VARIETY
tion of other literary men, are col–
lege professors. When we realize
what an extraordinary number of
PR readers and contributors are
attached to an academy we are
bound, since PR is the least "aca–
demic" of the literary periodicals,
to recognise that there never was so
intimate a tie between living culture
(such as it is) and our institutions
of higher learning (such as they
are) . In these conditions it might
possibly be interesting to hear from
some of the writers what is going
on. That, as I understand it, is the
purpose of the PR "Reports from
the Academy." Here is my report.
At some point between high–
school and entering the teaching
profession the academician is deep–
ly disillusioned a:bout the higher
learning in America. He expected
campus life to be highminded, if
rather aloof; he discovers freshman
English and campus politics. Of
the possible responses to this situ–
ation the simplest and most un–
compromising is a complete re–
jection of the present system of
education and participation
in
an
attempt at educational reform.
This was my response. It will be of
interest to those who are wonder–
ing what function the experimental
college has had, or could have, in
our present state of things. The
years following the last war wit–
nessed a great vogue of education–
al experiment. As this war draws to
a close many will be wondering if
we are to have new Bertrand Rus–
sell schools and the like. I offer the
case of Black Mountain College as
an
exemplum.
423
Black Mountain College was
founded in 1933 by John Andrew
Rice, a stormy petrel of education
who had unfairly been fired from
Rollins College, Florida, an institu–
tion which also considered itself
advanced. In a summer hotel,
otherwise unoccupied nine months
in the year, Rice gathered together
something under a hundred stu–
dents and a handful of teachers,
some of whom had followed
him
from Rollins. The story of the first
five or six years has been told by
Rice in his autobiography
I Came
Out
of the 18th
Century.
They
culminated in Rice's being driven
out by a number of his colleagues.
At the same time one of the
wealthy friends upon whom the
college depended for its existence
provided the college with grounds
and some rather rickety buildings
a
couple of miles from the summer
hotel near Black Mountain, North
Carolina . For one school year the
main task both of students and
faculty was to build with their own
hands a building to study in. This
unusual task was performed-not
indeed to the extent of completing
the building but at least to the ex–
tent of providing shelter for all.
Primitive shacks dotted around
a
dammed-up swamp ironically nam–
ed Lake Eden served
as
student
dormitories and faculty houses.
In this setting, which may be re–
presented as idyllic or barbarous,
informal or messy, refreshing or in–
convenient, Arcadian or Bohemian,
according to the predilections of
the critic, Black Mountain College
worked out its own scheme of
education. It is nothing if not
