|
Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy November
17, 2004: 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
|
