Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy
a column by Jane Martin paw@princeton.edu
November
17, 2004:
Great
expectations
The image on the front cover of the Nov. 5, 1954, PAW is arresting:
a fierce, large tiger holds a bulldog puppy – a ribbon tied
in place of a collar – firmly by the scruff of the puppy’s
neck. The background of the illustration appears traditionally Asian,
with a sliver of moon and delicately brushed grass under the tiger’s
paws. Editor Philip Quigg ’43 explained that the painting
was neither “an absolute prognosis nor an attempt to restore
the betting odds in the few remaining days before the classic struggle.”
Instead, “PAW’s cover is merely a gentle morale-builder
for men of Old Nassau.” The work, it turns out, was commissioned
by Clarence Gamble ’17 and his son Richard Gamble ’50
from a Japanese master painter, who had “never seen a bulldog
until a picture from an old football program was airmailed from
the United States.” Quigg’s explanation ends with the
note, “Price: $1.20,” though it’s not entirely
clear if that’s what the Gambles paid or if that’s the
rate for a print of the piece.
The attention-grabbing cover leads to an interesting find inside
the issue, a selection made by faculty of the best senior theses
of recent years. Charles Atherton ’54 drew praise for his
architectural design of a regional zoo in Pennsylvania, for example:
“Mr. Atherton was particularly skillful in using a natural
watercourse to separate spectators from the animals,” his
adviser wrote. In the music department, J. Heywood Alexander ’51
was cited for his original composition, a song cycle called Separation,
based on texts by Walter Savage, as well as his accompanying critique
and analysis of songs of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolff. “All
in all, he succeeds admirably,” wrote the nominating faculty
member. “The thesis shows those qualities of maturity and
literate expressiveness that are the mark of an educated man.”
Stuart M. Sperry Jr. ’51 “came up with a first-rate
thesis on John Keats,” according to his adviser, “a
study of Keats’s life in relation to his development as an
aesthetic theorist and practitioner of some of the greatest poetry
in the English language.”
All three went on to success in fields related to their thesis
topic, Atherton as an architect, Alexander as a music professor,
Sperry as an authority on Keats and Shelley, proving the perspicacity
of their thesis advisers. None was so insightful, though, as the
professor who described an economics thesis on multi-country trade
as “a brilliant performance: original, decisive in its results,
and presented with clarity and economy of argument.” Its author?
Gary S. Becker ’51, 1992 Nobel laureate.
Jane Martin 89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can
reach her at paw@princeton.edu
|