SPAN A LEITER FROM THE PUBLISHER The observation is often made-even in America itselfthat the United States, with only six per cent of the world's people, consumes a disproportionate share of the world's energy resources. And the question is rightly asked: What is the U.S. going to do about this? "Energy for the Future," on pages 5-9, attempts to give some answers. America's "Project Independence" aims to make the United States virtually self-sufficient in energy by a combination of new conservation practices plus massive scientific research in developing geothermal, solar, fission and fusion power. The new energy technologies will be shared with other nations as well, thus helping them solve their energy problems. If America is thinking big in terms of the drama of the energy problem, it is "thinking small," however, in terms of the drama of the legitimate stage. This issue's pair of articles on "little theater" in America (pages 10-17) points out that the big money and high professionalism may still be on Broadway, but the excitement of true American drama today is to be found in the small regional theaters and road companies. Gopal Sharman's report (page 14) on the American tour of Delhi's Akshara Theatre ("On the Road With the Ramayana") brings out another aspect of American life that may' surprise Indians. Many young Americans are avid devotees of the Indian classics and Indian religious thought. The extent of American interest in Indian thought and culture prompts an Indian classicist such as Gopal Sharman (who confessed to being "sort of pro-British and anti-American" before his trip to the U.S.) to observe that Vedantic thought is "exciting the American intellect as much as that country's exploration of space has captured the popular imagination... the world over." Besides the mini-package on theater we feature a pair of articles on and by an amazing American-"management philosopher" Peter Drucker. Read first about Drucker the management consultant and Drucker the man; then explore his unorthodox views on multinational corporations. SPAN has printed many articles on this subject through the years. What's really different about this article (besides its famous author) is its highly original thesis: The same four biggest "myths" about multinationals-myths he demolishes with his lucidly argued "realities"-are taken as gospel truth by the friends of multinationals as well as by their critics! On the lighter side is our big color picture story on pop art (pages 20-27). Is pop art all "frivolity"? Is it a big "put-on"? Art critic John Perreault doesn't think so. He takes pop art very seriously indeed. What's serious about blown-up comic strips? Well, says Perreault, no one familiar with pop art can ever look at "objects from everyday life"-such as comic strips-in quite the same way again. No one who's read Perreault's article will ever look at pop art in quite the same way again! -A.E.H.
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Energy for the Future
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10 14
Aren. Stage
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~mericans A~e Talking' AbOUJ/.,
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Pop Art at the Whitney Museum
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What You Should Know About Mental Depression
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On the Road With the Ramayana
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by Gopal Sharman
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by John Pe'rreault • •J' •• " I I "I
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An Iflterview With Dr. Bertram S. Brown
42 Global Approach Needed to Combat Terrorism
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by Ambassador Lewis Hoffacker
46 49
Fashion Genius of Stephen Burrows I
Front cover: Scene from Pantagleize, a little-known contemporary farce, as performed by the Arena Stage in Washington. A picture story on the Arena, one of the most innovative regional theaters in the U. S., appears on pages 10-13. Back cover: Wearing colorful creation by Stephen Burrows, a model swirls past a sculpture from Mali in Washington's Museum of African Art. For story on young black designer who feels that "clothes must be fun to wear," see page 49.
Photographs: Front cover-Fletcher Drake, 6-7-NASA, lnset by Harvey Lloyd, IO-Mike Mitchell. 11-13-Fletcher Drake, IS-R,N. Khanna. 16-Donald Wilson. 28-Avinash Pasricha, 32-lrwin Gooen, Inside backeover and back covcr-Yoichi R, Okamoto.
The following is a statement of ownership and other parliwlars about SPAN magazine as required under Seclion 190(b) of the Press & Rcgi>tration Books Act and under Rule 8 of the Registration of Newspapers (Central) Rules. 1956
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Left: One of the works included in the recent pop art retrospective at New York's Whitney Museum-Claes Oldenberg's "Shoestring Potatoes Spilling from a Bag (Falling Shoestring Potatoes)," 1965-66. (Canvas filled with kapok, painted with glue and Liquitex. Collection of Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.) See page 20.
by Henry T. Simmons
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Editor's Name Nationality Address
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Unifed Stales In/im1/(lfiofl Service 24 Kas1Urba <;u"dhi MtII"J(. NClr Delhi·} 1000/ MOl/thly Arufl K. Mehta
Indian Vakil & Sons Pvt. LId. Vakils House. Sprott Road, /8 Ballard EState, Bombov-4Q{)QJ8 Albert E. Hemsing . American 24 Kasturba Gandhi Murg New Dellti-IIOOO J Stephen B. Espit! American 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marc New Delhi·IIOOO I
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The GOl'f?mment of the United Name and address of individuals who States of Americu own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than one per cent of the total capital. I, Alber! E. Hemsing. hereby declare that the particulars given above arc lrue to the best of my knowledge and belief.
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Ool,Ooe 'UII, Americao' Dear Sir: Ten years ago, I returned from the U.S. with wonderful memories which have been kept alive by continued contact with many lovely Americans. At one of the many farewell parties before my departure, I was constrained to remark that but for a taxi driver in New York, I had not met a single ugly American; and my elderly and distinguished-looking host replied, "My dear, remember that anywhere in the world you get as good as you give." I must confess, however, that I was not very appreciative of the Americans I met during the month-long voyage to the U.S. which my Fulbright group was privileged to enjoy. Many of the passengers on the S.S. Orsova were elderly Americans on a round-the-world tour, and I found them greedy and loud in their avid pursuit of life and its pleasures, condescending and tolerant in their kindness. Neither did the young Americans on the S.S. Grootebeer, sailing across the Atlantic, impress me much. Since then I have developed the theory that the average American undergoes some kind of metamorphosis when he leaves his native shores; perhaps the guilt complex, which many Americans unconsciously harbor as a result of their comparative affluence, expresses itself in aggressiveness and intolerance when they come face to face with the poverty which they could never imagine exists in the world. On the trans-Atlantic voyage, the young Americans on the vessel-which had been chartered for U.S.-bound studentsundertook to orient us. The official orientation took the form of discussion on topics such as "How to date on an American campus"-which, with its rules and regulations, seemed to take all the spontaneity out of dating. Though one co-ed assured us that "it could be a lot of fun." Unofficially, my table-mates tried to help me with my "language problems." It was indeed a revelation to experience the informality and humanity of the American professor. I had been warned
that mine was an ogre, and knowing him to be a pioneer and prominent authority in his field of marine microbiology, I was prepared for the worst. But he and his scientist wife became and still are among my closest and warmest friends in the U.S. However, I never got used to the classroom informality, with students eating and smoking during lectures. When I mentioned this to one of the professors he remarked, "Do you know, I have never noticed it!" What a contrast to the undivided attention I expect and get from my classes! I had the good fortune during my year in the U.S., as a post-doctoral fellow, to live with one of the nicest families in California. And I would strongly recommend family living to every Indian student in the U.S., not only for the insights one gets into the real American way of life, but also for the warmth and cared-for feeling it generates, dispelling the loneliness which can often envelop a person accustomed to the closeness of family and community life in India. As I climbed the steep hill from Scripp's Institute of Oceanography after the day's work, the deserted roads aroused in me, accustomed as I was to Bombay's crowded streets, a feeling of desolation. But I felt thankful that I was returning to the welcome of my American family, as interested in me and my day's doings as was my family in India. I can never forget the many little family things we did together, with me so much a part of the Bittmann family, that my "little sister" Betsy often asked, "Why doesn't Yvonne have to do this?" Though the answer was "Because Yvonne pays rent," I never was made to feel my paying-guest status; and leaving them was indeed a tearful wrench for both sides. In the U.S. my displeasure with the elderly Americans on the ship changed to admiration and pity. Pity for their lonely independence which was always gratified by attention; admiration for their courageous independence which im-
pels them to be alert and aware and enjoy whatever life has to offer them. The day after my arrival in New York, I flew to Colorado on the Experiment in International Living, to stay with 72year-old Miss Victoria Smith in the little farming community of Del Norte. The following day, Victoria and I, with four of her "girl friends," not one of them below 65, motored down to Santa Fe for the opera. They proved to be delightful companions, with their wide knowledge of a variety of subjects, and, above all, their eager zest for living. I was pleasantly amazed at women my mother's age being proud of their slim legs, taking care of their complexion and figure-interests my mother and her peers had discarded years ago. I realized that, separated as they are from children and grandchildren, they had bravely developed complementary and compensatory areas to maintain an undaunted interest in life and make it worth living. Even today, Victoria's interests and vitality, as expressed in her letters, are unabated, an example worthy of emulation. It was the people of the U.S., more than the sights and academic experiences, who made my stay in the U.S. so memorable. But I will always cherish the words of an elderly American woman whom I met toward the end of my year in the U.S. As I thanked her and wished her goodbye, she said, "You will always be happy, my dear, because you carry your happiness around with you." However, the nuggets of happy memories I carried back with me often help to brighten the sometimes-gray routine of my life in India. As my plane neared Bombay, my excitement kept mounting, and in a way I was glad that an error in communications prevented anyone from meeting me at the airport. As I drove through the dark drizzle-wet streets with the early morning workers huddled against the rain, my heart kept beating: "This is my country. These are my people." Absence had made me fonder and more appreciative, conscious and proud of the fact that I am an Indian. DR. YVONNE FREITAS Department of Microbiology St. Xavier's College Bombay
AMERICA'S NEW AMBASSADOR TO INDIA President Ford's nomination of U.S. Attorney General William Bart Saxbe, 58, as next Ambassador to India has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Ambassador Saxbe succeeds Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan, who has resigned to resume his academic career at Harvard University. William B. Saxbe has spent 28 years in public service: as a member, majority leader and speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives; as Attorney General of the State of Ohio; as a U.S. Senator from Ohio; and as Attorney General of the United States. He has held the latter position-America's top law-enforcement office-since January 4, 1974. He has practiced law for many years, and is a member of the American Bar Association, the Ohio Bar Association and the American Judicature Society. Ambassador Saxbe is enthusiastic about his assignment to a country which he finds "endlessly exciting." "I consider myself a good friend of India," he said during a visit to New Delhi. "I am very much interested in the future of India." Ambassador Saxbe has visited India five times in the last five years. Perhaps his most eventful visit was in NovemberDecember 1971. He was then a U.S. Senator, and he came with Senators Frank Church and William Roth at the invitation of the Government of India to tour .the Bangladesh refugee camps at Salt Lake and Bongaon. After witnessing medical and food facilities and talking to refugees, Senator Saxbe said he was "tremendously impressed with the efficient and compassionate way the Indian Government is dealing with the refugee problem." During the same visit, Saxbe called on the then President of India, V.V. Giri, and the Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi. He also visited Parliament, and toured the Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana, an institution which, since its founding in 1962, has been associated with Ohio State University where Saxbe had earned his bachelor's and law degrees.
