In 2017 Matthew Cissell gave a lecture at the International Pynchon Week conference about Thomas Pynchon's time in NYC just after graduating from Cornell.
I wish Matt had told me, cuz I'm just a short train ride away! Doh!
One thing he focused on in his lecture was the informal salon that affluent couple Hans and Greta Meyerhof hosted, at time including Pynchon and his set, aka "The Whole Sick Crew."
Apparently, Cissell was turned onto the subject by our interview with Mr. Tod Perry, back when we were investigating some potentially unknown photographs of Pynchon, an investigation which morphed into a broader look at Cornell in the 50's and the "Cornell School" of writers.
I recently posted about Cissell's request on the P-List for any info on the Meyerhofs. I guess he got what he needed!
This is exactly the kind of thing we hope for. Mr. Perry makes a few brief remarks about the Meyerhofs and it gets turned into an entire lecture. When we're dealing with a writer like Pynchon, who is a very private man, anything we can study will shed light on the genesis of and motifs found in his work. Rad!
We're glad to have made our small contribution to Pynchon Studies, and thanks Matt for giving up a shout out.
Investigating these individuals led us to write another post about a student protest, sometimes dubbed a "riot", that occurred about the time this photograph was taken in 1958.
One of the people we contacted was Carl Leubsdorf ('59), a veteran political journalist and past president of both the
Gridiron Club and the White House Correspondents' Association. He was also Associate Editor of the Cornell Daily Sun at the time of the duel photo shoot(The Cornell Daily Sun,Volume LXXV, Number 25, 24 October 1958). These photos feature one "Ivan Cbarl":
Dr. Cbarl confirms Aladar's death.
Digging around The Sun archives, we discovered that Leubsdorf's name had been misspelled as "Cbarl" on a byline for an earlier article and speculated that Ivan Cbarl and Leubsdorf were one and the same. We also found a letter to the editor by Ivan Cbarl from a couple years later, and speculated that it was written by the same person.
We sent Mr. Leubsdorf a link to the post and asked him if he could shed any light on Dr. Cbarl's origin.
This was his response:
I can indeed help you. As the blog points out, I was indeed
Dr. Ivan F. Cbarl and the name was indeed inspired by the typo in which my
byline appeared one day in The Sun as Cbarl P. Leubsdorf. I did write the
letter when I was working for the AP in New Orleans.
The duel was conceived by the editors of The Sun, led by
Editor-in-Chief David Engel and Managing Editor Bob Malina, for the Spring
Weekend edition of The Sun. I was the Associate Editor, or editorial page
editor, of The Sun. As the article points out, college newspapers of the day
often had joke issues, akin to today's Onion, for special social occasions on
campus. Our idea was to have a perfectly straight paper with the exception of
the article about the duel. We had hoped to stage it in the middle of campus,
in the Arts Quadrangle, but realized that, by the time there was enough light,
there might be others there. So we moved it to the cemetery on Stewart Avenue,
just below the campus. As the pictures show, the light was indeed not very
good.
Farina was indeed Herman Hochkappler; I can't remember where
that name came from but I don't think it came from another student; the name of
the other dueler, Marcel Aladar, came from Editor-in-Chief Engel, whose middle
name was Aladar. [...] The young lady, who was the object of the duel,
was perhaps Farina's girl friend. She was not Diane Divers, whom I knew
well and was in a number of classes with since we were both government majors.
Heartened by this response, we sent him a list of questions:
Did
we get anything totally wrong in our blog posts? If so, can you clear
up the facts for us?
Who
was using the name Ludlow in the photos? Just to clarify, in the third picture on our first blog post,
was that Guy du Puy on the left and Ludlow on the right?
Did
Fariña write the dueling article?
We'd
like to know more about the pantheon of characters and
pseudonyms. Aladar, Cbarl, Hochkappler, Ludlow, du Puy, Huntington...what
other adventures did they get into, other than those we cited?
