The Plastic Age by Percy Marks (e book reader pc .TXT) 📕
Description
The Plastic Age can be read as an exposé on the moral failings of undergraduates in Jazz Age New England, as described through the four-year experience of a young man at the fictional Sanford College. Students enroll at Sanford to “acquire culture,” and do so at an age when they are “plastic” in the sense that they are changeable and meant to be transformed by the experience.
But, not all of the lessons of a college education are in the curriculum. To a student reader of the 1920s, Marks’ novel would have looked more like a moral tale, critique, and guide to navigating the challenges, pitfalls, and possibilities of higher education. Marks was an English instructor at Brown University at the time of publication but also had experience teaching at MIT and Dartmouth from which to draw his descriptions of campus life.
The book was popular, the second best selling novel of 1924. It inspired two motion pictures. But it was also controversial. The novel was banned in Boston and Marks was removed from his teaching position at Brown the next year. College administrators saw the novel’s setting as a thinly-veiled version of their own school and the novel’s portrayal of college life hit too close to home.
A Sanford English instructor seems to convey the author’s view when he says: “Some day, perhaps, our administrative officers will be true educators; … our faculties will be wise men really fitted to teach; … our students will be really students, eager to learn, honest searchers after beauty and truth.”
But what Marks sees instead are uninspired teaching and advising, superficial learning, pervasive smoking, prohibition-era drinking, vice, gambling, billiards, institutionalized hazing, excessive conformity, and a campus life that molds its students into less serious people. The author seeks elevation but sees regression.
Some of the norms and expectations of the 1920s may seem dated to the modern reader, but important themes endure. Marks went on to write 19 additional books and late in his career, returned to teaching literature at the University of Connecticut.
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- Author: Percy Marks
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Burbank tossed a cigarette butt into the fire and gazed into the flames for a minute before speaking, his homely face serious and troubled. “I don’t know what to think,” he replied slowly. “Ellis tells about some things that make you fairly sick. So does Forel. The human race can be awfully rotten. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m all mixed up. Sometimes life just doesn’t seem worth living to me, what with the filth and the slums and the greed and everything. I’ve been taking a course in sociology, and some of the things that Prof. Davis has been telling us make you wonder why the world goes on at all. Some poet has a line somewhere about man’s inhumanity to man, and I find myself thinking about that all the time. The world’s rotten as hell, and I don’t see how anything can be done about it. I don’t think sometimes that it’s worth living in. I can understand why people commit suicide.” He spoke softly, gazing into the fire.
Hugh had given him rapt attention. Suddenly he spoke up, forgetting his resolve not to say anything more after Ferguson had called him “innocent.” “I think you’re wrong, Mel,” he said positively. “I was reading a book the other day called Lavengro. It’s all about Gipsies. Well, this fellow Lavengro was all busted up and depressed; he’s just about made up his mind to commit suicide when he meets a friend of his, a Gipsy. He tells the Gipsy that he’s going to bump himself off, that he doesn’t see anything in life to live for. Then the Gipsy answers him. Gee, it hit me square in the eye, and I memorized it on the spot. I think I can say it. He says: ‘There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?’ I think that’s beautiful,” he added simply, “and I think it’s true, too.”
“Good for you, Hugh,” Ross said quietly.
Hugh blushed with pleasure, but he was taken back by Nutter’s vigorous rejoinder. “Bunk!” he exclaimed. “Hooey! The sun, moon, and stars, and all that stuff sounds pretty, but it isn’t life. Life’s earning a living, and working like hell, and women, and pleasure. The Rubaiyat’s the only poem—if you’re going to quote poetry. That’s the only poem I ever saw that had any sense to it.
“Come, Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
Today of past Regrets and future Fears.
Tomorrow? Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s seven thousand Years.
You bet. You never can tell when you’re going to be bumped off, and so you might just as well have a good time while you can. You damn well don’t know what’s coming after you kick the bucket.”
“Good stuff, the Rubaiyat,” said Ferguson lazily. He was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. “I bet I’ve read it a hundred times. When they turn down an empty glass for me, it’s going to be empty. I don’t know what I’m here for or where I’m going or why. ‘Into this world and why not knowing,’ and so on. My folks sent me to Sunday-school and brought me up to be a good little boy. I believed just about everything they told me until I came to college. Now I know they told me a lot of damned lies. And I’ve talked with a lot of fellows who’ve had the same experience. … Anybody got a butt?”
Burbank, who was nearest to him, passed him a package of cigarettes. Ferguson extracted one, lighted it, blew smoke at the ceiling, and then quietly continued, drawling lazily: “Most fellows don’t tell their folks anything, and there’s no reason why they should, either. Our folks lie to us from the time we are babies. They lie to us about birth and God and life. My folks never told me the truth about anything. When I came to college I wasn’t very innocent about women, but I was about everything else. I believed that God made the world in six days the way the Bible says, and that some day the world was coming to an end and that we’d all be pulled up to heaven where Christ would give us the once-over. Then he’d ship some of us to hell and give the good ones harps. Well, since I’ve found out that all that’s hooey I don’t believe in much of anything.”
“I suppose you are talking about evolution,” said Ross. “Well, Prof. Humbert says that evolutions hasn’t anything to do with the Bible—He says that science is science and that religion is religion and that the two don’t mix. He says that he holds by evolution but that that doesn’t make Christ’s philosophy bad.”
“No,” Burbank agreed, “it doesn’t make it bad; but that isn’t the point. I’ve read the Bible, which I bet is more than the rest of you can say, and I’ve read the Sermon on the Mount a dozen times. It’s darn good sense, but what good does it do? The world will never practice Christ’s philosophy. The Bible says, ‘Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,’ and, believe me, that’s damn true. If people would be pure and good, then Christ’s philosophy would work, but they aren’t pure and good; they aren’t made pure and good, they’re made selfish, and bad: they’re made, mind you, made full of evil and lust. I tell you it’s all wrong. I’ve been reading and reading, and the more I read the more I’m convinced that we’re all rotten—and that if there is a god he made us rotten.”
“You’re wrong!” They all turned toward Winsor, who was still standing by the fireplace; even Ferguson rolled over and looked at the excited boy. “You’re wrong,” he repeated, “all wrong. I admit all that’s been
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