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Born in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, on June 24, 1916, William Bart Saxbe grew up there on a farm-where he still main-
of a central police academy, regional crime laboratories and a statewide criminal records center. In 1968, Saxbe was elected to the U.S. Senate. An active Senator, he was a member of the Senate committees on Government O~erations, Armed Services, Post Office and Civil Service, and the Special Committee on Aging. He was ranking minority member of the Armed Services Subcommittees on Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Safeguards and General Legislation; the Government Operations Subcommittee on Budgeting, Management and Expenditures; and the Post Office and Civil Service Subcommittee on Postal Operations. When Elliot Richardson resigned as Attorney General late in 1973, Saxbe was asked to take the job. He said he accepted because he had frequently told people what he would do as Attorney General if he ever had the opportunity. Now that the opportunity had arrived, tains a home. After graduating from he said, "it is something you can't walk Ohio State University in 1940, he served 'away from." as a pilot in the U.S. Army during World He said about the Attorney General's War II. He maintains the rank of colonel job: "It is a challenge, a challenge that as an inactive member of the National I like. It is a personnel job. It is a manageGuard. ment job. It requires an understanding His political career began in 1946 of lawyers, and I have probably hired when he was elected to the Ohio House a thousand lawyers in my days as Ohio of Representatives. (He was then still a Attorney General." "I feel very strongly," Saxbe said in graduate student in law at Ohio State University; he received his law degree an interview with the U.S. press at that in 1948.) time, "that the Justice Department is Ambassador Saxbe was an Ohio state the very heart and soul of our country, legislator for eight years. He became because government without law is tythe Republican majority leader of the ranny. I would like to re-establish a sound Ohio State House of Representatives in belief in our system of justice and in 1951-52, and the House elected him our country." Speaker for the years 1953-54. After It was during Saxbe's tenure as U.S. leaving the Ohio legislature, he served Attorney General (head of the Justice a three-year stint as partner in a iaw Department) that the Watergate infirm before being elected Attorney vestigation, carried out by the Justice General of the .State of Ohio in 1957. Departmen,t's Special Prosecutor, reached He held this position from 1957 to 1958 its climax. and again from 1963 to 1968, serving as Widely traveled, Saxbe has visited the that state's chief legal officer longer Soviet Union, Japan, Thailand, Israel, than any Attorney General in Ohio's Argentina, some countries of Africa, history .. and most of Europe. His wife Dolly-the As Ohio Attorney General, Saxbe former Ardath (Dolly) Kleinhans of "was described by associates as a tough, Toledo, Ohio-frequently accompanies capable crime fighter," according to him on his travels. They have three American press reports. He worked for children (two sons and a daughter) and new law-enforcement aids: development three grandchildren. D
u.s. NATIONAL
ENERGY GOALS
by GERALD R. FORD President of the United States
On January 15, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford delivered his annual State of the Union message to the U.S. Congress. A major portion of it was devoted to outlining his program to make the United States self-sufficient in energy and thereby 'foster a new world energy stability for other major consuming nations.' Below are the relevant excerpts from the President's address. I am proposing a program which will begin to restore our country's surplus capacity in total energy. In this way, we will be able to assure ourselves reliable and adequate energy and help foster a new world energy stability for other major consuming nations. But this nation and, in fact, the world, must face the prospect of energy difficulties between now and 1985. This program will impose burdens on all of us with the aim of reducing our consumption of energy and increasing production .... I am recommending a plan to make us invulnerable to cut-offs of foreign oil. It will require sacrifices. But it will work. I have set the following national energy goals to assure that our future is as secure and productive as our past: • First, we must reduce oil imports by one million barrels per day by the end of this year and by two million barrels per day by the erid of 1977. • Second, we must end vulnerability to economic disruption by foreign suppliers by 1985. • Third, we must develop our energy technology and resources so that the United States has the ability to supply a significant share of the energy needs of the free world by the end of this century. To attain these objectives, we need immediate action to cut imports. Unfortunately, in the short-term there are only a limited number of actions which can increase domestic supply. I will press for all of them .... Voluntary conservation continues to be essential, but tougher programs are also needed--and needed now. Therefore, I am using Presidential powers to raise the fee on all imported crude oil and petroleum products .... I am requesting the Congress to act within 90 days on a more comprehensive energy tax program. It includes: (1) Excise taxes and import fees totaling two dollars
per barrel on product imports and on all crude oil. (2) Deregulation of new natural gas and enactment of a natural gas excise tax. (3) Enactment of a windfall profits tax by April 1 to ensure that oil producers do not profit unduly .... The sooner Congress acts, the more effective the oil conservation program will be and the quicker the federal revenues can be returned to our people. I am prepared to use Presidential authority to limit imports, as necessary, to assure the success of this program. I want you to know that before deciding on my energy conservation program, I considered rationing and higher gasoline taxes as alternatives. Neither would achieve the desired results and both would produce unacceptable inequities. A massive program must be initiated to increase energy supply, cut demand and provide new standby emergency programs to achieve the independence we want by 1985. The largest part of increased oil production must come from new frontier areas on the outer continental shelf and from ... Alaska. : .. Use of our most abundant domestic resource-coal-is severely limited. We must strike a reasonable compromise on environmental concerns with coal. I am submitting clean air act amendments which will allow greater coal use without sacrificing our clean air goals .... I am proposing a number of actions to energize our nuclear power program. I will submit legislation to expedite nucleai licensing. and the rapid selection of sites .... To provide the critical stability for our domestic energy production in the face of world price uncertainty, I will request legislation to authorize and require tariffs, import quotas or price floors to protect our energy prices at levels which will achieve energy independence.
Increasing energy supplies is not enough. We must also take additional steps to cut long-term consumption. I therefore propose: • Legislation to make thermal efficiency standards mandatory for all new buildings in the United States. • A new tax credit of up to $150 for those home owners who install insulation equipment. • The establishment of an Energy Conservation Program to help low-income families purchase insulation supplies. • Legislation to modify and defer automotive pollution standards for five years to enable us to improve new automobile gas mileage to 40 per cent by 1980. These proposals and actions, cumulatively, can reduce our dependence on foreign energy supplies to three to five million barrels per day by 1985. To make the United States invulnerable to foreign disruption, I propose standby emergency legislation and a strategic storage program of 1,000 million barrels of oil for domestic needs and 300 million barrels for defense purposes. I will ask for the funds needed for emergency research and development activities. I have established a goal of one million barrels of synthetic fuels and shale oil production per day by 1985.... I believe in America's capabilities. Within the next 10 years, my program envisions: 200 major nuclear power plants; 250 major new coal mines; 150 major coal-fired power plants; 30 major new oil refineries; 20 major new synthetic fuel plants; the drilling of many thousands of new oil wells; the insulation of 18 million homes; and construction of millions of new automobiles, trucks and buses that use much less fuel .... If the Congress and the American people will work with me to attain these targets, they will be achieved; and sUrpassed. 0
FOR THE FUTURE Last year the United States launched Project Independence to conserve energy and develop technologies to exploit new sources of power. In this article, the author reports on Project Independence-and on U.S. progress in harnessing solar, wind, geothermal and fusion energy.
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In 1973, the United States, with only six per cent of the world's population, consumed 35 per cent of the world's output of energy, including an average of2.5 million tons of oil a day, more than a third of which was imported. If the United States can reduce this demand, pressure on overseas sources of oil will be relieved with a consequent reduction in the pell-mell scramble for bilateral oil agreements which today threaten the stability of industrialized economies as well as the future of the less-developed countries. With this in view, last year America launched Project Independence which aims to reduce, through stringent conservation measures, the consumption of energy in the United States and to accelerate development of new energy sources (nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal power). More efficient processes for extracting gas and oil from coal and oil shale are being tested. And farther down the road is the nuclear fusion reactor, which experts believe will ultimately meet the bulk of the world's energy demands. For the near future, perhaps until 1985, co-ordinators of Project Independence recognize that the United States must continue to rely on oil and natural gas, which in 1973 supplied more than three-fourths of its total energy requirements. Accordingly, the project calls for a variety of measures to stimulate an increased supply of these two hydrocarbons, including more attractive price levels on new gas finds, the establishment of deepwater and offshore "superports" for tankers, a second pipeline to bring gas from Alaska's rich North Slope field, development of oil reserves on the continental shelf off the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, elimination of tax incentives for American companies to produce oil overseas, and new incentives to stimulate the production of synthetic oil and gas from domestic coal and oil shale, At least as important to Project Independence as new technology and expanded supplies will be the introduction of energy conservation habits, up to now quite alien to the American way of life. In recent years U.S. demand for energy has been growing at an annual rate of more than five per cent. Tlj.egrowth curve must be flattened if the U.S. goal of energy self-sufficiency is to have any reasonable chance of success. Economists believe the United States fell into its wasteful Scientists are studying utilization of energy from such heat sources as volcanoes and hot springs. Left: Steam from the earth gushes up from control valves at a geothermal power plant in California.
It is estimated that by the year 2000, solar energy will supply 80 per cent of the heat for houses and single-story commercial buildings in the United States. energy habits because in the past natural gas and petroleum fuel sold at bargain prices relative to the costs of labor and capital investment and the industrial and consumer economy came to reflect this fundamental pricing relationship. For example, gasoline for automobiles has been priced at one-third to one-half the levels prevailing in most of the industrialized world. The huge growth in U.S. agricultural productivity since World War II is traceable as much to the "~cheap energy" policy as to so-called "miracle" strains of wheat and ¡corn. It is estimated that the modern American farm, to grow a single hectare of wheat, requires the energy equivalent of 750 liters of gasoline. If Americans have been squandering energy, they can also mend their ways. For years America got along well with returnable glass bottles for milk and soft cirlnk~.A return to that practice, which allows reuse of glass containers, would save large amounts of electricity now expended to produce one-time containers. In other areas, Americans can turn, and in fact now are turning, to economical small cars which also pollute less than the gas-guzzling larger machines. A substantial increase in insulation standards for houses and buildings might save as much as 35 per cent of the energy now used for heating and cooling. Such conservation measures could result in a net saving by 1980 of one million tons of oil per day. Of course, there are industries such as agriculture which cannot significantly cut energy use without suffering loss of productivity, possibly an intolerable loss in a world with such a narrow margin of surplus food. Agricultural requirements will probably have to be met from energy savings in other areas, as will fuel needs for activities vital to the health, safety and economy of the U.S. In being able to tighten its belt and go on an energy diet, the United States is more privileged than most other nations. But ultimately the whole world is in the same fix: The amount of hydrocarbon fuels-coal, lignite, oil and gas-is essentially finite. One expert, M. King Hubbert of the U.S. Geological Survey, has calculated that world output of petroleum will peak in the 1990s and thereafter decline swiftly in the next century. Although his forecasting methods are controversial, he accurately predicted that gas and oil production in the United States would peak in the 1970s. Crude petroleum production peaked at 1.4 million tons a day in 1970, dropping to 1.3 million tons a day before the present oil crisis. Hubbert believes that the world, particularly the United States, is in much better shape with respect to coal, but he sees world production of this resource slacking off in the 22nd century and U.S. production declining in the 24th century. Whether one accepts Hubbert's grim prophecies in toto, or â&#x20AC;˘ his prediction that use of hydrocarbon fuels will be only a "transitory and ephemeral event" in human history, the fact is that Left: This photograph, taken from the U.S. Skylab space station, shows an eruption of the sun's atmosphere. America plans to harness solar energy through "solar farms" and an array of solar cells in space that would relay power to the earth by means of radio energy. Inset: Powerful laser beams like this one are being used to ignite thermonuclear fusion reactions of heavy hydrogen isotopes. Fusion may prove mankind's ultimate hope for abundant energy.
'The future may not be as grim as many pessimists fear. There indeed may be "limits to growth," but there is no hard reason to believe that a long-term dearth of energy will be one¡of them.'
