Word: burdick
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...EUGENE BURDICK...
...Burdick had looked vainly for the early '20s Oxford of Novelist Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited') where the "subtly homosexual youth . . . carries his teddy bear about St. John's Quad . . . boys roar out into the country in Bentley roadsters, and over Cointreau and plovers' eggs have some dazzling conversations "about God and Truth." But, said Burdick, "Times have changed since Waugh was here. The Oxford homosexual today has neither wittiness nor creative eccentricity to recommend him . . Parties revolve around gin and orange which is, beyond question, one of the most barbaric drinks that any people ever accepted...
Worst of all, Burdick thought, was what he called "cultural passivity." In England, he found, there was none of "the rise and fall, the massive brooding anxiety, the creative stabbing of self-doubt, the tortures of ethnic inadequacy that one finds to a marked degree in America and Asia . . ." He doubted very much whether England "could today produce a Shakespeare," but thought America or Asia might...
...Burdick wanted it understood that his criticisms had nothing to do with the way he had been treated at Oxford. "The anti-Americanism of Oxford is complex and subtle, [but] the sting [has been] taken out of it by the fact that it is fashionable to have an American friend. Perhaps it is for the same reason that the courts used to find the muscular slow-witted barbarian from Asia a curiosity and a comfort to have about. The role is somewhat uncertain, but it is interesting...
...Burdick's pronouncement had had one instant effect. Other Oxonians, including a batch of other Rhodes scholars, dashed to their desks to compose retorts for the next week's issue of I sis. It looked as though the year was off to a splendid start, with enough to sparkle and stutter about all through Michaelmas term...