In
our article, we wrote, "If Minstral Island is a jagged look
at concerns Pynchon and Sale would address throughout their lives,
mightn't the Sun articles also have some use, however minimal,
in that regard?" Any thoughts on this speculation? Can you
point us to anything that Pynchon or Fariña wrote (or
collaborated on) in The Cornell Daily Sun under pseudonyms?
Do
you know why Sale's arm was in a sling in photos of the protest?
One
of the four students who was initially suspended immediately following the
student protest was identified in newspapers as as "Robert M.
Perry". Was this Perry the same person as Todd (or Tod) Perry who was
reportedly good friends with Fariña, Pynchon, and Sale?
As
you can tell, we think this was a fascinating time/place to have gone to
college -- with such talented group of students! Do you have any stories
you'd care to share or misconceptions you'd care to clear up?
Can you tell us if Pynchon,
Sale, Fariña, and/or Perry appear in any of these photos of the
student protests (see attached)? If so, can you point them out for
us? These photos all appeared in the Sun's coverage of the student
protest, although the first one is copied from an AP reprint in the NY
Daily (by the way, President Malott is the person circled in this
first photo). If it helps to see these images in the context of the Sun,
here are links: images 1 and 2 (The Cornell Sun, May 26, 1958, p. 7); image 2 - The Cornell
Sun (The Cornell Sun, May 26, 1958, p. 1).
Mr. Leubsdorf responded:
Let me try to answer at least some of this. Perhaps my
general discussion will help you with the specifics.
One thing is important to understand: Though a couple of
people were involved in both, there was no real connection between the May 1958
demonstrations and the fraudulent duel that was staged for the October 1958
Fall Weekend issue of The Sun. The demonstration that got out of hand was the
culmination of a long battle between the Cornell administration, led by
President Deane Malott and his executive assistant Lloyd Elliott (later
president of George Washington U), and various student groups including the Student
Council and The Sun over student rights. As such it was something of a
forerunner of the more significant civil rights struggles of the early 1960s.
It was precipitated, as is suggested in the post, by the
comments of Theresa Humphreyville (real name), who was chair of a President's
Committee on Student Affairs. At a Student Council meeting at the beginning of
the week, she made the inflammatory comment that "apartment parties (a
term used for the presence of men and women at social or even academic gatherings
in off-campus apartments) were conducive to petting and intercourse"
and should be banned. I've always believed that her comment, reported in The
Sun, was the spark that set things off. I was Associate Editor and David Engel
was editor-in-chief and, following in the footsteps of previous editors Andrew
Kopkind (56-57) and Kirk Sale (57-58), we roundly condemned the administration
position. What started as a peaceful demonstration at midday got out of hand
with eggs thrown at Edmund Ezra Day Hall, the administration building. A second
demonstration at night got even more out of hand and led to the burning of
President Malott in effigy and the march on his off-campus house. I wrote about
many of these events in a 100th anniversary edition of The Sun in 1985. Sale,
the former editor of The Sun, appeared at the nighttime rally, and was one of
the main speakers who fired up the crowd. I believe he is the person pictured
in the middle of the group with his hand up in the air. At the time, Sale, who
was about to graduate, was living off campus with several friends, I believe
including Pynchon, Seidler and possibly Farina. They were there with him, but he
was really the principal figure as the former Sun editor who had led the fight
against the restrictive student rules. His picture appeared in a prominent way—the one with his hand raised in a way that made him look like the ringleader—in many pictures across the country and, among other things, cost him a
newspaper job he had lined up. Robert Perry and Tod Perry were, I'm pretty
sure, the same person; he was another friend of Kirk's. I believe Farina is
pictured in the picture that shows Dean Frank Baldwin, but most of the pictures
are too crowded for me to recognize individuals. The Sun said that, while the
cause was justified and the initial demonstration was a good idea, the
nighttime demonstration was a mistake and the violence was inevitable. For
that, we were roundly condemned by some of our former Sun colleagues. Ironically, Lloyd Elliott was headed for a new job as President of the
University of Maine. The same edition of The Sun that reported on the
demonstrations also reported on the naming of John Summerskill as Vice
President for Student Affairs. Summerskill, a liberal, was very different from
Malott and Elliott and, over the next several years, guided the administration
and student body in a very different direction including far more power for a
revamped student government. Summerskill later became president of San
Francisco State University and was a central figure in the student
demonstrations there in the mid-1960s. Many accounts described his appointment
as resulting from the demonstrations but, in fact, he had been named
beforehand.