U.S. policy makers have adopted Hubbert's tw() principal recom- a major new industry. The U.S. Bureau of Mines and the Amermendations: reliance on coal and nuclear fission to meet Amer- ican Gas Association are currently working on four separate ica's major energy needs for the intermediate future, beginning approaches in pilot plants around the country for the production about 2000 A.D., and hastened development of the fusion reactor of SNG, and the Bureau will press work on two new processes so that ultimately all mankind will have a virtually inexhaustible for the manufacture of synthetic crude oil and gas from coal. source of energy into the most remote future. Full-scale commercial synthesis plants will require a capital The rapid expansion of nuclear power generation is crucial to investment dwarfing the $25,000-million Apollo lunar program. America's Project Independence. The United States presently It has been estimated that an SNG plant capable of producing has 42 operating nuclear plants with a total generating capacity seven million cubic meters of SNG daily would cost about of 25 million kilowatts, or about 5.5 per cent of the nation's total $350 million. When one realizes that 100 such plants would proelectricity. By 1980 the United States hopes to have another 95 duce less than half the gas the United States presently consumes, million kilowatts of nuclear capacity, bringing the atom's share the magnitude of the investment is placed in perspective. of total power generation to 20 per cent. Similarly, to manufacture syncrude from coal requires a plant The present generation of reactors suffers from two major investment of about $225 million to produce 4,200 tons a day. drawbacks. Their thermal efficiencies are relatively low and they The various coal liquefication processes would yield between can burn only the fissionable isotope of uranium U-235, which one-fourth and one-half ton of syncrude or three-fourths ton of amounts to only 0.7 per cent of the total uranium supply. For methanol per ton of coal. these reasons, Project Independence stresses development of While coal and nuclear power represent the major techno"breeder" reactors. Of the total of $1,800 million of energy devel- logical thrusts, Project Independence also calls for increased opment funding which the U.S. Congress approved for the year work on a number of more exotic energy sources including solar 1974, $725 million was earmarked for development of several types and wind energy, tidal power, recovery of methane from urban of breeders, but particularly for the sodium-cooled, liquid Metal trash and feedlot wastes and the tapping of geothermal energy Fast Breeder Reactor. The great advantage of this breeder is that sources such as volcanoes. it will convert "fertile" isotopes of uranium (more than 99 per Solar energy is particularly interesting because it appears cent of the total supply) into fissionable plutonium. It should possible. to develop commercial systems for both heating and also be able to manufacture'plutonium fuel charges for additional cooling homes and offices in as little as 5 to 10 years. Although breeders at the same time that it generates electricity. And because it would not be economical, even at today's elevated energy it will operate at temperatures very close to those of modern prices, to design solar systems to provide all space heating and steam plants, its thermal pollution will be much less than that cooling for new buildings, it is estimated that such systems of present nuclear plants. It is hoped that the first large-scale could provide 80 per cent of the heat and 90 per cent of the breeder demonstration project will go on line in the early 1980s. cooling for houses and single-story commercial buildings with Development of coal resources accounts for the second largest the result that the sun might meet one per cent of the nation's share, $416 million, of Project Independence funds in the first total projected energy needs by 2000 A.D. Grandiose projects for large-scale production of solar elecyear. The United States mined 602 million tons of coal in 1973, for 17 per cent of its total energy consu~ption. Project Inde- tricity are also under consideration, including vast "solar farms" pendence calls for expanding this to 962 million tons in 1980, in the southwestern United States and a 25,000-ton array of solar which would provide 26 per cent of total energy requirements. cells which would be assembled in space, relaying power to Expansion of coal production must continue'well beyond 1980, Earth by means of high-frequency radio energy. These proposals however, because coal not only must replace oil and gas as fuel for solar power suffer from the fact that while solar kilowatts for industry and utility boilers but it also must become the feed- are free, their power density is low, so that an inordinately large stock for the' manufacture of hydrocarbons in their more con- capital investment is required to collect and store the energy. Wind energy presents similar problems, but work is under way veniently utilized liquid and gaseous states. One promising technique for achieving this conversion ap- on small- and large-scale units. A wind turbine with a 38-meter pears to be the underground combustion of coal to release a blade is being built near Cleveland, Ohio, to determine the feasibility and economics of very large units. It is estimated relatively low-energy power gas which can fuel boilers. Natural gas used in home furnaces and stoves contains about 35,000 that intensive development of large wind machines on the Great British Thermal Units (BTUs) of heat energy per cubic meter; Plains and other similar regions might provide as much as five power gas would have only about 15 per cent of this heat energy, per cent of America's total electrical output by the year 2020. Similar units of 3.6 to 4.5 meters in diameter are under investibut the sharp jump in crude oil prices would make underground gasification of coal economically feasible. The U.S. Bureau of gation to meet the power needs of remote areas now dependent Mines is presently operating a small pilot project in Wyoming on diesel generators and batteries. The National Aeronautics which is extracting 70,000 cubic meters of power gas daily from and Space Administration is experimenting with a novel vertical a borehole sunk into a seam of low-grade coal at a depth of 122 windmill with two curved blades which would produce about one horsepower in a 21-kilometer-per-hour wind. meters; the process is about 75 per cent efficient. Because the wind, like sunlight, is not constant, the most If coal is to provide synthetic natural gas (SNG) on a scale challenging problem is the development of methods to store the sufficient to support present consumption rates, which run about power. Storage batteries are used at present, but these are so 1,~20 million cubic meters a day, it will be necessary to establish
expensive that windpower is economical only in remote areas. One attractive scheme would use electric power from a windmill to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, its constituent gases, and then recombine them during windless periods in a fuel cell similar to that used to provide power on the Apollo manned space missions. Geothermal power is also receiving much attention. Development of such heat sources as volcanoes, hot springs, etc., might produce as much as 20 million kilowatts of heat energy by 1985. But geothermal steam is generally much lower in temperature than that used to fire utility and industrial boilers. This means that a larger capital investment will be required to harness naturally occurring "hot spots" than coal or atomic stations of the same output. Because geothermal energy is free, however, these increased capital costs may be offset. Most students of the world energy problem agree that the world supply of hydrocarbons such as coal and oil will eventually become too costly to burn for their energy content alone, and that they will be used solely for feedstoyks in petrochemical plants manufacturing synthetic raw materials for many goods. The development of a practical breeder reactor might stretch world reserves of uranium and thorium into an energy supply good for hundreds of years, even allowing for several more doublings in demand. But the ultimate hope for industrial civilization rests on the nuclear fusion of heavy hydrogen isotopes. Since this occurs at temperatures of 100 million degrees centigrade, extremely difficult processes must be mastered. For the past 20 years, scientists have been exploring powerful magnetic techniques to compress, heat and contain the superhot plasmas of deuterium and tritium (the two "heavy" forms of hydrogen) for instants of time long enough to fuse the atomic nuclei and release more energy than required to sustain the process. More recently, powerful laser beams have been employed to ignite thermonuclear fusion reactions. No one can be certain that man will be able to tame on earth the same thermonuclear processes that power the sun, but those in the field are optimistic that net power production can be achieved with experimental fusion units in the 1980s and that commercial-scale systems can be introduced by the year 2000. If they are correct, mankind will have a source of clean, safe and cheap nuclear power into the far distant future. Even after all the accumulated hydrocarbons in the earth's crust are exhausted, it will be possible to sustain a "hydrogen economy" in which pure hydrogen replaces natural gas in the pipeline networks supplying stoves and home furnaces. In its liquid form hydrogen could also power vehicles. Alternatively, cheap and abundant electricity from nuclear fusion could drive any number of processes to synthesize hydrocarbons using "light" hydrogen extracted from the oceans and carbon extracted from carbonates in the earth's crust and seas. So the future may not be as grim as many pessimists fear. There indeed may be "limits to growth," as the controversial book of that title suggests, but there is no hard reason to believe¡ that a long-term dearth of energy will be one of them. Subject to the laws of thermodynamics and the upper limit on the amount of waste heat that would be released into the earth's environment, there is no reason why all mankind cannot share the benefits 0 that an abundance of energy makes possible. About the Author: Henry T. Simmons, who specializes in science and engineering suhjects and writes for publications such as Smithsonian magazine, is a former science writer for Newsweek.
PROJECT INDEPENDENCE In January 1974, the U.S. Government inaugurated "Project Independence," an $ 11,000-million, five-year program. The goal of Project Independence is simply to make sure that, by 1980, the United States is "no longer dependent to any significant extent upon potentially insecure foreign supplies of energy." Far from being a return to isolationist policies, the project will have positive international ramifications. In addition to easing pressures on the world's present energy sources, the technological advances in energy production that will spin off from this project will relieve future energy problems of nations around the world. Last autumn, President Ford pledged the continued dedication of the U.S. Government to Project Independence as one means of helping the world's international efforts to meet the energy crisis. Late last year, U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, in his famous "energy speech" at the University of Chicago, restressed the goals of Project Independence. Dr. Kissinger said: "The United States, which now imports a third of its oil and a sixth of its total energy, will have to become largely selfsufficient. Specifically we shall set as a target that we reduce our imports over the next decade from seven million barrels a day to no more than one million barrels or less than two per cent of our total energy consumption. "Conservation is, of course, the most immediate road to relief. President Ford has stated that the United States will reduce oil imports by one million barrels per day by the end of 1975-a 15 per cent reduction. "But one country's reduction in consumption can be negated if other major consumers do not follow suit. Fortunately, other nations have begun conservation programs of their own. What is needed now is to relate these programs to common goals and an over-all design .... "Project Independence is the American contribution to this effort. It represents the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars, public and private-dwarfing our moon-landing program and the Manhattan Project, two previous examples of American technology mobilized for a great goal. Project Independence demonstrates that the United States will never permit itself to be held hostage-politically or economically. "Project Independence will be complemented by an active policy of supporting co-operative projects with other consumers. The International Energy Agency [lEA] . . . is well designed to launch and co-ordinate such programs. Plans are already drawn up for joint projects in coal technology and solar energy. The United States is prepared to expand these collective activities substantially to include such fields as uranium enrichment. "The area of controlled thermonuclear fusion is particularly promising for joint ventures for irwould make available abundant energy from virtually inexhaustible resources. The United States is prepared to join with other lEA members in a broad program of joint planning, exchange of scientific personnel, shared use of national facilities and the development of joint facilities to accelerate the advent of fusion power .... " [The major portion of Dr. Kissinger's "energy speech" appeared in the February 1975 SPAN.]
A
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STAGE
While Broadway is still the pinnacle of the American theaterthe center of high professionalism and big money where all actors ultimately hope to play-some of the most exciting developments in U.S. drama are taking place in such regional theaters as Washington's Arena Stage (story below) and in small theatrical troupes touring university campuses (story on page 14). In 1969, the Pulitzer Prize for drama was won by an unknown play called The Great White Hope. It told the story of Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight boxing champion who was in love with a white woman. Starring the gifted Negro actor James Earl Jones, the play had a long run on Broadway. But The Great White Hope did not originate on Broadway. It went to New York from Washington's Arena Stage, one of the most outstanding "regional theaters" in the United States. Like "off-Broadway," the collective name for little New York theaters away from the main Broadway theater district, regional theaters are a relatively recent phenomenon in America. The driving force behind Arena Stage is Zelda Fichandler. In 1950, Mrs. Fichandler organized a small group of people including her husband, a policeman, a lawyer, a jeweler, and a college professor. Their goal: to raise $15,000 in 10 days to buy a run-down
Leji: James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander in The Great White Hope. Above: Zelda Fichandler in front of the theater she built. Right: Arena's stage, uncluttered by railings or pillars.
old movie house which they planned to convert into a theater. Somehow the money was raised; and Arena Stage was born. Very soon Arena Stage was attracting considerable attention-and help from philanthropic foundations. Eleven years after its founding, the theater moved into its permanent home: the first structure in America especially built for theater-in-the-round. The design, resulting from hours of consultation with actors, directors, and stage technicians, features a square stage surrounded by steeply banked seats (below). But Arena's claim to fame rests on the quality of its productions. And one measure of its excellence is the fact that in 1973 the troupe was chosen to represent American theater in Moscow and Leningrad. It has also sent more plays to Broadway than any other U.S. theater. For Zelda Fichandler, this is incidental. "We don't send them," she says. "They take them."
The repertoire offered by Arena Stage encompasses the whole gamut of theater: tragedy, comedy, farce, musicals, the classics and first-runs. Zelda Fichandler, who serves as producing director, does not settle for "the sure thing"; constantly experimenting, she often gambles with new plays, playwrights and actors. "When we started, one was supposed to do pop theater-commercial, profit-motivated," she says. "Times changed slowly. Even 10 or 12 years ago, Chekhov was considered avant-garde. So many things that were new once are taken for granted today." Plays evolving out of the headlines, exploration of subjects formerly taboo, foreign classics unfamiliar to Americans-all these fueled the company's growth and made the Fichandler reputation as a producer. She is known for her meticulous concern for perfection-she once stopped a rehearsal because someone had put the wrong kind of varnish on a banister. By presenting fine plays with taste, perceptiveness and the sense of immediacy that only central staging can convey, Arena has won a devoted following of 16,000 subscribers who buy tickets in advance for the entire season. All plays are guaranteed engagements of a certain number of weeks. Free from Broadway's compulsion to succeed, Arena has been able to take on other functions, such as offering drama instruction to people of all ages. One such class is called the Living Stage, and is intended to develop individual expression. The students are taught to explore what it is like to be someone or something else. In one session, four students imagined that they were heroin; four others were humans. They paired offand grappled, groped, writhed and rolled over and around each other. Living Stage gives free performances at schools) hospitals and churches in and around Washington. Arena also produces special plays for children, and provides internship training for school and college students. But Arena Stage's main concern is its regular theater season. For this, it maintains a permanent company of about 20 performers and brings in visiting actors to suit the needs of particular productions. It is one of the first U.S. theaters to have resident black actors who work throughout the season, not simply in plays about blacks. "American directors use the term .'repertory' actor' to connote one of versatility and range, staying power and commitment," says Zelda Fichandler. This is certainly true of Arena. As far back as its earliest days, when it had no resident troupe, people would remark during intermissions in the old movie-house lobby: "Why, they're as good as professionals!" 0
Arena's excellence is measured by the number of plays it has originated, the variety of its offerings, the caliber of its actors.
Plays in Arena Stage's diversified repertoire have included (1) Chemmy Circle, (2) Raisin, a musical version of the play A Raisin in the Sun, (3) The Hostage, (4) No Place to Be Somebody,
(5) Moonchildren, (6) The Cherry Orchard, (7) Mother Courage, (8) The Caucasian Chalk Circle, (9) Dance of Death and (10) The Sign in Sidney Brunstein's Window.
ON THE ROADWITH THE
New Delhi's Akshara Theatre-founded in 1972 by poet-playwright Copal Sharman and actress lalabala Vaidya-is best known for Sharman's English version of The Ramayana, a three-hour drama performed in the traditional katha style, in which ail the roles (Rama, Sita, Ravana, Hanuman, everyone) are played by Miss Vaidya. Two years after Akshara started, Copal and lalabala were invited by a group of American university and college deans to tour the United States. For three months last year, they were a on the road with the Ramayana," giving performances at universities, colleges, high schools, and Rotary clubs. And everywhere they played, they received rave reviews. The drama critic of the Oregon Journal said: aSharman's script fused poetic power with the pacing of a very fine film editor ... " and "lalabala was mag-
nificent. Her voice was storms, flutes, madness, joy, handmaiden, addled king, abducted wife, battle-stunned warrior, man and woman, god and prince-all so fluently that the suspension of disbelief was never at issue." When The Ramayana played at New Rochelle College in New York State, one man in the audience was Robert A. Hendrickson, a New York drama producer. Hendrickson liked the play so much that he invited The Ramayana to come back again-it opened at the Barbizon-Plaza Theater in New York last month. lust before the company left for the U.S., SPAN asked Sharman to write an impressionistic piece about his American experience, one that would describe how a an Indian classic" is received in the United States. The following article is the result.
