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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It was a moonlight night, and the campus was mysterious with shadows. The elms shook their leaves whisperingly; the tower of the chapel looked like magic tracery in the moonlight. He paused before Surrey Hall, now dark and empty. Good old Carl. … Carl and Cynthia? He wondered. … Pudge had roomed there, too. He passed on. Keller Hall, Cynthia and Norry. … “God, what a beast I was that night. How white Norry was—and Cynthia, too,” Cynthia again. She’d always be a part of Sanford to him. On down to the lake to watch the silver path of the moonlight and the heavy reflections near the shore. Swimming, canoeing, skating—he and Cynthia in the woods beyond. … On back to the campus, around the buildings, every one of them filled with memories. Four years—four beautiful, wonderful years. … Good old Sanford. …
Midnight struck. Someone turned a switch somewhere. The Japanese lanterns suddenly lost their colors and faded to gray balloons in the moonlight. Some men were singing on the Union steps. It was a few seniors, Hugh knew; they had been singing for an hour.
He stood in the center of the campus and listened, his eyes full of tears. Earnestly, religiously, the men sang, their voices rich with emotion:
“Sanford, Sanford, mother of men,
Love us, guard us, hold us true.
Let thy arms enfold us;
Let thy truth uphold us.
Queen of colleges, mother of men—
Alma mater—Sanford—hail!
Alma-mater—Hail!—Hail!”
Hugh walked slowly across the campus toward the Nu Delta house. He was both happy and sad—happy because the great adventure was before him with all its mystery, sad because he was leaving something beautiful behind. …
ColophonThe Plastic Age
was published in 1924 by
Percy Marks.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Paul King
and is based on a transcription produced in 2005 by
Scott G. Sims and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
The Young Man,
a painting completed in circa 1898 by
Thomas Eakins.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
March 16, 2021, 8:30 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/percy-marks/the-plastic-age.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
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