Modernism in the Magazines by Robert Scholes

Author:Robert Scholes [Scholes, Robert, Wulfman, Clifford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300142044
Publisher: YaleUP
Published: 2010-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

We still lack any reliable measure of the quality of teaching, and we still favor research over teaching in our colleges and universities—and we still lament this fact. In this respect human character seems not to have budged since 1911. But the common thread of measurement and the need to measure everything from teaching to shoveling runs through the entire issue of this magazine. Something, indeed, appears to be changing, if we can judge by this American magazine. What we are seeing here is the pressure of modernity on human character and culture—a pressure in the direction of greater measurement, greater quantification of human activities: measuring the success of the film industry by numbers of viewers and dollars, measuring the success of teachers by testing their pupils, measuring waste in the post office and other government activities against the standards of profitable industries.

We can also find in this issue an interesting discussion of the problem of representing the lives of great figures. Dorothy Lamon Teillard, in “Lincoln in Myth and Fact,” takes up the problem of such representation by discussing the persecution of her father for writing what she calls “the most faithful history of Mr. Lincoln’s life from his birth to his first inauguration.” In this article the author quotes extensively from the attacks on her father’s biography and also from letters praising it, written by people with some knowledge of the man and his life. She also discusses the impact of the criticism on her father, who finally suppressed the second volume he had intended to produce. She also calmly discusses the reasons why the book was found so offensive:

Many things combined against the acceptance of the truth then. First and perhaps the most important was the fact that so short a time had elapsed since the death of Mr. Lincoln. The memory of the hideous tragedy was still fresh. The reading public regarded it as an offense to trace his wonderful growth from so humble an origin. Then there was the religious world, which was shocked that he was described as unorthodox. What may be called the sectional public took exception to the unprejudiced attitude toward the South. (WW 21.4: 14042)

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