F
There is nothing I do which is not an expression of the ananda which I see as pervading all existence, the universe.
our, three, two, one, zero. Do we have the symbols and sounds to go further than that? I believe we have. I also believe that speech, or sound, comes from that same zero state, silence; and that the cessation of speech or sound is not cessation per se, the end of all meaning. Furthermore, reality does not end with one's perception of it through the sense organs of sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing: the panchendriyas. I believe, or let me now say I know, that manifest reality, all manifest reality, is only an extension of that which is not manifest. For believing in this I once was an unhappy man: I was called "cracked," somewhat soft in the head, and so forth. "How can you believe in nothing?" Or rather: "What do you mean by saying you believe in nothing?" No one was interested in knowing what I meant, the question was put dismissively. So J sought dialogue not among my immediate contemporaries but with the Vedanta and the Upanishads, the mystics of old. From them I asked, like Nachiketa in the Chhandogya Upanishad, "for that instruction by which we hear what cannot be heard, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived, by which we know what cannot be known." J had decided that I needed no instruction in how to respond to the realities of my situation-a host of inequities often too tiresome for anyone else's interest and too multitudinous to right. One deals with the realities of one's situation as best one can; no one needs instruction in that. All my work, as poet, playwright, theater director, carpenter, electrician, editor and critic, has been a quest for ananda, the kind of infinite mobility which characterizes the classical Hindu temper. Not merely quest but also its fulfillment. Nothing interests me any more through which I cannot aspire to ananda.
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The reality of our situation at the Akshara Theatre in the winter of early 1973 was that we were up to our ears in debt. One particularly smoggy day that January, a group of some 20 Americans booked themselves for the evening's performance of The Ramayana in our theater. Americans always made a good audience, and we had stopped trying to figure out why the land of capitalism manufactured such lovely audiences for The Ramayana. They came and were so impressed that the following morning we were asked over to their hotel by these 20 deans of leading American colleges and universities, wondering if we could tour some of their campuses. The reality of our situation was pressing on us, and we tried to meet it as best we could. Yes, we would be thrilled to tour their campuses for a fee 0[$10,000.
Letters flew between us after that, airmail coming sea mail, sea mail going surface route, all very confusing indeed as Dean Carl Selinger of Bard College in New York tried to introduce "a measure of realism" on behalf of their "financially strapped" institutions and the "competitive theatrical situation" in America. But when Chicago Dean Robert La Du arranged an acceptance from Lewis and Clark, a far distant Portland, Oregon, college on the West Coast, which by itself meant a payment of $6,000, the "realism" started to become very pleasant indeed. Still, America didn't seem very close for the first tour of any professional Indian theatrical company; didn't seem very close without the active involvement of either the Indian or American Government, not even the big American foundations such as Ford or Rockefeller. The Akshara itself had come into existence
as the first every-night drama theater and was subsisting without audience respond to the style and content of the production? any government or institutional support or subsidy. And now, Wherever would we be without our absolutely gifted light and to cap it all, we were busily corresponding on our Olivetti Lettera sound technician, Anasuya Vaidya? For our first performance, 32, without even the aid of secretaries and stenographers, for a â&#x20AC;˘ in the theater at Bard College, reputedly one of America's most tour of the United States. avant-garde colleges-situated on the Hudson River a few miles It was a bitterly cold winter end in New York when the from New York City-we got the theater only after 10 in the Akshara Theatre Company of New Delhi began its tour of the morning of the day of the performance. The theater itself was United States on March 3, 1974. not a fixed proscenium one like the Akshara. Even the seating, What are a touring theatrical company's nightmares? First, let alone the stage and the lights, was flexible to the point of a technical one: that in the brief time available, it might not be being without any definition whatsoever: a clear case of experipossible to master a new theater's sound and light equipment mentalism carried to excess. and the acting area. And second, of course, the audience turnAnasuya established her light and sound "booth" up on a out: Will it be a packed hall or half empty, and how will the disused balcony, and with help joyfully given by a couple of
'A renaissance-it was impossible for that word not to come to mind-is what America seemed to us to be experiencing from its exposure to the classical thought of India.' students we had transformed the place by the afternoon into an excellent working theater with clearly defined seating, stage and lights. We went up to call Dean Selinger to see the result and found a girl student, Beth Shaw, literally in tears because the house was full and she hadn't got a ticket. That set our minds at rest over audience turnout. We offered Beth Shaw a place on the balcony beside Anasuya near the lighting controls. Then Beth Shaw introduced us to another half-dozen equally miserable senior drama students like herself who had not been able to get tickets. Good, we said to ourselves, good! Good, good, we said again when Dean Selinger spoke to us with a touch of panic in his voice about our generosity with his seating arrangements. It was almost twice a full house with the audience, some crosslegged on the floor, converging nearly onto the acting area. If we had found Americans coming to the Akshara a lovely audience, this audience was twice as good watching Jalabala Vaidya's first performance on American soil. A full measure of the quality of their response was had by us the following day toward the end of a two-hour talk I gave in the college's philosophy department. No one had found the Rama of my Ramayana difficult to understand-his pursuit of freedom from the duality of existence imposed on him by time, his desire to be free of the prisonhouse of time, free of its passions and despairs. The play had underlined the intensity of Rama's reactions to the realities of his situation. For instance, his reaction to the abduction of his wife, Sita, by Ravana had not been conveniently philosophic; he goes through a bloody war for her recovery and yet he is not beyond wearying of that triumph, so dearly won-wearying of it and wanting morc. Wanting and achieving it: the ultimate freedom from the duality of existence. The freedom of being beyond time, of being both cause and effect, both beginning and the end, both form and formlessness. None of this was Greek to our audience. The question I found a little difficult to answer was whether India still cherished such freedom. We, personally, did. Did America cherish similar ideals of freedom, given vibrant expression by such American Brahmins as Emerson and Thoreau? We have always felt that India's heritage isn't India's alone-no more than the ancient Greeks are cherished only by modern Greece. A renaissance-it was impossible for that word not to come to mind-is what America seemed to us to be experienci'1g from its exposure to the classical thought of India. It couldn't have been very different among the intellectuals of medieval Europe exposed to classical Greece. The minute detail of the Vedantic preoccupation with time and space, a preoccupation continued well beyond the Upanishads all the way to Shankara, is exciting the American intellect as much as that country's exploration of space has captured the popular imagination in America-why, the world over! There had been a heavy snowfall and the roads were packed and slippery with ice as Dean James Lawrence drove us from
Bard up the Catskill Mountains to his Hartwick College in Oneonta, a week later. What a total contrast Hartwick's magnificent theater turned out to be: beautifully built and superbly equipped. One of the two students who helped us with the lights was a veteran of the Vietnam war, had actually seen his twin brother killed in action. He sat through the rehearsal alone in the empty auditorium-so rapt and moved, especially in Rama's soliloquy in the scene of the war council prior to the final battle, that it wasn't a rehearsal for us at all, rather a most rewarding performance for an audience of one. There wasn't even standing room left in the theater the following evening during the performance, and at the end the audience gave Jalabala a standing ovation for almost 10 minutes. "How does the classical Indian penchant for freedom from the limitations of manifest reality express itself in music?" It was around this question that the discussion revolved next morning in the class of music department chairman Thurston Dock. This view that the United States was beginning to experience a renaissance from its exposure to classical Indian thought was borne out in question after question. No one was pressing to know about scarcities and other economic and social ills in India. Goodness knows America has its share of that too: East or West, we all live in glass houses. Hartwick College, or the College of New Rochelle in New York City, or the University of Pittsburgh, or Allegheny College up near the Canadian border in Pennsylvania, or across the continent at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, or at the University of Oregon in Eugene, or even a junior high school in the tiny Pacific coastal village of Florence: this curiosity, interest in the classical Indian definition of existence, definition of the relationship between what is manifest and what unmanifest, was consistent. We encountered it from students, teachers, scientists, writers, theater people, journalists, lawyers-even businessmen. Three instances especially come to mind. The first. A few weeks after we had done a performance of The Ramayana at the University of Oregon in Eugene, we were approached by a senior research fellow in the physics department to return for a day to meet the chairmen of the university's physics, mathematics, and chemistry departments who had earlier seen the performance but whom we had not met. He drove some hundreds of miles to pick us up in Portland and we spent
a most fascinating day with four distinguished scientists intensely desirous of knowing the Upanishadic concepts of time and space, their interrelation and whether these classical Indian texts visualized phenomena other than matter and energy as we know it. What an absolute delight it was in such company to talk of the mobility of Brahman (the Upanishadic term for a composite of all that is, manifest and unmanifest), its myriad manifestations in maya, and the ananda, delight, all of this myriad phenomena engages in through lila, play. We were amazed that none of these terms were foreign to them. And how very delightful to be able to identify known phenomena and their behavior by classical Indian determinants and yardsticks-the behavior pattern of subatomic particles, the unpredictability among these of the neutrino. Or, moving from the microcosm to the macrocosm, the intense galactic condensation of the Black Holes. Another instance. A cosponsor of our visit to Oregon was the Oregon Arts Commission, and at their invitation we went to do a performance in the little fishing village (though the inhabitants called it a town) of Florence on the Pacific Coast. The day after the performance we were invited to the junior high school there to talk to the students. It turned out that the principal of the school as well as the English teacher. had read about transcendental meditation and practiced it by their understanding of it. The students too, it seemed, shared their interest, and in the lively question-and-answer session that our meeting soon became, one of the boys, a 14-year old, asked: "Meditation I understand, but what do you mean by transcendental?" I must admit that we never use the term "transcendental medi. tation" in anything we do, nor do I particularly understand what this term has come to mean in the spiritual vocabulary of our day. We explained what transcendence meant to us: the continuance of sense and meaning beyond manifest reality; in fact, the effect such sense and meaning has on our physical reality. After a little explaining, this became intelligible to the children. But this is not what the two teachers had understood by transcendental meditation-which was for them some method of mental relaxation which percolated to ease their body tensions too. Did the children know of India's socioeconomic ills? Of course not! What did they know of India? In some small measure, transcendence. We wondered, as we skirted the Pacific Ocean on our drive back to Portland-past the mooing, grunting, barking sea lions basking in the sun at the foot of a precipitous cliff, past a lone deer staring at us out of the foliage as we stopped to admire its gentle elegance-what change in a decade or two this renaissance would. bring about on the American scene. Unlike many other lands rooted and set beyond the possibility of significant change, America is a transparently young country, young and beautiful and learning. Was it possible that it could learn the secret of agelessness, car. ing and not caring about its pre-eminence in the power configurations of the world?
The third instance. "There are enough of us embroiled in power politics," said author Don Berry (Trask, Moontrap, etc.) back in Portland, resolutely disowning blame for it. "That is the maya of existence. And you would be out of your mind trying to purge the world of it. That isn't my business. My work," he said, frequently quoting from Patanjali, "is to search for the meaning that transcends manifest reality. And then my work is to communicate with others who do the same-so that we may create a climate, however small, which tunes itself not simply by what is manifest and therefore perishable, but also concerns itself with that which is imperishable, which is the source and aspinltion of all our manifest reality." Don Berry had, it seemed, taken temporary sanyas (renunciation) from writing for intense research into the structure of sound -aided by electronics and ¡computers. That research had brought him close to Indian music. He had devised a tiny electronic drone instrument whose two ear-plugs emitted two notes of the standard octave-and if you hummed or chanted a specific third note, all three combined into a single compound note which was heard by a second person unidimensionally while it came back to you, the singer, multidimensionally. You felt the effect oqhis "rounded" note in a completely physical, tangible way. On his own admission, Berry was using this instrument much as an Indian musician uses the tanpura, whose four strings are tuned to two notes in three octaves, to create a somewhat similar effect. Jalabala asked him what he hoped to accomplish with his electronic device. "It will free the Western ear from the irrefutable manifest reality which inflexible musical notes symbolize. The Indian musician is always giving utterance to intervallic soundas a matter of course. We try to savor it only in harmonization." What a striking similarity with the Indian concept of approaching the Brahman through nada, .sound, aspiring to freedom, moksha, through nada brahma.
* * * * *
Twenty-five years from now when a good many of us will still be around to see the first of January, 2000, I wonder what the state of the arts, especially theater, will be! I wonder whether the audience, in India or America, will demand and get a theater of the 21st century: a theater claiming virtue for being neither 'small nor large but one fully aware of itself, like the consummate yogi experiencing totality with every breath, every constituent of it knowledgeable of the functioning of the whole; and the whole no hydra-headed monster sprawling over the offices of agents and subagents, unions and financiers, big names, little names and nonnames, and all the rest of today's world of the theater, pulling in a hundred directions! A hundred different directions! Why should that change with the passage of time? It is Brahman that we are questing for in what we do, all that we do in the theater. Why should we expect the elimination of the maya, these hundreds of hurdles and distractions that are essential to Brahman's lila, play? Without them, what ananda, delight, is there to be had in the play? 0
About the Author: Gopal Sharman (left), a leading Indian playwright, is also a Sanskrit scholar, poet, musician, artist and cofounder-with Jalabala Vaidya-of the Akshara Theatre in New Delhi. He began his career as art critic for the Indian Express and was for some time critic of the performing arts for the Times of London. His book Filigree in Music was lauded by the Sunday Times as exploring "the miracle of delight." In June Sharman begins a one-year stint as playwright-in-residence at Hartwick College. Oneonta, New York. His plans for the future include a new English version of The Mahabharata.
