BOOKS and MEN One of the country’s most accomplished literary historians here discusses the works of Edwin O’Connor, and in particular, his latest novel, ALL IN THE FAMILY, just published by AtlanticLittle, Brown.
The ATLANTIChere gives the floor to critics of and commentators on “The Decline of Freedom at Berkeley,” Professor Lewis Feuer’s angry adieu to the University of California in the September issue. Additional reactions, including a final comment by Professor Feuer, will appear in the November ATLANTIC.
“Goodwill is one of the obscuring forces in academic life,” says Howard Mumford Jones, distinguished critic and literary historian, and in the name of goodwill the American university has assumed such a variety of responsibilities and peripheral services that its energies and attention have been diverted from its proper function, the critical examination of ideas.
The essay by HOWARD MUMFORD JONES which follows was written at the invitation of the Thoreau Society of America on the occasion of the installation of Thoreau’s bust in the Hall of Fame. Mr. .Jones, who began teaching at Harvard in 1936 and has been Abbott Lawrence Lowell professor of humanities, is note leaching at M.I. T. and is at work on a new book tracing the European origins of American culture.
In this pungent paper of dissension, HOWARD MUMFORD JONES laments the passing of the free elective system and explains why the compulsory and windy courses of today are having such a juvenile effect upon the college undergraduate. A scholar and author, Mr. Jones has been Professor of English at Harvard since 1936, and was Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1943 to 1944, and President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1944 to 1951.
Scholar and author, who was born in Michigan in 1892, HOWARD MUMFORD JONES took his B.A. at the University of Wisconsin in 1914 and his M.A. at the University of Chicago. He has been Professor of English at Harvard since 1936, and was dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1943 to 1944, and President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1944 to 1951. Throughout his teaching career Mr. Jones has been an ardent proponent of civil liberties, and this is the gist of a talk he gave recently at Wellesley College.
Educator, biographer, and poet. HOWARD MUMFORD JONES is a native of Michigan who has taught at the University of Texas, at Chapel Hill, and at the University of Michigan. Since 1936 he has been Professor of English at Harvard, and he is the author of many boohs and articles. Atlantic readers will recall his part in the debate on “The Withering of New England in our April, 1950, issue, but he now discerns a new social phenomenon which seems to be national rather than regional in scope.