The duel was totally separate, conceived of by a group of
Sun editors, as a good centerpiece for the Fall Weekend issue. As I said
before, like many college papers, we sometimes did totally fraudulent
Onion-like papers for these weekends; this time, the whole paper was legitimate
except for the duel. I've explained to you the origins of Dr. Cbarl and Marcel
Aladar. The name Ludlow stems from a Linotype process involving the melting
down of lines of type after they're used. Though Farina was Hochkappler, I
don't think he had any further involvement in either the conception or the
writing of the article. Pynchon was not the other dueler.
You've listed several names:
Carol Huntington was someone's girl friend, but she
definitely was not Diane Divers. As I recall, we wanted sort of a willowy,
long-haired blonde as the prize for whom the duel was fought. Diane, with whom
I had classes in government honors, dated Farina at one point. She went to work
in one of the 1960 presidential campaigns after graduation (I think Stuart
Symington), moved to Arkansas where she became a well known professor of
government. She and her second husband, a prominent Arkansas Democrat named
Jim Blair, were married by Bill Clinton, and she became especially close to
Hillary Clinton before her untimely death from cancer at 61 in 2000.
C. Michael Curtis, who had a lengthy college career before
graduating in about 1960, was at Cornell at the time but I don't believe he had
anything to do with the Sun parody.
Kirk Sale, as I mentioned, had graduated at the time. He and
Faith started dating midway through college and got married after graduation
(I'm not sure precisely when). Stephanie Greene had nothing to do with any of this.
Stephanie Gervis '58, who later wrote for The Village Voice and married
Socialist Michael Harrington, was Associate Editor of The Sun when Sale was
editor, but was not directly involved in either event.
O. Kristin Osterholm had graduated in 1957. She was on The
Sun but was gone from campus when all this happened.
David Seidler was, I believe, principally involved because
he was friends with Kirk. He had nothing to do with The Sun.
Bob Wegryn was The Sun's Photo Editor.
Allan Metcalf's use of the name Marcel Aladar may well have
occurred because he was a Sun staffer at the time of the duel.
I hope this is helpful. But I have to ask: why are you so
interested in this?
We responded with a note explaining our interest (which basically boils down to our interest in Farina and Pynchon as artists, as well as our curiosity about this time at Cornell). We also asked for Mr. Leubsdorf's permission to post his emails and shared a draft of the article with him, and he was kind enough to allow us to publish this. In this email to us, he wrapped up by stating that:
The 1958 demonstrations were among the most significant events of my years at Cornell, while the fake duel shows how much fun at The Sun often had. It may explain why, some 55 years later, I'm still writing for a newspaper.
Having read a handful of Mr. Leubsdorf's opinion pieces in the Dallas News, we see that this sense of fun combined with tackling the significant still comes through in his writing.
Well, this wraps up our fourth post on this topic. We appreciated the opportunity to discuss this seminal period with some of its key figures. We entered this series of posts about Cornell in the late '50s with a focus on a series of pictures of the fake duel, and, thanks primarily to Mr. Leubsdorf, we have identified half of the participants: the two duelists and the doctor. If anyone is able to identify the two seconds or the woman in the photos, we remain curious....
