws best. seem to have been only superficially ex- vocates of this "consequentialist" position that crystal ball, whose nonexistence capacity. This is not an answer. It is a The Frozen Deep, a melodramatic love "Wilkie Collins," said Trollope in his plored. have followed out their own logic. Prof. Foley documents? Should he have naive and simplistic evasion of the com- story in which they both had roles. A autobiography, "seems so to construct his Our choice of normative models has Professor of Physics Henry Foley was tuned in to the slaughter of Luftwaffe plex issues which must be faced in this friendship resulted and Collins was offered a (novels) that he not only, before writing, been portrayed, roughly, as between the quoted in these pages recently as saying aviators potentiated by radar, stopped his sensitive and emotional area. Surely job on Dickens' new magazine Household plans everything on, down to the minutest deontological look-where-you-want-and- that scientists lacked the foresight to research, and thus preserved his Columbia deserves better than that. Words. There, he produced a series of Poe- detail from the beginning to the end; but don't-worry-what-results, and the more successfully "avoid investigations which academic purity? For had those Nazi E. L. Flatow like tales of the supernatural. then plots it back again to see that there is responsibly teleological research-should- could lead to nefarious applications." pilots been spared, much of the world no piece of necessary dove-tailing which does not dove-tail with absolute accuracy. The construction is most accurate and most wonderful. But I can never lose the taste of Head Residents or Lebensraum? the construction. The author seems always to be warning me to remember that Given the university's newest proposal student" category who is being opened employed up. something happened at exactly half-past to subject students to the indignity of by Columbia while not actually registered Admittedly this is not going to solve the two o'clock on Tuesday morning; or that a "doubled-up" rooms, I wish to propose an at the university, as well as a recently problems of more than 20 30 or students. woman disappeared from the road just equally plausible solution to the housing departed head resident who was also in But I find it obscene that Columbia fifteen yeards beyond the fourth milestone. shortage: eliminate several of the that situation. While that may be perfectly University will continue to subsidize the One is constrained by mysteries and Residence Counselor and Head Resident legal according to the regulations of the housing needs of a select few while hemmed in by difficulties, knowing, rooms. Certainly upper-classmen don't Housing Office, I for one find it unethical. jeopardizing losing academically qualified however, that the mysteries will be made need to have a counselor on every floor Since most counselors (or at least those students and eventually its own (the and the difficulties overcome at the reason for counselors in Furnald "special students" and graduate students) reputation. clear, end of the third volume." completely eludes me)—three or four would probably move off campus were Merri Rosenberg would suffice. I know of at least one there Whether one agrees with Trollope or not, not the inducement of free room plus Barnard Senator long", residence counselor in the "special $500 or $1000, at least some rooms would be Armadale is the perfect book for a features snowy weekend in the country.