IS SATYAJIT RAY 'THE WORLD'S BEST FILMMAKER'?
of quiet images with precise, striking acuity .... The picture is an artistic masterpiece. " Writing about Ashani Sanket, Film Quarterly tempers praise with mild criticism. "If this, Satyajit Ray's most explicitly socially conscious film, lacks some of the subtlety of, say, Chant/ala or
Way back in 1964, Time magazine lauded Satyajit Ray's "quiet, deep films," and said he could one day become the "Shakespeare of the screen." Ray's movies continue to enthrall American critics, and the release of any Ray Days and Nights in the Forest movie is a big event[Aranyer Din Ratri], it is something all filmperhaps because hunger and violence, subjects it cannot lovers look forward to and talk about. In recent help dealing with, are not months, several of Ray's subtle subjects; nonetheless, their effect on the leading films have been released in characters is presented with the the U.S. Most critics have sensitivity we expect from been impressed; some have showered high praise on them Ray." The review cites Ray's "exquisite images-butterflies, -at times bordering on the lyrical. One critic says Ray a huge tree against the sunset, girls bathing in the river," but is "the world's best filmmaker." opines that Ray commits "one Penelope Gilliatt of the New Yorker described Charulala as a of his rare faux pas" toward the "flowing, opulent tale that end-"one can't help wishing seems to be lit from the inside that Ray had found a less like a velvet-lined carriage with melodramatic manner of ending a lantern in it rocked by a this fine film." hot monsoon wind .... The film New York magazine's widely leaves one with a sense of read movie critic Judith Crist great things unfulfilled but describes Nayak as "a witty and never of mania .... It has a ironic film." "It is quintessential style that is songlike, beautiful, Ray, a simple story moving at sometimes turning into an the pace of a majestic snail, its abrupt and comic rudeness .... protagonist projected on a broad It is beautifully written and canvas so subtly crammed with sometimes it is very funny .... insights, perceptions and [Ray's] Fosterish irony seems wry comment that its deeply imbedded in his style, and compassionate awareness of the he obviously works from within human comedy sticks to the in his sight of the Indian mind's ribs with surprising character. The film is triumphant persistency." in its comprehension of a Ray's appeal extends far period." beyond the elitist readers of arty The New York Times said of magazines, as should be obvious Charulata: "Arranging every from the rave review of single camera scene to convey Simabaddha in the massnuance, mood or tension, circulation New York Daily Mr. Ray has photographically News: "It is a powerful though embroidered a steady flow understated study of the rise of
a young Indian from the life of a provincial academic to the upper ranks of a British corporation in Calcutta. Ray paints his portrait of a man for whom nothing is illegal or immoral, so long as it is commonly practiced, with the most delicate brush strokes. Looks, gestures, the light in a room, the sound of music, the texture of a sari-these are the means through which Ray communicates. The executive is wonderfully acted by Barun Chanda, but the show is stolen by Sharmila Tagore, as his sister-in-law who pays a visit to the executive and his wife and with the simple wisdom of a country girl sees through his facade to his unscrupulous core. For my money, Miss Tagore is the world's best actress. I , say that as one who thinks Ray the world's best filmmaker."
THE WORLD'S CHAMPION COW Pennsylvanians are talking about a cow that in 1974 yielded more milk than any other cow in the world. Her name is Corinne and she's a Holstein cow who lives in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania. Last year she yielded a record-breaking 50,759 pounds of milk. (The average Holstein produces about 13,000 pounds.) Corinne is IO years old and weighs 1,600 Ibs. Says Kenneth Mowry, owner of this "miracle cow": "She just has the will to milk." Corinne's bounteous udder has made her a celebrity. Some 2,000 people turned out at a recent ceremony in Roaring Spring, when she was honored by the Holstein-Friesian Associatio!l of America.
A DEEPLY DISTURBING NOVEL ABOUT LIFE AND' DEATH Some Americans are calling it the most important novel in a decade. Critics are even willing to forgive the author the 13 years he took to write it. The novel is Something Happened, and the author is Joseph Heller whose wildly funny first book, Catch-22, sold eight million copies and was made into a film. Those Heller fans who had hoped for a sequel-like Son nonplussed of Catch-22!-are by Something Happened. They think something must have happened to Heller. Catch-22 was an outgoing book, a laugh-raiser even in its grimmest moments. Something Happened, on the other hand, plumbs somberly and deeply
ERICANS RETALKING
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into the human psyche. One critic called it 569 pages of virtually "unrelieved misery." Something Happened is about Robert Slocum, who works for a large nameless company that sells something. The name of the firm and what it sells are never disclosed. Slocum is a man in torment, who is scared even of closed doors because something horrible may be happening behind them. "In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I'm afraid. Each of these five people is afraid offour people ... for a total of 20, and each of these 20 people is afraid of six people, making a total of 120 people who are feared by at least one person." Slocum carries his anxieties home. "Only one member of the family is not afraid of any of the others, and that one is an idiot."
Slocum's family consists of an intelligent and attractive wife, a 15-year-old daughter, a nineyear-old son, and a mentally retarded child. Apart from the latter, it would seem to be a family that Slocum should be proud of and happy about. But he fears and distrusts it, except the nine-year-old-whom he fears/or. Success in the office brings him no peace of mind, nor does extracurricular sex with charming women. So Slocum broods, circling and recircling the question of what went wrong with his life, why he has become unloving and unloved. He is petrified with boredom; drained of any capacity for joy. His thoughts are almost exclusively those of· imminent disaster. And the disaster he dreads comes about in a manner he could not have foreseen. His nine-year-old son is hit by a car. Slocum finds him on a pavement "screaming in agony and horror, with legs and arms twisted brokenly and streams of blood sprouting from holes in his face and head .... He looks beggingly at me for help .... I hug him tightly in my arms. I squeeze.... " The doctor says later that the car-incurred injuries had not been serious and that death was due to asphyxiation. "The boy was smothered." Something terrible has indeed happened-and it's certain that nothing will· happen to Slocum again. "Is this book any good?" asks a distinguished contributor to the New York Times Book Kurt Vonnegut. Review-novelist He answers the question himself: "Yes. It is splendidly put together and hypnotic to read. It is clear and hard-
edged as a cut diamond." Says another reviewer: "Those who are aggrieved that the best American novelists have often seemed to work outside ordinary life will find that Heller has written an epic of the everyday." What does the "average" reader think? Being trapped inside Slocum's head is a claustrophobic and oppressive experience, but the reader stays there because he is fascinated by Slocum's mental processes, because he wants to know what's going to happen to Slocum. And the strength and power of many passages in the book-all of which is a monologue by Slocum-are magnetic. Some say Heller's extraordinary and in some ways demonic portrait of an ordinary man cannot be read without a sense of trauma, without deep introspection. Since Heller's work has been a bestseller for weeks, a lot of Americans have apparently been doing some intense soul-searching.
PROFESSORS OF PEACE American college students are talking more and more about peace. Why? Because they're studying peace in the classroom -earning degrees and doctorates in the subject-just as war is studied in military academies the world over. In fact, the upsurge of interest in peace is one of the major academic phenomena of recent years. Today, 53 colleges sponsor peace programs, hundr~ds of others offer at least one course in the subject. At the University of Pennsylvania, you may even earn an M.A. or a Ph.D. in peace studies.
The "peace craze" has also caught on in high schools. Colleges think that's a good thing because then college peace courses can start from a higher base. "Peace" is considered· one of the most interdisciplinary of "majors" as it draws on many liberal arts. Professors of peace studies believe lasting peace is possible. Says political scientist James Crown who teaches peace at New York University: "War is not an inevitable part of the human condition but an aberration that can be excised with proper understanding." He feels it isn't necessary to build a "utopia where people all love one another .... We didn't have to wait till people were perfect to control violence." Eventually, the new specialty might even be recognized by governments. "In 10 or 15 years," says one college teacher who took his degree in peace, "wen be seeing a whole new range of students coming out of college. They' /I be the onesthe professors of peace-whom governments will consult, not political scientists, when governments need expertise on resolving conflicts." D
D D(j AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM As is evident from a recent show at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Pop art is a fully validated style, capable of sustained development, elaboration and expansion. A sampling of the best works of the Whitney retrospective are shown on the following pages. A chunky, oddly angled bedroom and a soft pay-telephone. Paintings of flags, targets, comicstrip frames, Batman, Popeye, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell's Soup cans and billboard fragments. All of these, and more, were part of a survey of Pop art at New York's Whitney Museum, selected by guest curator (and well-known art critic) Lawrence Alloway. It was a well-timed exhibition. Over a decade has passed since the emergence of Pop as an identifiable style. Although Pop art is still not to the taste of everyone-there are pockets of resistance commanded by doctrinaire abstractionists and by others who confuse the Pop artists' use of mass culture with the faults and excesses of mass culture itself-Pop is by now a fully validated style. Most of its major figures were accorded retrospectives by the late 1960sWarhol, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, Dine, Oldenburg-and several years before these, Rauschenberg and Johns, who are now considered proto-Pop (as well as neoDada), a kind of two-man bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop. Catalogues, essays and coffee-table monsters analyzing most of the major Pop artists have multiplied, and no museum or collector concentrating (Hl contemporary art with any pretense to objectivity can be without several examples of Pop. Most of the major Pop artists have, of course, continued to produce new works more or less Rcprintcd by pcrmission from Art In America. © 1974 by John Perreault.
within the styles-or the more specific vocabularies-they established a decade ago. Perhaps the most profusely inventive is Lichtenstein, who has moved from his initial and notorious massmedia images through replicas of "Abstract-Expressionist" brushstrokes and other increasingly complex art-historical reference/ parodies-fine art too can be 'part of mass culture-to modular Art Deco abstractions, elaborate reflection-coded mirrors and, most . recently, his reinvention of shallow trompe-l'oeil still life, making· some splendid sC).llpture along the way. Oldenburg, while focusing on the fabrication of some of his proposals for fantastic monuments, has increasingly revealed in prints and drawings his talent for exquisite draftsmanship, as well as' increasingly ambitious scale. Warhol's rather painterly new series of silkscreens with the image of Chairman Mao indicates an artistic (as well as a physical) resurgence of energy. Rauschenberg's new sculptures using cardboard and all sorts of other homely junk recall his early, pretechnological work and also have a renewed force of their own. And on and on, attesting to the fact that Pop art was-and still is-capable of sustained development, unpredictable elaboration and expansion. Not only have the best of the Pop artists deepened and intensified the individual qualities of their various styles, which, as time goes by, can be increasingly seen as personal; they also established a broad range of .general principles and possibilities which have provided the
groundwork for a number of new styles-of which more later. Thus the Whitney's large ap.d fairly comprehensive Pop art exhibition stimulates some additional thoughts on this successful but still controversial style. Lawrence Alloway's excellent catalogue, which will doubtless become a standard Pop art text, discusses the works of the major artists in the show in enough detail to do them justice as individuals, and also includes a general section in which he carefully and clearly delineates a context for Pop art, within both the mass-culture and the art frameworks. In the latter case he contests the hard-line dogmas of critics such as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg who, when Pop emerged, were unable to be sympathetic. Alloway maintains-I feel, rightly-that Pop is an art style based upon pre-existent signs already known to the viewer through the mass media. Consequently, Pop directs attention to the original sign system and so is about 20th-century communications systems in general, as much as it is about-or in precarious equilibrium withmore traditional art concerns. Alloway is usually credited with the first use of the term "Pop art," in the mid-1950s, when he was associated with the Independent Group of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Nevertheless (as he explained in his essay on English Pop in Lucy R. Lippard's 1966 Pop Art), he used the word "Pop" to mean mass culture itself and not the art which drew upon it as a
source. He was a keen observer of English Pop art in the midand late '50s and when he moved to America in 1961, he was prepared for and sympathetic to the sensationally rapid and (at the time) startling development of American Pop. Neither English Pop nor Continental semi-Pop "New Realism" was included in the exhibition. This is not just because the Whitney· is a'museum of American art. American Pop is quite distinct. In general, art from outside the U.S. that draws upon mass-culture images and forms does not have the panache or aggressiveness or clarity of American Pop. The mass media, after all, received their greatest, most glamorous and most devastating expression in the U.S.-perhaps because European high culture was never so firmly established, or because a Babel of transplanted cultures, impossible to integrate, necessitated an entirely new culture-high-pitched, strikingly banal, instantly visual, insistently electric. One remembers rather fondly, at ihis point, the shock of Pop in the early '60s-and also the confusion. So many artists were working with mass-culture images then that it was difficult to establish the perimeters of the style. The best of the new works caused a kind 'of perceptual double take (that for new viewers continues to occur). Even with the tactical and semantic example of Duchamp's Readymades firmly in our minds, Pop's. seeming disruption of the fine line between art and life violated
our expectations. Pop images were nothing like the now remote "industrial antiques" of Duchamp; they were images in the present tense, as familiar as the comic books and advertisements they came from, which were curiously invisible until introduced into an art context. Alloway's exhibition offered a wide range of artists (17) operating within the Pop style, not limiting itself to any hypothetical "hardcore" handful. We are now far enough away from Pop's auspicious-and upsetting-early '60s debut to be able to savor and analyze some of its accomplishments. Pop was a widespread movement. Many of its major practitioners seem to have come to Pop independently, unbeknown to each other.