Thank you, Mr. Leubsdorf and Mr. Perry, for your recollections and insights into these tumultuous times and interesting people, including yourselves. We would appreciate hearing from anyone else who we've discussed, whether it's to share more anecdotes, clarify any mistakes we may have made or just to tell us to knock it off and leave you alone....
******************************************************************************
Related articles on LoS:
Gid, who is agog, thanks Daurade and author/poet Jon Frankel for their research assistance and editorial input. In our previous post, we exposed a long-rumored picture, possibly of Thomas Pynchon, that was hiding out in plain site (hyuk hyuk) on the Internet. We also dropped (an admittedly small) "bombshell": "we founda reference to another heretofore unknown photo of Pynchon!" Now we're back with follow up, as promised.
I'd like to start by framing this article in a way that's not stalker-ish: "This is a search for better perspective on events that feel pivotal to '60s student movements as well as Pynchon and Farina's artistic concerns and themes; and we actually hope to dig up juvenalia by Pynchon or Farina!" In fact, those previous statements *are* entirely true ... about our previous post. But the truth is, in this case, we were just plain old curious about an apparently unknown reference to an unrecognized yet allegedly publicly availablephotograph of Pynchon. Gid sniffed something that grabbed him, and off he went blood-hounding.
But be fair to us: As with our previous post, everything we've presented is all quite public, and we're amazed no one else has presented it yet. Furthermore, Pynchon himself once reportedly said, "Not bad. Keep trying" in response to a story postulating that he was Salinger, so what's wrong with trying to locate a public photo? Finally, we think that Pynchon has a sense of humor about this stuff; he did, after all, voice his own character on the Simpsons in a small skit that clearly poked fun at his aversion to being photographed.
"Pynchon on the Simpsons" is a tongue twister!
So...here we go.
The Source of the New Rumor The reference we found was from from a 2010 questionnaire for Cornell alumni. The answers were, oddly, posted online. One of the responses was:
Outstanding Cornell memory: President Deane Waldo Malott was burned in effigy, and a photo of Tom Pynchon, Kirk Sale, Richard Farina and Todd Perry made the front page of the NY Daily News under the Headline “Coeds Riot for Sex.”
This is not, as far as we know, something that has been mentioned in any rumor of Pynchon photos, much less something that has been "found" or discussed. Given the paucity of Pynchon pics and the interest among Pynchon fans have shown in this topic over the years, this silence was too tempting to gloss over.
The recollection is from Julia Werner '61; there are numerous mentions in the Sun suggesting that she would have personally known the people she mentions. In 1958,the Sun reported that Werner won a short story competition sponsored by the Writer. The upperclassman prize went to Fariña. One year later, in 1959, the Sun reported that she was elected prose editor of the Writer. In January, 1960, the Sun carried her book review of an anthology of student work; it's well-written and absolutely brutal (let's hope she doesn't review this blog). One of few pieces she praises was written by Fariña. Just beneath this review is a letter by Hadley S. DuPuy, whom you may recall from our previous post. DePuy's letter is written to recruit students to join a team participating in a college bowl quiz. Interestingly, Werner ended up joining the team. In December, 1960, the Sun reported that Werner had three stories published in the first edition of the Trojan Horse; others in the edition included Curtis, Fariña, and Baxter Hathaway--all of whom we discussed in our last post. A review in the Sun two days later called one of Werner's inclusions, which was the lead piece, the "finest" story in the publication.
At a time when Cornell's English department was chock-full of highly talented students, including Pynchon and Fariña, these are remarkable accomplishments--and bear in mind that we only highlighted Werner's achievements that were somehow related with the people she mentioned in her recollection.
Before We Start, What's This About a "Riot for Sex"? Starting on May 23, 1958, thousands of Cornell students protested against the school's in loco parentis policy.
The protest was started by Kirk Sale, a good friend of Thomas Pynchon. The demonstration began peacefully enough, but it soon took a nasty turn. After burning an effigy of Cornell's President, the students marched to the President's house, despite Sale's pleas for them to stay put. Students hit the President with eggs, and by some reports, a smoke bomb was tossed into his house.
