Word: matthiessen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Thirties were, in many ways, the "Golden Age" of History and Lit. The new limitation on enrollment had just taken effect, and F.O. Matthiessen, chairman of the board of tutors, began to emphasize the honors character of the field. History and Lit became, Perkins says, "insensibly, by circumstance, not by original plan" an honors field. A mystique grew up around the field; there was a tendency for History and Lit people to talk in terms of "we happy few;" they felt, as one observer put it, that "everybody from T. S. Eliot to Marx can be understood in terms...
History and Lit was now thought of as a field for an elite--a reputation that many concentrators and tutors have since tried to live down--but more important was the esprit de corps of the tutorial staff. It was a small, brilliant group, led by Matthiessen and Perry Miller; there was a feeling that they were doing something unique and important in the Harvard curriculum. There were disagreements, to be sure--some tutorial meetings ended in fistfights--but enough agreement existed on central principles and objectives to make History and Lit a great, cohesive field...
...used to describe those who founded the Paris Review [Aug. 11]. If the word bumptious is to be interpreted as "offensively self-assertive," it might better be applied to those who had whatever hand in producing this particular story. The Review was founded by Harold L. Humes and Peter Matthiessen, the author of two novels and many notable short stories. The first two recruits were George A. Plimpton and Thomas H. Guinzburg...
Pernods & Bludgeons. Review's four American founders spun together accidentally in the Paris literary whirl late in 1952. They were Plimpton (Harvard '48), Novelist Harold Humes (M.I.T. '48), Peter Matthiessen (Yale '50) and John P.C. Train (Harvard '50), son of the late lawyer-writer Arthur Train. Over Pernods at the Chaplain bar in Montparnasse, they agreed that the world badly needed a new little magazine, and scraped together $ 1,000 to start it. Their complaint: "Laden with terms like 'architectonic,' 'Zeitgeist' and 'dichotomous,' the literary magazines seem today...
...know, it is factually correct, as to dates, etc., though perhaps a bit indulgent in its judgment of personalities. I write this, however, to lament that Mr. Levy appears not to know the name of W. Ellery Sedgwick, who in the late 1930's was associated with Professor Matthiessen and me in the conduct of English 33. Both Matty and I learned as much from him as we did from any formal instrcutor of our own, and as a personality exciting the interest of students in this area throughout these years, he was of immense effectiveness. For the sake...