That both Warhol in 1960 and Lichtenstein in 1961 discovered comic-strip subject matter is the most striking example of "parallelism." Irony, shift in social context and alteration of visual context, all of which were part and parcel of Pop art, became ways of both celebrating and criticizing a cultural environment of consumerinciting advertisements, symbols and products. Thus, disconq,ertingly ephemeral bits of visual meaning were combined to produce a disconcertingly meaningful new art style which was able to express complex and ambiguous forms and feelings which generally imply a love-hate relationship with the images of mass culture, absorbed and transformed yet recognizable.
The art audience mainly consists of individuals with tastes predicated on higher-than-average social, economic and cultural standing-and for an audience like this, there is a kind of anticlass thrill in the proximity to, even the appreciation of, the ordinary and what used to be called the Vulgar. It is adventurous, at least up to a point, to admire crude but energetic B movies, striking supermarket food cartons, comic strips and even television. Warhol once said that Pop art is liking things. Art is one way to communicate without taboos what you like. It is also the best way to express mixed feelings, ambivalence. Pop art can communicate intense nostalgia. One immediately thinks of Jim Dine's
James Rosenquist "The Lines Were Deeply Etched on the Map of Her Face," 1962, oil on canvas. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Scull, New York.
marvelous Child's Blue Wall, a starry wall with a light switch and nursery lamp. Warhol's superstars (manufactured by him) seem to express nostalgia for the present, distancing it through exaggeration and instant myth. However, unlike most other Pop, Warhol's work, whether his films or his many death-obsessed paintings, has a darker edge to it, even a cruel morbidity. As an art movement, Pop was challenging and vital. In some ways it still is. Vitality does not wear off that quickly. Particularly Text continued on page 26
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Roy Lichtenstein "Woman Witha Flowered Hat," 1963, magna on canvas. Private Collection. Photo courtesy of Pace Gallery.
Jim Dine
"Hatchet With Two Pallettes, State No.2," 1963, oil on canvas with wood and metal. Collection of Harry N. Abrams family, New York.
1. Andy Warhol "Marilyn Monroe Diptych," 1962, acrylic on canvas. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Burton, Tremaine, Meriden, Connecticut.
4. Jasper Johns "Map," 1962, encaustic and collage on canvas. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Weisman, Los Angeles, California.
2. Andy Warhol "Popeye," 1961, acrylic on canvas. Collection of Robert Rauschenberg, New York.
5. Jasper Johns "Three Flags," 1958, encaustic on canvas. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Burton, Tremaine, Meriden, Connecticut.
3. Robert Rauschenberg "Persimmon," 1964, oil on canvas with silkscreen. Collection of Mrs. Leo Castelli, New York.
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'No one familiar with Pop can ever again look at the contemporary environment in quite the same way.' at its inception, Pop was contrary to what had come to be expected and what was thought to be required. Therefore, Pop was necessary, since contrary moveswhen accompanied by other qualities such as inventiveness, feeling, a coherent style-are what keep art open, keep it free. Pop art helped to make possible the current pluralism of art styles when it offered positive proof that serious art need not be limited to abstraction, and that imagery, extremely loaded subject matter and even humor could all be absorbed by modern art without embarrassment to produce work of great energy. Representational images, chunks of the real world, could no longer be forbidden in serious art, as they had been for over a decade. Abstract art continued, of course. Developing simultaneously with Pop, many of the young abstractionists can be seen to have been strengthened in many ways by the Pop "competition." Some of the new abstract styles, in painting as in sculpture, were just as much a reaction to Abstract Expressionism as was Pop, adopting (as did Pop) harder edges, bright synthetic color and impersonal finish or fabrication¡ (Stella, Noland, Judd, et a1.).The stylistic similarities shared by Pop and the various sorts of abstraction developing in the early '60s are much clearer in retrospect than they were in the heat of the ideologically fraught moment. Pop forms and Pop composition are difficult to separate from subject matter, as in any art with a representational component. In Pop painting, the use of images already once removed from three dimensions-preflattened, so to speak-allowed Pop artists to have their cake and eat it too, to remain loyal to the orthodox modern idea that painting at its best and most contemporary should be as flat and nonillusionistic as possible, while at the same time introducing representational subjects. Many Pop paintings are more literally flat, less illusionistic,
than many abstract paintings. Johns's paintings of flags, because flags as subjects are absolutely flat to begin with, are absolutely flat paintings, despite Johns's lush paint. Their images, contradicting their textures, keep the stars and stripes right on the surface. Much the same can be said about Lichtenstein's paintings based on comic-book art. Pop art has borrowed artmaking techniques as well as subjects from the mass media. A new style is often created by the artist's use of currently unsanctioned ways of making art. The Dadaists and Surrealists were particularly creative in this regard. And in the AbstractExpressionist context, Pollock's method of making his drip paintings was certainly unorthodox too. Likewise, Pop art often not only resorted to factory fabrication but also appropriated other techniques directly from commercial art: silk-screening and other stencil methods, airbrush spray-painting, or transferring and enlarging images with opaque and slide projectors, among many other methods considered "forbidden" in fine art, circa 1960. Perhaps more important than any of these factors is the way in which Pop introduced massmedia visual codes as a subject. In Lichtenstein, for instance, the crude yet elaborate visual language system of comic strips is revealed by being taken apart and exaggerated. The graphic devices used to communicate speech (various types of "balloons"), unspoken thoughts (bubbled "balloons") and everything from powerful emotion to violent physical action (linear zigzags, bolts of lightning, tears, etc.), l.llong with the conventions which represent smoke, fire, water and even mirrors, all figure in Lichtenstein's complex, formal works. Rosenquist takes the over-lifesize representational devices of bill-boards and the equally arbitrary artifices of color ads and illustrations and collages them into his own poetic, Cubist-inclined structures; the visual language of his sources has been
fragmented to reveal its basic components. (Not how an orange looks, for instance, but how the illusion of an orange is built up.) Working in another direction, Oldenburg uses the giant size and the hardness or flaccidity of his objects as wild, erotic metaphors to expose the hidden sexuality of the visual language of mass-culture products, foods and commercial displays. Pop art has changed American art. A good case can be made that Oldenburg's soft sculpture had an influence on much recent abstract antiformal sculpture, in all its stuffed, draped or floppy manifestations. Pop also reintroduced some of the conceptual context shifts initiated by Duchamp, and this reintroduction surely had some influence on recent Conceptual art. PhotoRealist painting, particularly when its subjects are the highway culture and magazine photography, is obviously indebted to Pop, if it is not itself to be seen actually as second-generation Pop. The Photo-Realists' use of preflattened subjects (photographs) gives their work the same paradoxical but assured twodimensionality we see in Johns's flags and Lichtenstein's comicbook paintings. Pop art has also changed our lives. Its feedback to commercial art has been enormous, making post-Pop pop culture more sophisticated, more pretentious, much more eclectic and, in some ways, less interesting than the early, undiluted, "classic" commercialart sources of Pop. No one familiar with Pop can ever again look at the contemporary environment in quite the same way. 0
About the Author: John Perreault, art critic for New York's Village Voice newspaper, also writes for Vogue and Art in America magazines. He is the author of Luck, a book of poems.
Mel Ramos
"The Joker," 1962, oil on canvas. Private Collection, New York.
Why do some people get 'down in the dumps'-and stay there? Can it be avoided? In this interview, Dr. Bertram S. Brown, Director, U.S. National Institute of . Mental Health, discusses the latest research on an ailment that may be as prevalent as the common cold.
What IOU
should know about mental depression
QUESTION: ••• Doctor, exactly how do you describe depression? BROWN: From the layman's point of view, sometimes people say
they're depressed when they're just feeling a bit moody, a little "down"-and that's just as common as can be. In that sense, maybe 30 per cent of all Americans suffer from depression at times. But clinically, we mean something more serious when we speak of depression. In the intermediate stage, victims feel a lack of energy and interest in life that hangs on for a few days or a few weeks and affects their life functions. QUESTION: In what way? BROWN: I mean that even the everyday, routine things just are
hard for a depressed person to perform-things like getting one's own breakfast or getting the day's work done. The third level, where no one can doubt that you're dealing with depression, is when somebody literally sits in a corner-almost paralyzed-looking into space.
Let's take, for example, a depressed woman. If she is willing to talk to you-which she often isn't-ask her what she's thinking, and she'll tell you that life isn't worth living and that she's a terrible person. She's feeling guilty about things that may have happened recently or in the past. She's feeling gloomy about herself and the world to the point that it occupies her whole mind and soul. QUESTION: Does it become mental illness at that point? BROWN: Yes. I don't think one can say it's then anything but a mental illness. One of the ways of looking at it that I find illuminating is to say it involves great feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and haplessness. QUESTION: Do physical symptoms generally come with depression? BROWN: With severe depression, yes, there are physical symptoms and they're fairly well known. For example, it's rare to have a serious depression without loss of appetite. Sometimes this sneaks up on the victim, so the doctor always asks about weight changes. Another symptom is a change in sleep patterns. The most common one is when the person wakes up early in the morning for no apparent good reason. Or less often but just as significant, he or she has trouble falling asleep. A third symptom is that depressed people feel aches and pains and complain about them more. They have chest pains, their head aches, their muscles hurt and their bones creak. QUESTION: Are these symptoms easy to discern? BROWN: It's usually easier to pick it up in a family member or a friend than it is in yourself-though it's worth thinking about if. you're having unexplained aches and pains. QUESTION: Is depression often confused with other forms of mental illness, such as schizophrenia? BROWN: .In the most severe cases, depression can become temporarily confused with schizophrenia, since it shows up with changes in thinking or illogicality or paranoid thoughts. We call this psychotic depression, and it is the worst ·kind, but a severe "black mood" change points to the diagnosis of depression rather than schizophrenia. Nevertheless, a diagnosis of depressive illness may be missed for a variety of reasons. Recent research indicates that in one of America's large cities, 20 per cent of the patients admitted to mental hospitals diagnosed as schizophrenic may have been suffering from a depressive psychosis. QUESTION: Is there a genetic factor in depression? BROWN: Yes. It varies from very heavy, if not predominant, to very minimal, depending on the type of depression. QUESTION: Does depression develop slowly? BROWN: It can develop rather quickly-within a day-or it can build up over months. One form of depression, as you know, is linked with the opposite-mania. This is the manic-depressive form of the disease. In such cases, people have an episode of hyperactivity and grandiosity that can go on for a month or two or three. Then they're well for a time. Then, a few months later, they'll have a depressive illness. QUESTION: How many types of depression are there? • BROWN: We talk about a number of alternative types. Briefly: Reactive depression is more clearly associated with. outside events-unlike endogenous depression, which is more closely associated with biological factors. We talk about neurotic depression-mild, without thinking that you're rotten inside. Psychotic depression is so deep that you become afraid that not only isn't food worth eating but you may even have a paranoid thought that it might kill you because you re~lly want to kill yourself. The newest way of looking at it is the unipolar-bipolar axis.