The story was picked up in the national news, with coverage lasting for several days. What were the student's concerns? Speaking about the cause of the protest, Sale stated:
We feel that the Administration, during the past eight years, has consistently hampered the rights of both the students and the faculty ... The Administration of Cornell has so often ignored the student's voice and so regularly refused to establish any effective channels of communication that a public demonstration was our only recourse.
Other articles cast the net wider, addressing issues related to fraternity vs. non-fraternity disputes; facility scholars vs. facility creative writers; and academic freedom vs. censorship pressures from the Postmaster General (that last point seems relevant to The Crying of Lot 49). See our "Annotated Bibliography of the Protest Coverage" at the bottom of this post for some recommended discussions, responses and analyses of these events, if you're interested in learning more.
This litany of student grievances was, however, mostly ignored by the press. Even The Harvard Crimson, which one would suspect of being sympathetic to the Cornell students' point of view, wrote only of the immediate events and ignored the larger context, stating, "The students were protesting a proposed ruling that co-eds no longer be permitted to attend unchaperoned parties in off-campus rooming-houses." They focused on the last straw, and not the hay bale which preceded it.
So it's easy to leap to the conclusion that this was a riot for sex--but it still takes a salacious liberty, which newspapers, quite frankly, ought not to do.
The Hunt for the Daily News Enough with the background; it's time to chase the New York Daily News! Unfortunately, despite its large readership, the paper has not been indexed and it's electronic archives do not go back to 1958. Fortunately, Gid lives near a big university, so one evening he went into the university library and down into the basement where microfilms are stored. (Not to air our dirty laundry, but Daurade noted that "Cornell's Olin Library also stores microfilm in the basement--surely a practical consideration given the need for rear-projected light to read them--theaters don't have windows, after all". The Gid counters that, like Gilligan watching bicycle-powered TV, he read the Daily News' microfilmed archives on a computer screen, this being 2013, though he suspects that Daurade's correctly peeled back a layer on the palimpsest.) [Gid, this may be 2013, but I read this in 2000 and even now they still use those back-lit machines!]
Anyhow, the Cornell protest was on May 23, 1958, and other newspapers (e.g., New York Times) stopped discussing it after a couple of days, so Gid scanned through the microfilm from May 24 - 31, 1958. And there it was!
Protest at President's House, President Circled (AP Photo in the Daily News)
Or maybe not. (Sorry, but the AP photo had a circle around President Malott. Couldn't resist yanking your chain.) The Daily News' coverage had a different title: "Cornell Boots 4 in Egg Tossing" (May 25, 1958). The title we wanted, "Coeds Riot for Sex", sounds like it's going for yucks and offering editorial interpretation of facts. The article we found, however, sticks to facts, even if a few details were later challenged and the presentation lacked balance insofar as it seemed to down-play the concerns of the students. The picture is pretty blurry, but it's clear enough to see that the same picture appeared in the The Cornell Daily Sun in a "SUN Staff Photo Feature" which credits all images to Sun staff photographers (Volume LXXIV, Number 14, 26 May 1958, "Students Protest Administration", p. 7, various Sun staff photographers listed).
Protest at President's House (Staff Photo in the Sun)
We took a pretty careful look at these photos, and we did not see anyone who looked like Pynchon or
Fariña, although we're less sure about Sale or Perry. These are grainy photos with lots of people, though, so we may have missed something. What do you think? Did we overlook something? (By the way, President Malott is circled in this picture, too; it's just harder to tell.)
Another Clue! Overall, something wasn't adding up. We certainly understand that 52-year-old recollections won't be impeccable; besides, Werner wasn't listing out facts for a court or newspaper; she was just reminiscing. Still, the title and tone of the article didn't feel right, and the photo didn't look right.
What next?
