The Public Arts: Gilbert Seldes

Gilbert Seldes, The Public Arts. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.) $3.95.

Mr. Seldes' new book provides us with a cogent rationale and a title for this new department. Why should English teachers be concerned about the effects and prospects of the public arts of commercial entertainment? Precisely because it is "not what anyone can turn off, but what nearly everyone turns to" that "creates the moral and intellectual and emotional climate in which we live." In short, it is because the public arts predetermine in an overwhelming way the level of the private sensibility that English teachers should "enter into open conspiracy to use the public arts in order to protect our heritage of national culture."

The unusual merit of this volume lies in its ability to state so clearly the problems involved in starting such an "open conspiracy." Seldes neatly quashes the broadcasters' evasive dogma of "giving the public what it wants" by showing that broadcasters create audiences for specific kinds of programs-to their glory in the instance of classical music, to their shame in the case of so many "harmless" genres. The public, he argues, has no more than an indeterminate desire to be entertained; the broadcaster fixes the ways by which such hazy desires are satisfied.

Disney's TV success, for example, clearly indicts those producers who covered their own lack of imagination by claiming children would only watch inferior material. Seldes further contends that "the need for bold imaginative creation for children will never be acutely felt while the standard of acceptability remains what it has been in broadcasting from the start: as long as no positive proof of harm is presented, the program may be transmitted. It is as meager an ethical standard as can be imagined." It is not enough that programs be innocuous; too few are bold enough to be disturbing, to challenge the mind and uplift the heart of the audience.

The real achievement of the book is that it immediately raises the level of discussion above the niggardly level of "no damage" to the reasonable one of positive contribution. Since the public arts dominate the common consciousness, they have the duty to ennoble it. This department will try to provide English teachers with strategies to be used in Seldes' "open conspiracy." Reading Seldes' book should be our first conspiratorial act.

Records
David Allen reads very beautifully selections from Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" (Poetry Records, 475 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, $5.95, 12" LP, PR #300). His choices are "One's Self I Sing," "I Hear America Singing," "Poets to Come," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," "Song of Myself" (excerpts), "When I heard the Learned Astronomer," "The Last Invocation," "Goodbye, My Fancy," "Hushed Be the Camps Today," "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night," and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed." All these are contained in the Mentor edition of "Leaves of Grass" (New American Library, Ms 117, 50?); most of them plus generous selections from the poet's prose are in The Whitman Reader (Pocket Books, GC-25, 50?).

Whitman's "Lilacs" brings to mind another interesting record, Abraham Lincoln as read by Carl Sandburg, Walter Huston, Orson Welles, and Agnes Moorehead (Decca, DL 8515, 12" LP, $4.98). The various angles of vision that different writers bring to bear on a single personality reveal much of both that person and of the nature of literature. The record contains writings on Lincoln by Sandburg, Edwin Markham, Walt Whitman, Rosemary Benet, Vachel Lindsay, as well as the President's Gettysburg and Second Inaugural Addresses. Paul M. Angle's The Lincoln Reader (Pocket, GC-23, 50') might well be included as supplementary reading.

It has become very easy for English teachers to keep up with both recordings and collateral paperbound books through two indispensable guides: Paperbound Books in Print (R. R. Bowker, 62 West 45th Street, New York; twice yearly, $3.00, "for a 200 page catalog of paperbacks indexed by subject, author, and title; individual copies, $2.00) and The Long Player (Sam Goody, 235 West 49th Street, New York 19, monthly catalog of all LP's; sample copy free; single issue, 35 ; $4.00 per year). Section 8, "Theatre, Films, and Speech," lists records of most immediate concern to the English teacher. "New Releases" are conveniently listed each month at the front of the catalog. Most interesting new releases: "My Fair Lady," musical based on Shaw's "Pygmalion," 12" Columbia CL 895; Prof. Frank C. Baxter's "The Nature of Poetry," 12", Spoken Art 703; "Siobhan McKenna reads Irish Poets," 12", Spoken Art 707; "Arthur Miller Reads from The Crucible and The Death of a Salesman," 12", Spoken Art 704 (Spoken Art, 275 Seventh Avenue, N.Y. 1, for catalog.)

