Word: socializing
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Also, there is the question of organization. The long flashback in the middle of the book sags perceptibly. After a couple of chapters one is perfectly willing to accept the author's word for the fact that the social strata in a small New England town are extremely solidified. Mr. Marquand, however, piles on more and more illustrations. Everything that happens to Charley Gray seems caused by the fact that he isn't quite on the top of the social ladder...
Finally, there is the basic philosophy of the book. While Mr. Marquand is a master at describing the outward characteristics of the people about whom he writes, he fails when he probes any deeper than their social climbing or the cut of their suits. Basically, he is saying that the man who typifies our urban eastern civilization, the rising executive who rides the commuter's locals and hopes to send his children to good prep schools, is caught in a horrible treadmill. A rut is what you make of it; even Mr. Marquand's social anthropologist--a fascinating literary device...
...report, General Education in a. Free Society (TIME, Aug. 13, 1945). As chairman of Harvard's Committee on General Education, he has spent the last three years in charge of an experimental program to divide the freshman curriculum into three balanced spheres: the humanities and the natural and social sciences...
Hollywood used to shy away from heavy "messages" and social consciousness, but last week the moviemakers were feverishly racing one another to make problem pictures. Emboldened by last season's success at denouncing anti-Semitism (Crossfire, Gentleman's Agreement) and examining mental illness (The Snake Pit), Hollywood was tackling a new and difficult subject: the Negro problem. Apparently no one was much worried about how it would do at the box office; the only question was which company would get its picture out first...
Culture, as he defines it, is being destroyed not by the atom bomb but by the fact that religious faith is declining more rapidly than ever before, that government planning and nursery schools are smashing the family group, that social barriers are being hurled down everywhere, and the last islands of regional diversity corrupted by mass communications and the passion for mass education...