While poking about that May 26, 1958, edition of the Sun, Gid noticed a little article on page 3 called "Press Views on Mass Action"; this article listed several other papers' coverage of the protest, including, "Four Suspended by Cornell After 2-Day Riot Over Girls" in the New York Journal American.
Now that sounded an awful lot like Werner's recollection of a "Riot Over Sex" article!
So, Gid and Jon tried to find the New York Journal American [NYJA]. It was not, however, available at any institutions they could access. It looks like 1958 was never archived electronically. Very few places seem to have it on microfilm, and when Gid searched the catalogs of libraries with the microfilm who might be willing to offer an inter-library-loan ... he kept finding spotty coverage that missed the desired time frame (May 1958). Gid checked with a large number of librarians across the country (LIBRARIANS ROCK!!!), but at the time this post was posted, Gid was still searching for a library with the correct microfilm, waiting to hear back, for example, from the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library periodical reference services. (That's not criticism; these two institutions are still well within a reasonable window to reply.)
It was starting to feel like a Pynchonesque quest, kind of like Crying of Lot 49 or V..
There's More Than One Way To Skin a Cat
It was time for another approach. According to the Sun's "Press Views on Mass Action", the NYJA's article is from the AP, and the same AP article was run in the Binghamton Sunday Press and the Buffalo Courier-Express. With the help of a kind librarian, Gid found two articles in the Binghamton Sunday Press' coverage of the events. Both had differenttitles than the NYJA, but papers are allowed to change the text/title of AP articles. One of the Binghamton articles also had a picture, the first in this montage:
From left to right: Sale from Binghamton Sunday Press; Sale from the Sun; Sale showing sling (Sun); Sale from '72 sketch
This photo, however, is only of Sale. Do papers alter the photo(s) that they include with AP articles? "Yes, Matilda, they do", sez Daurade. In other words, we still don't know what photo was in the article that Werner referenced--the reference that started this chase.
By the way, does anyone know why Sale's right arm is in a sling? It's a little tough to see in the Binghamton's copy of the image. You can see it a little better on p. 8 of the May 26, 1958 Sun and even more clearly in a different picture of Sale on the preceding page (see images 2 and 3 in our Kirk's sling montage). It is also clearly reproduced in a drawing on p. 12 of the June 1972 Cornell Alumni News(large PDF warning!) which we included as image 4 in the preceding group of photos.
We noted that this photo, like the previous photo, was credited to AP but also appeared in the Sun as credited to Sun staff photographers. The exact same picture appears in the Utica NYObserver (big PDF) credited to the AP.
Which got us to thinking...
As Planets Orbit the Sun As far we can recall, every photo that we've found of the event also appeared in the Sun, so, Gid proposed a theory: perhaps the Sun was the only paper with photographers on hand; the Sun turned over their photos to the AP; and other newspapers got them from the AP. Was this why Pynchon praised the The Cornell Daily Sun so highly, calling it "the Sun, an observation point on high"?*
Seriously though, that would explain why the Sun credits the photos to Sun staff photographers while other sources credit the exact same photos to the AP. (By the way, May 26, 1958, Sun, p. 7, credits seven staff photographers; one of them was Bob Wegryn, who also shot the photos for the dueling article we wrote about in our previous post.)
Ironically, as the Sun didn't print on the weekend, they ended up running these photos a day or two after they had already appeared in other sources, which makes the record look wonky. For example, the photo we included with Cornell's president circled is from the Daily News, May 24, 1958, credited to the AP -- but the same photo appeared in the Sun two days later credited to Sun staff photographers.
Our friend Jon tried to poke a hole in this theory (which is what I expect friends to do; moreover, Daurade reports that Jon has a deeply ingrained poke fetish) by asking if we'd checked the Ithaca Journal, which could have presumably gotten photographers to the scene quickly. Gid's cursory check turned up no photos of the event in the Ithaca Journal, but this is something worth a follow up by any enterprising researchers (none being found on our staff). If Gid's theory is correct, then whatever photo is in the NYJA is one that we've already seen in the Sun, none of which appear to include Pynchon -- but we'd like to know for sure; we'd also like to see which photo prompted Werner to make the comment.