The bipolar is the form more commonly known as manic-depressive, in which some people have a depressive illness whose symptoms show up at one time in excitement, at another in depression. The unipolar variety shows up as depression without the alternating excitement .... QUESTION: What causes depression? BROWN: We are getting close to the actual biological mechanisms that are involved-down to what· happens between nerve connections in the transmission of messages. The transmission from nerve "A" to nerve "B" is a complicated chemical-electrical phenomenon involving enzymes which help the chemicals to move around and change their nature rapidly. Jle now know which enzymes might be deficient and which chemicals might pile up at the place between the nerve "A" and nerve "B" where the connection takes place and the message is transmitted. This has led to our major, exciting pharmacological breakthroughs. I know you have to be careful in saying "breakthroughs," but just 20 years ago, if any of us had a serious depression, the chances were we would be in a mental hospital for nine months' to a year or so. Now, if the same thing happens, the chances of being back at work or functioning or at home in a month or two are excellent-perhaps 80 or 90 per cent. QUESTION: What are some of the big breakthroughs? BROWN: One is a very effective, and yet somewhat frightening, treatment, and I wish that we understood it better. That's electroshock. We find that electroshock treatment in certain types of depression brings the patient out of the depression. Another very successful approach to treatment is psychoactive drugs. There are antidepressant compounds that have direct activity on the nervous system. Another drug, offering the prospect of a tremendous breakthrough in terms of preventing depression, is lithium chloride-a simple salt which seems to be especially helpful in warding off the manic-depressive type of depression if it is taken regularly, just a1sinsulin shots help ward off the effects of diabetes. QUESTION: How widely is this being used? BROWN: Our estimate is that approximately 30,000 people in the United States are on lithium chloride; Scientists are not sure, but they suspect that several hundred thousand would benefit from being on the drug under supervision. QUESTION: The diabetic has to keep taking insulin the rest of his life. Is that true of the person taking lithium chloride? BROWN: Usually. For the particular type of manic-depressive \disease where it seems to be working as a preventive, taking the 'drug becomes a lifetime endeavor. QUESTION: What about nonprescription drugs, such as pep pills and that sort of thing? BROWN: I don't think that self-prescription is helpful, and perhaps is much more dangerous than taking nothing at all. We are using several energizers, such as Ritalin, in the treatment, but usually in conjunction with some over-all strategy. Of course, amphetamine has proven to be quite dangerous, in terms of its addictive potential and the letdown afterward. QUESTION: You mentioned two basic approaches to treatmentBROWN: A third category of treatment for depression which is being tried is the psychological approach. In this, the idea is not to dig into the patient's past-what happened in his childhoodbut to do a frontal attack on that feeling of helplessness to show that the person is!}'t helpless. For example, the patient will say how weak he or she feels, and you ask, "How much do you think you can lift?" Well, perhaps about five pounds is the answer. So you bring in a seven-
'The wisdom through the ages is that a break in routine or something that's pleasurable is the best medicine in the recovery from mild depression. But this does not work for severe depression.' pound weight and let the patient lift it, and go on from there. Or the depressed person will say it's too far to walk down the corridor. With a little bit of encouraging, you take him or her to the corridor and back-give them success experiences to counteract the feelings of helplessness. QUESTION: How long do effects of electroshock treatment last? BROWN: For most of the people who have received electroshock, it's the first and only time they need it. QUESTION: Does electroshock therapy take a long time? BROWN: We've made progress. The usual course of treatment might be somewhere between 4 and 10 treatments over a period of approximately two to three weeks at most. In the old days, those electroshock treatments would produce muscular and convulsive movements, but now we have chemicals to use in conjunction with the therapy, and find those responses aren't essential at all. QUESTION: How long does each individual shock last? BROWN: Less than a second. And within an hour or two, the patient can walk home with a friend or relative. The treatment is most often given in a hospital, because if a person's sick enough to have electroshock treatment, he's sick enough to be in the hospital. While electroshock treatment still gives rise to some anxiety and fears, it can free patients of depression in one or two weeks. It's a rapid form of treatment which many doctors turn to, especially for suicidal patients. Drugs work as effectively in many cases and take two to three weeks. However, electroshock is not used in mild depressions which are clearly rdated to external events and which are not very deep and present no suicidal danger. QUESTION: Are there any side effects to electroshock? BROWN: Either none or a minimal memory loss for a few days .... QUESTION: Is there anything a depressive individual can do for himself short of seeking psychiatric advice? BROWN: One thing depressed individuals can do is to build into themselves, even before the depression begins, the idea that they are not helpless or hopeless. Of course, once a depression starts to become stronger and sustained, they will help themselves best by seeking professional help. QUESTION: Are general practitioners capable of dealing effectively with depression? BROWN: Yes. This is part of a promising breakthrough in treating depression. Most general practitioners and internists can treat mild and moderate depression quite successfully. In fact, physicians often must deal, in serious and disabling illness and injury, with the bereavement reactions of broken and upset families. With severe depression or prolonged bereavement. consulting a psychiatrist would be very useful. QUESTION: How can friends and relatives help? BROWN: Well, they can avoid the error of screaming at the person to "snap out of it" when people just can't very well "snap out of it." If they could, they wouldn't be staying depressed. Also, we can avoid recriminatory statements that can aggravate the person's guilt feelings and knock down one's self-image. If your colleague at work is feeling kind of blue and depressed, for example, and thinks his work isn't worth anything, you can make known your approval when he turns out a good piece of work. Then, as he internalizes your approval, he sees that maybe
he isn't as helpless and hopeless as he thought. Most people, by the way, give positive clues and warnings to their friends or relatives before committing suicide. These clues should be taken very seriously, and the person should be advised to see a psychiatrist .... QUESTION: Is there a difference in depression among women and men? BROWN: Yes. Our statistics show that of patients coming under care in psychiatric facilities and services, female patients outnumber males two to one. This is in all age categories. As you look at external events that are difficult enough to be a' major precipitant of depression, some appear quite predictable. One is the woman who has not worked and, when the last child leaves home, has not yet made any adaptation. I think this is a first cousin to the problems of the man who's worked successfully and at age 60 has not made any plans as to what he's going to do next, after retirement. This suggests an intriguing problem for the future: As we see a shift in life patterns, with changing roles for men and women and more "singles," we will have to keep a very sharp eye on changes in depression and psychiatric syndromes accompanying these changes. QUESTION: Do you find more depression among married or single people? Or does marital status make any difference? BROWN: Right now, we're pursuing careful statistical studies as to family structure and mental illness. I'll give you some statistics that are just mind-boggling-at least to me: Of American males aged 45 to 64-unmarried, si!,1gle,widowed, divorced or separated-six per cent are in institutions such as mental hospitals, old-age homes, retirement centers and veterans' hospitals. This increases to 13 per cent for males 75 and over. Corresponding figures for females are 2 per cent and 13 per cent. Psychiatric hospitalization and outpatient treatment among "singles"-whether they're divorced, widowed or never married -is more than double the rate for married persons. QUESTION: How serious can depression become in children? BROWN: Young children can get depressed, though it shows up' in different ways than among adults. Sometimes their symptoms are restlessness and lack of att~ntion at school, or sleep troubles and nightmares. Currently, we're pulling together our knowledge about depression in children and looking carefully at which approach might be useful for children. Depression in children is an uncharted area with a great deal of controversy, but one that, I think, holds much promise for solving a lot of mysterious. troublesome behavior in our youngsters. QUESTION: Does any particular kind of attitude on the part of parents seem to predispose children to depression? BROWN: There is no one. simple answer. I think that in depression among children we have to carefully avoid blaming the parents for what may not be their fault in any way, but has more to do with biology or genetics .... QUESTION: Are working situations today really anymore stressful and competitive than they have been- in the past? BROWN: I think in most ways work at present is more satisfying and less difficult than in most prior ages: The hours are shorter, the pay is better: and there is less monotony. On the other hand, the expectatigns with which we come to
work have shifted perhaps more dramlltically than the nature of work itself. Eight hours on a boring, repetitive assembly linewhen it'.s seen as a clear way just to make a living for your family -would be tolerable. But not so if the expectation is that the workday will also be rewarding from an interpersonal point of view and offer some mastery and challenge. If one has a chronically unrewarding situation where the expectation is otherwise, this can be an external stress that could precipitate depression. QUESTION: Does our modern era-through television and other wonders-tend more than other eras to create unrealistic expectations among people? BROWN: I think there's little doubt as to the answer to that question. The whole world of communications not only builds up expectations but markets them-second cars, second homes, boats, foreign travel, and on and on. And something that I've learned in my world travel is that if there's some resignation and acceptance of one's lot, there is not the frustration, anxiety, tension and, occasionally, depression that we get with unmet expectations. QUESTION: Does weather bear on depression rates? BROWN: There are differences in suicide rates across the world in different cities. As to whether or not the weather itself is a predominant factor, we're not sure. Studies in Switzerland show a significant increase in suicide and crime in periods when the foehn -a warm, dry wind which blows in the mountain valleys-is a prevailing influence on the climate. Scientists have investigated the question of the influence of weather and climate on our mental processes. The question is a very old one, but most of the studies have been inconclusive. More often I'm asked about what happens- to depression and suicide rates over Christmas.
QUESTION: What does happen? BROWN: We have found, surprisingly, that there are fewer suicides right around Christmastime, rather than more. In the aftermath-early spring-suicide rates show an increase .... QUESTION: For mild depression, does it help to go to a ball game or take a week off and go to the beach? BROWN: I think the wisdom through the ages is that a break in routine or something that's pleasurable is perhaps the best medicine in the recovery from mild depression. I've known literally dozens of my friends who were feeling a bit blue, and after a good few weeks of vacation came back with their spirits renewed. But this does not work for severe depression. Some suggest going out and getting drunk. I don't think that's a very good treatment for depression. Some people do find that using alcohol to handle their moods does give an alleviation of tension anxiety. But then, the secondary dependency on alcohol turns out to be worse than the disease itself. QUESTION: How effectively can people recover from severe depression, especially if they have a tough or high position of responsibility? BROWN: It's a very delicate issue, but one example of successful recovery in a demanding post is that of Senator Thomas Eagleton [of Missouri], whose depressive illness was in the headlines when he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1972. I think that in terms of the public's understanding and acceptance of depressive illness and its treatment, this whole episode and the personal example of the Senator's recovery was a remarkable step forward. We would hope that through this and other examples more people now realize that you can have a severe depression, be hospitalized several times, and come back to full and effective functioning and enjoyment of life. 0
HOW SERIOUS IS THE DEPRESSION PROBLEM IN INDIA? Depressive illness is a worldwide phenomenon and India is no exception, says Dr. l.S. Neki, head of the Psychiatric Department of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. The two most prevalent kinds of depression are: endogenous depression, which is by and large genetically determined; and neurotic depression, which is caused by extraneous factors. However, he says, "the patterns of disease vary from culture to culture." For example, victims of endogenous depression in India, unlike those in the West, seldom have delusions of guilt. "We are not a guilt-conditioned people," Dr. Neki says. "We are a shame-conditioned people." The second characteristic found in India, and not recognized in the West, is .the presence of the fugitive impulse-the patient wants to withdraw and run away from society. This, says Dr. Neki, is culturally approved here. "In fact, the patient gets positive community support if, motivated by his seclusion-seeking, he chooses to live the life of a religious mendicant," Dr. Neki adds. "Sanyas in India is a time-honored institution." Thirdly, in India endogenous depression is often characterized by symptoms of agitation and excitement; in the West endogenous depression is more likely to be characterized by retardation. What about neurotic depression? Neurotic or reactive depression is not a very serious problem in India, says Dr. Neki. "This depression," he feels, "probably has a lot to do with loneliness and this is not a common phenomenon in India.
Our closeness of family and community life is a guard against loneliness which often breeds depression." However, one kind of neurotic depression that is found in India but is hardly noticeable in the West is what Dr. Neki calls "hysterical depression." Especially common in women, this depression is usually verbally exaggerated, is "expressed far more than is felt and is used to manipulate others and to get other people to do things." Childbirth is another cause of neurotic depression, mostly in wQmen. If they expect a son and get a daughter instead, many go into bouts of depression. How serious is the depression problem in India? There are no figures available for the country as not many surveys have been carried out. But one important survey, conducted by Dr. K. C. Dube in and around Agra, places the figure roughly at one per thousand of population. This, Dr. Neki feels, is true also of big cities like Delhi. However, he adds: "Today in hospitals we see many more patients than before." What is the best way to avoid depression? Dr. Neki doesn't know if there is any. But he says that people should try to avoid stress, and build up in themselves the belief that they are not helpless or hopeless. A short vacation can also help in mild cases. But it's more important, he feels, that people should recognize the disease's symptoms which are loss of appetite, a run-down feeling, loss of weight, aches and pains, and loss of sexual desire. "If you have one or more of these symptoms," says Dr. Neki, "it's time that you consulted a doctor."
'TO PETER DRUCIER, MI.II.OEMEIT. IS WBI.T TBE MODEll WOILD IS I.LL I.BOUT'
As America's foremost management consultant and 'management philosopher,' Peter Drucker has probably influenced more business executives in more countries than anyone else. His latest book promises in a single volume all that a manager must know about management. The following article discusses this ambitious book-as well as Drucker's style, ideas and methods. It is nqt easy to characterize, or explain, the essence of Peter Drucker-not that many people have not tried. To James Hayes, president of the American Management Association, "he is a management philosopher, and there aren't many of those around." To Chairman Walter Wriston of First National City Corporation, "he has what's called judgment." To Daniel Lufkin, who helped start the investment banking house of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, based at least in part on ideas set down by Drucker, he is "simply terrific." Yet to some, including many in the academic world, Drucker is. inconsistent, opinionated, and infuriating. At 65, Drucker has slowed his pace a little. He stilI holds the title of distinguished lecturer at New York University, where he was Professor of Management in the Graduate Business School for more than 20 years. But he moved to California three years ago and now limits his teaching to a few courses at Claremont Graduate School, where he is Professor of Social Science and Business Administration. Actually his pace has slowed only in com-
parison to the load he had been carrying. He is, or has been, a highly successful author, a widely sought-after management consultant, an economist, a journalist, a political theorist, and a sociologist, as well as a teacher. His books have sold three million copies worldwide, including more than one million copies of The Practice of Management, which has earned him $250,000 in the 20 years since it first appeared. He has been consultant to. hundreds of corporations, beginning with General Motors. And, while few corporate managers can explain precisely how Drucker helped them, they stilI cheerfully pay his $1,500-a-day fee. "It's not specific advice so much," says Lufkin, "as that he gives you a framework in which to view your business, your markets-~nd your life." Most of all, Drucker is a consummate student of the world of business. He has spent half his life opening the eyes of managers to the dimensions of their job and to the significance of their role in society. In his books, in the classroom, in his consulting assignments, he has imprinted his own ideas on so many executives that he is, without question,
one of the best known, most frequently quoted, most effusively praised-but also most exhaustively criticized-observers of management today. To Peter Drucker, management is what the modern world is all about, and the emergence of the 20th-century manager was, in his view, the pivotal event of the age. Now he has distilled "Drucker"-a vast body of knowledge and opinions-into Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, an 839-page work published in 1974.To Drucker, management is not so much a science as an organized body of knowledge. His audacious aim in Management is to present in a single volume all that a manager must know about it. Drucker's recurring theme, in this book and elsewhere, is that in only a few generations, the world has evolved from small family and work units into a society of vast, complex institutions and that the responsibility to make these institutions function effectively rests upon their managers. If the manager succeeds, says Drucker, then the institutions-and thus society as a wholewill work. To be effective, he says, managers need both a basic competence and a will to perform. Management touches upon virtually every tool of modern scientific management, from strategic planning to the design and content of jobs, with dozens of case studies of how corporations have worked through problems. Yet it is less a how-to book than a framework for Drucker's theories about management. Drucker could no more fail to make judgments than fail to breathe, and his philosophy is sprinkled liberally through Management. At a time when many observers see the multinational corporation as a disruptive force in the world economy, Drucker sees it as the most fruitful social innovation of the century, carrying opportunities and ideas across national boundaries and so working to unite the world economy [see article on page 37]. But he thinks the conglomerate corporation is virtually unmanageable, and the conglomerate that goes multinational absolutely unmanageable. Drucker believes that the service institution-colleges, hospitals, government -will be the frontier for management for the rest of this century, because these institutions are often vast but inefficient and so are the most difficult and challenging to manage. Some of Drucker's views seem so basic as to be almost axiomatic. In his The Practice of Management, he laid down the line that the
basis of a company is the customer. That idea, he says, has penetrated the business world here and there, but not nearly far enough. "Otherwise," he says, "we'd have no need for consumer advocates like Ralph Nader." [See "Citizen Nader" in January 1975 SPAN.] Drucker defines profits, on the other hand, not as a company's purpose but as an objective requirement of economic activity. Profit is seen as a minimum need of the corporation -not as a maximum "goal" of business. To Drucker: "Businessmen who talk about profit maximization are doing more to hurt the system than anything else. They are merely convincing people that there is no defense of the system." What strikes Drucker as most ironic is that the maximum profit, "which managements hope to achieve with their maximum goals," is often less than the minimum profit needed to keep the business healthy and growing. "It seems moronic to me the way many businessmen explain the reason for profit," he says. "Making money is a demand on you whether you are really interested in it or not." Drucker says that his consulting clients think he makes "horrible profit demands" on them. "Anyone who has less than a 12 per cent return in the past few years has been frittering away his assets," he says. In the end, Drucker has a view about nearly everything-insights gained in his 65 years on two continents. In an essay on¡ Drucker, Marshall McLuhan and his colleague Barrington Nevitt noted that an encyclopedic and international cultural background is indispensable to coping with life in the electronic age. Drucker's background is just that.
