Books in Brief

Youth and Dissent The Rise of a New Opposition, by Kenneth Keniston (Harcourt, 403 pp., $9.9,5). The title about says it all. In this collection of twenty previously published essays, Keniston, a Yale psychology professor, argues that The Young we shall have always with us—and likely in an adversary role. Though “un-greened” by the counterculture, Keniston sees something “noble and important” in what the kids are doing. Fortunately, his dignified tone helps redeem him. And he does draw an interesting portrait of the campus activist—bright, idealistic, non-vocationally minded, reared in a democratic, permissive, upper-middleclass environment. On the whole, a not un-useful book. One thing bothers me exceedingly, however: Keniston’s marginal understanding of the non-radical student. As Keniston sees it, support for traditional values comes from bourgeois careerists on the make, who feel threatened both by those who’ve made it already (the radicals) and those who are “excluded” (blacks etc.). What this amounts to, of course, is a glib put-down of young people benighted enough to esteem the Permanent Things. And it indicates that a detailed study of the youthful Right is among our more present literary needs.

Surviving the Future, by Arnold Toynbee (Oxford, 164 pp., $5.95). This book is important, though in a rather minor way, for several reasons, and in each case it is depressing as well. To be sure, it is not important for the brilliance or originality of what is said, nor (I think) was it intended to be: it could, in the Victorian manner, have been subtitled Reflections at Eighty, and that would have given an adequate idea of the kind of book it is. But it is important, first, because Professor Toynbee is largely convinced (though not perhaps so much as Professor B. F. Skinner) that we must give up our personal freedom to survive at all—second, because he believes that to shrink from the abolition of man is “not only illogical but also unenterprising and cowardly”—third, because the book reveals (in other ways besides those just mentioned) the damaging political and philosophical beliefs of one of the great intellects of our time—fourth, and not least, because it is an electronic book, the edited transcription of (apparently extempore) question-and-answer dialogue at Kyoto University, an off-the-top-of-the head book, so to speak, not altogether either the fish of conversation nor the flesh of writing, but a curious amphibian hybrid. I suppose we shall see many more such hybrids in the future (if we survive): in the meantime, I do not think the kinds of importance I find in this one justify buying it. J. C. LOBDELL

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Youth and Dissent The Rise of a New Opposition, by Kenneth Keniston (Harcourt, 403 pp., $9.9,5). The title about says it all. In this collection of twenty previously published essays, Keniston, a Yale psychology professor, argues that The Young we shall have always with us—and likely in an adversary role. Though “un-greened” by the counterculture, Keniston sees something “noble and important” in what the kids are doing. Fortunately, his dignified tone helps redeem him. And he does draw an interesting portrait of the campus activist—bright, idealistic, non-vocationally minded, reared in a democratic, permissive, upper-middleclass environment. On the whole, a not un-useful book. One thing bothers me exceedingly, however: Keniston’s marginal understanding of the non-radical student. As Keniston sees it, support for traditional values comes from bourgeois careerists on the make, who feel threatened both by those who’ve made it already (the radicals) and those who are “excluded” (blacks etc.). What this amounts to, of course, is a glib put-down of young people benighted enough to esteem the Permanent Things. And it indicates that a detailed study of the youthful Right is among our more present literary needs.

Surviving the Future, by Arnold Toynbee (Oxford, 164 pp., $5.95). This book is important, though in a rather minor way, for several reasons, and in each case it is depressing as well. To be sure, it is not important for the brilliance or originality of what is said, nor (I think) was it intended to be: it could, in the Victorian manner, have been subtitled Reflections at Eighty, and that would have given an adequate idea of the kind of book it is. But it is important, first, because Professor Toynbee is largely convinced (though not perhaps so much as Professor B. F. Skinner) that we must give up our personal freedom to survive at all—second, because he believes that to shrink from the abolition of man is “not only illogical but also unenterprising and cowardly”—third, because the book reveals (in other ways besides those just mentioned) the damaging political and philosophical beliefs of one of the great intellects of our time—fourth, and not least, because it is an electronic book, the edited transcription of (apparently extempore) question-and-answer dialogue at Kyoto University, an off-the-top-of-the head book, so to speak, not altogether either the fish of conversation nor the flesh of writing, but a curious amphibian hybrid. I suppose we shall see many more such hybrids in the future (if we survive): in the meantime, I do not think the kinds of importance I find in this one justify buying it. J. C. LOBDELL