Finally, we'd like to know your thoughts on the pictures in the May 26, 1958, Cornell Sun! To the extent that all leads seem to trace back to this one edition of a small paper, we feel like we're investigating the universe in a grain of sand. It's entirely possible that we are, as a previous commentator suggested, stirring a tempest in a tea cup; hell, our previous post now comprises about 3% of the hits that this entire blog has received in the past five years, but, as Daurade has previously mentioned, "we feel there's value in looking at the little things".
* Mason & Dixon, p. 707, but we're totally kidding. We dragged this quote completely of context; it has nothing to do with newspapers.
1. We found a reference to "a photo of Tom Pynchon, Kirk Sale, Richard Farina and Todd Perry [that] made the front page of the NY Daily News under the headline "Coeds Riot for Sex.'"
2. The Daily News didn't have an article with that headline, but it did run "Cornell Boots 4 in Egg Tossing" (May 25, 1958). We don't think that article's photo (see above, with President circled) includes Pynchon or Fariña. Do you?
3. The New York Journal American (NYJA) did have an article called "Four Suspended by Cornell After 2-Day Riot Over Girls", but we couldn't find a copy. Can you?
4. The NYJA article was from the AP. The Binghamton Sunday Press and the Buffalo Courier-Express ran the same AP article. Does this mean they included the same photo? The Binghamton Sunday Press' article has a photo, but it's only of Kirk Sale. (If you want to see it, scroll back up and rtfa.) 5. We think that the Sun was the only paper with photographers on hand; that the Sun turned over their pics to the AP; and that all photos of the event stem from the Sun. Can you prove me wrong? If we're correct, then whatever photo Werner was recalling is probably in the May 26, 1958, Sun. Do any of the pictures there look like the right one to you?
The Cornell Daily Sun, Volume LXXIV, Number 147, 26 May 1958.This was the first edition of the Sun to come out after the protest. Many (all?) of the key students in the protest were English Lit majors and many were involved with the Sun, so the coverage is extensive and high quality. Numerous photos. We believe the Sun staff photographers may be the sole source of photographs printed in the state and national media of the event.
Cornell Alumni News, Volume 60, Number 18, 15 June 1958, "Students Protest University Relations; President Promises Conference Group", author unknown, p. 621-623 - Strange pagination; actually starts on p. 7 of the scan. Good coverage of the protest (but a large PDF). Cornell Alumni News, Volume LXXV, Number 141, 15 May 1959, "WEEKEND OF SIN! Halfway Down The Gorge--In SLIME and FILTH!" p. 2, by Hermione Dopkit as told to Stan Werbul (both presumably pseudonyms) - Not coverage per se, but a good example of satirical commentary by the students. As we noted in our previous post, The Cornell Daily Sunused joke articles like this to poke at the administration. This was one of the more extreme examples; others, like the dueling article we highlighted last time, took more subtle, well, jabs. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, Richard Fariña, 1966. Fariña, who was eventually charged as a result of his leading role in the events, wrote an entire novel built around the protest.
Cornell Alumni News, June 1972, "Writers &; Teachers", by Geof Hewitt '66, p. 10 - 15. Large PDF! The protest coverage doesn't start until p. 13 (top of second column), but be sure to check out the drawing on p. 12. The Cornell Daily Sun, 5 May 1978, "Hathaway Recalls Cornell Writers of the 50s", p. 31 and 38 - Unfortunately, this specific issue hadn't made it into the online archives at the time we published this article, but if you'd like a copy, drop us a note. Good coverage of the protest, especially of some of the key players. Traces sources of discontent back many years to a censorship event related to the postmaster general. Also looks at some divisions within the English department over the same time span.