Film
If Disney's Davy Crockett series dusted off one hero in the American pantheon, perhaps John Huston's film translation of Melville's Moby Dick will persuade some of our students to ship out on the Pequod this semester. The complete and unabridged novel (New American Library, 501 Madison Avenue, New York 22; 500) and an abridgement with introduction by Maxwell Geismar (Teen Age Book Club, 33 West 42nd Street, New York 36; 350) are ready to quench their sea-thirst.

Timid mariners can chart their courses by Harvard maritime historian Samuel Morison's essay on "how-to-read" the novel, printed with some handsome color stills from the film, Life (June 25, 1956). Other bulletin board material: Cover story in Saturday Review (June 9, 1956); two pages of black and white stills, New York Times Magazine (May 13, 1956), and a sixteen-page brochure (Dr. Charles Steinberg, Warner Brothers, 321 West 44th Street, New York). For teachers who want to set sail from Nantucket with an entire class, three essays contain suggestions for presenting the film and novel together: Milton Stern, "A New Harpoon for the Great White Whale," Clearing House (May 1956); "The Whale and the Minnow: Moby Dick and the Movies," College English (May 1956); and Ruth Goldstein, High Points (June 1956). Miss Goldstein's essay is reprinted, along with Dr. Joseph Mersand's study questions, in the September issue of The Green Sheet, Joint Estimates of Current Entertainment Films, c/o Mrs. Marjorie, 28 W. 44th St., N.Y., 36. Free.

Cecile Starr, the Saturday Review's 16mm. film critic, has edited Film Primer ($1.00, 'from Miss Starr, 311 East 72nd, New York), a volume that suggests clearly how English teachers can begin extracurricular discussions of the film as an art form by organizing high school film societies. See my descriptive review in Clearing House (September 1956).

Brandon Films (200 West 57th Street, New York 19) has just made available study guides to the following superior entertainment films: The Pickwick Papers; Elephant Boy, based on Rudyard Kipling's short story "Toomai of the Elephants"; Alexander Korda's Rembrandt; and Maurice Herzog's Annapurna.

Broadcast
There will be more first-rate dramatic and cultural programs on the networks next year than even the most exacting teachers could assign and explicate effectively. In the hope of providing sufficient time for them to prepare themselves and their classes, we will list even tentative scheduling of outstanding events. For definite confirmations see "Listenables and Lookables" in Scholastic Teacher; for last minute cancellations see either the drama section of the Sunday New York Times or TV Guide.

NBC-TV "Producer's Showcase" continues its ambitious planning: "The Lord Don't Play Favorites," with Louis Armstrong and Kay Starr (September 17); Somerset Maugham's "The Letter," with William Wyler as director (October 15); "Jack and the Beanstalk," a musical (November 12); Sol Hurok's second "Festival of Music" (December 10); "Lysistrata," with John Huston as producer-director (January 7); "Mayerling," with Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer (February 4) ; the Old Vic company in "Romeo and Juliet" (March 4); "Ruggles of Red Gap," a musical, possibly with Alec Guinness (April 1); Sadler's Wells in "Cinderella" (April 29); and the Lunts in "The Great Sebastians" (May 25). Monday evenings.

Maurice Evans will produce some of Hallmark Hall of Fame's programs, with "Man and Superman" (November 25) and "Born Yesterday" (October 28). Sunday evenings, NBC-TV. "Omnibus" has moved to ABC-TV in prime Sunday evening time and has selected Walter Kerr as drama consultant. "Camera Three" (CBS-TV), Sunday mornings, deserves a better time period, and English teachers could very well muster grass roots sentiment for a change. The first thing to do is to see that your local station carries it. Robert Herridge, brilliant producer of "Camera Three," has moved into nighttime drama, and his "Studio One" (CBS-TV), Monday evenings, will bear watching. Worthington Miner, one of the creative giants of TV drama, is producing the new "Kaiser Aluminum Hour" (NBC-TV), Tuesday evenings. "Playhouse 90" (CBS-TV), Thursday evenings, is the first weekly 90-minute drama; it has interesting plans.

Source: The English Journal, Vol. 45, No. 6 (Sep., 1956), pp. 367-369
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English