H
ewas born in 1909 into a highly cultivated, well-to-do family in Vienna. By 18 he was in Germany, first as an apprentice clerk in a Hamburg export firm and later as a trainee economist in the Frankfurt branch of a Wall Street brokerage house. In 1931 he added a law degree and took on a dual career as a teacher of law and an editor and financial writer for a Frankfurt newspaper. In early 1933 he completed his first serious work, a monograph that was interpreted by the Nazis as a complete rejection of their philosophy. When the Nazis came to power a few weeks after the essay appeared, it was banned. He also was already at work on The End of Economic Man, the searing analysis of Nazism and totalitarianism that Drucker published in 1939. By then, Drucker had fled Germany, first
for England and then for the United States. In early 1937, he had established himself as the American editor for a group of Scottish and English newspapers and as resident economist in the United States for a group of foreign institutional investors, most of them British. He taught economics and statistics at Sarah Lawrence College in New York before moving to Bennington College in Vermont as a professor of politics and philosophy. Then, in 1942, General Motors Corporation surprised Drucker with an invitation to study the corporation's top management and the structure of the company from the inside.
D
rucker says he never did determine who initiated the study, since no General Motors executive ever admitted to doing so. Nor does Drucker now know why he was chosen. But the assignment ultimately led to his Concept of the Corporation, a landmark study of the large American corporation, based in large part on the 18 months he spent with General Motors. What he saw there convinced him that the big corporation was America's representative social institution, the one that setihe:-standard for the American way of life. That book propelled him into the study of business and management that has engaged most of his energies ever since. Drucker continued to see himself as a student of American society; he simply decided that the best way to analyze that society was by analyzing American business and how it is managed. In performing this task, he has come to occupy a unique niche as a kind of management philosopher, a systems thinker who can draw disparate threads of knowledge together into a meaningful pattern. Drucker's observations about management come directly from experience. He reads widely, but rarely about management. "For me it's not a spectator sport," he explains. Instead, he depends on consulting assignments, where he often gets as -inside as an outsider can. "I'm an itinerant member of top management," he acknowledges, "but while I'm there, I'm full member." Drucker's consulting and his teaching and writing are mutually supportive. The consulting assignments provide him with firsthand knowledge of how management is being and should be applied, and he uses this information in formulating the ideas that appear in his books. "Consulting is my laboratory," he says. The books, in turn, bring in clients. Citicorp's Wriston, for example, had never met Drucker before he first asked him for
Drucker insists that companies prepare themselves for his visits as assiduously as he prepares for them. He has walked outof meetings with billion-dollar companies because they didn't do their homework. advice. But he had read The Age of Discontinuity, the 1969 bestseller in which Drucker did not so much forecast the future as explain the discontinuities-the sharp breaks in trends-that were likely to shape it. "He struck me as a man who thinks," says Wriston. "One day I just called him stonecold and asked him to come in and have lunch." Wriston has consulted Drucker frequently since. Drucker has shed some of his teaching load, but by no means all of it. "The teaching forces me to organize my thinking," he explains. "It enables me to hear myself and try things. That's why I like to teach experienced executives rather than kids." Despite formidable demands on his time, Drucker takes his commitment to students seriously. He came to Claremont with the clear understanding he would be exempt from service on facuIty committees. "But he pays attention to students, and he's meticulous about making himself available for appointments with them," says Dean Paul Albrecht
of the Claremont Graduate School. And he has been active in a new degree plan, the outgrowth of a management program for experienced managers that Claremont started three years ago. Since he moved to California four years ago, he has reduced his consulting work as well as his teaching load, partly because he was preparing Management for publication but also because he is trying to pare down a grueling travel schedule. He has current assignments with five major corporations, four of which-a consumer products company, a bank, a pharmaceutical company, and an oil company-have at least $1,000 million in annual revenues. He is also active with five much smaller companies and has a growing institutional "charity" practice. In his consulting work, Drucker is, as Felix E. Larkin, president of W.R. Grace & Company, has noted, "a one-man band." Aside from his office at Claremont College, his only office is at his home, where he answers his own numerous phone calls. Al-
though Drucker is forever grumbling that he is totally disorganized, Dean Albrecht maintains that he actually is "tremendously efficient and disciplined in his allocation of time." He plans his schedule three to six months in advance and turns down far more consulting assignments than he accepts. So heavy are the demands upon his time that he has taken to sending out multipurpose cards expressing regrets that he cannot "contribute articles or forewords; comment on manuscripts or books; take part in panels and symposia; join committees or boards of any kind; answer questionnaires; give interviews; and appear on radio and television." Hundreds of these cards go out every year. "I know it's an arrogance," Drucker says, but he thinks that, impersonal as they are, the cards are so bizarre that they will not offend anyone. Even with all the turndowns, he still made some 30 speeches in 1973, fewer than his usual 50 because of work on his book. Drucker still spends as much as 100 days a year on consulting assignments, not including days spent in extensive preparation. He is "sold out" months in advance, can afford to be choosy about clients-and is. He has very strict rules that clients must live with. He will not work with any organization unless he has a single point of contact, usually the top man. He wiIl express no opinions about persons in a client organization, even after a relationship of many years. He will not hold what he calls rump sessions with any of a client company's executives unless they are on the record. And he insists that companies prepare themselves, for his visits as assiduously as he prepares for them. "I've been known to get up in the executive committee meeting of a $l,OOO-millioncompany and walk out because they didn't do their homework," he says. A consulting relationship may last five years. At that point it usually dries up, sometimes because of a change in top management, sometimes because Drucker feels he is becoming too much of an insider himself. He worked closely with General Electric Company, for example, during the years when Ralph Cordiner was chairman. Then one day at a management meeting, an executive of the company introduced him as "a member of the family and really a member of this company." For Drucker that was the last day
at that company. He realized his usefulness was at an end because he no longer was the outsider. "When there's a shift in top management, I withdraw because I don't want to be part of the legacy," he adds. "It's not a legacy; it's a mortgage." Drucker seldom advises the company point-blank: "Do this" or "Don't do that." What he perhaps does best is raise questions about corporate purpose and mission. Few companies have any clear idea of what their mission is, he contends, and that is one of the three major causes of their worst mistakes. The other two, he says, are that managers have no feeling for what the company is really good at (and conversely what it is really not good at), and they do not know how to make "people decisions." Most of the time spent on personnel decisions goes into selecting people at the bottom and not at the top, Drucker says. "The least time is spent on selecting the colonels, and this is the step where you are really picking future generals," he says.
T
hough many admiring executives find it hard to define exactly how Drucker helps them, they can do so in terms specific enough to pin down his contribution. Investment banker Lufkin, for example, admits that some of his favorite Druckerisms sound simplistic when he tries to repeat them. But, he adds, when Drucker offers a piece of advice, it is sometimes so appropriate to the moment as to seem no less than inspired. "Some executives want concrete answers, in black and white," says Lufkin. "Peter says, figure it out for yourself, but here's the way to approach it." President Larkin of W.R. Grace & Company agrees. "Peter's approach is Socratic," he says. "He virtually never tells you anything. He elicits from you what you think your problems are. Then he keeps asking you questions. It's almost like a psychiatrist. This is his technique." Larkin's use of Drucker is typical: "I used him as a sounding board. Together, we did a kind of analysis of the organizational structure of the company. We identified the decisions that had to be made at the corporate level and could not be made any place else. Then we identified the decisions that should be made at the operating group level, the divisional level, the plant manager level. It was an analysis of what people at all levels of the company should be doing." Over the years, Drucker has developed expertise in such fields as publishing, pharma-
PETER DRUCKER: AN INDIAN VIEW What do Indian management experts think of Peter Drucker? The answer was provided by an expert SPAN interviewedProfessor A. Dasgupta, a pioneer in management education in India. Formerly head of the department of business management in Delhi University (from 1955 to 1972), he is an adviser at New Delhi's Y.M.C.A. Institute of Management Studies as well as consultant to various universities and management institutions. "My interest in Peter Drucker," says Professor Dasgupta, "was aroused in 1952 when I read his bOQk New Society. I was tremendously excited by it, particularly its account of how giant American industrial enterprises affect the whole community." Dasgupta later read five more of Drucker's books. All these, he says, "were characterized by Drucker's easy writing style and his incisive arguments that constantly give the reader intellectual jolts." Dasgupta was most impressed ~ith three of Drucker's books-The Practice of Management, Managing for Results and The Effective Executive. He feels The Practice of Management is "very thought-provoking and suggests many subjects for research. Managing for Results will enable any executive to see his business in a better perspective. It does not tell the executive how to do things right, but how he can find the right things to do. I regard Effective Executive as indispensable for executives and those who train them. It does not deal in platitudes but in highly practical terms. Running right through the book is an emphasis on effectiveness: that it can be learnt." Drucker's books are much admired in academic circles in India, says Dasgupta. "They have enriched the teaching of business management in India with a quality of intellectual excitement. In fact, the syllabi of all management courses in India
ceuticals, electrical equipment manufacturing, and chemicals through his many assignments in those industries. But he maintains that it is not expertise lie is selling. "My typical stance," he says, "is this: What is foremost on your mind that an outsider who doesn't know a damned thing about your industry but who has seen a good many institutions could help you with?" Yet Drucker is selling expertise of a sortnot the cold pragmatism of the traditional
reflect Drucker's influence. It is also recognized that many management techniques extensively used in India and elsewhere are rooted in Drucker's ideas. At least two Drucker books-The Practice of Management and Managing for Results -are recommended reading in management institutions all over India." Dasgupta says the general feeling in India is that Drucker addresses himself in his books to the highest level of executive, such as directors and managers. Among that cadre, there is high appreciation of Drucker's concepts. It is felt that a junior executive cannot benefit immediately from Drucker. Dasgupta feels that Indian executives know some other American management experts-such as Herbert Simon, Andrew Towl, Charles Myers and Ernest Dale-better than they know Drucker, because they have visited India. But it is likely that Drucker's influence will grow. Dasgupta believes that some of Drucker's ideas are eminently applicable to India -such as those on managing time, on the optimum contribution every executive can make. Some other Drucker concepts can be modified to Indian conditions. Dasgupta is impressed by Drucker's argument that management "is not so much a science as an organized body of knowledge." This body of knowledge, he says, enables the ambitious executive to acquire or master the skills he needs to discharge his responsibilities effectively. But management is also an art. Why? Because from the same body of knowledge, each executive develops his own personal style. "If the institution of management is to survive," Dasgupta says, "the body of knowledge should be continuously organized and strengthened. Drucker's own role in strengthening it has been exemplary, almost unique."
management consultant but the broad view of the world that he has developed through the years. He is a catholic man: a student of not only management and economics but also of mathematics, psychology, and philosophy. He can identify more than 20 varieties of mushrooms and picks them for his table during the long walks he takes in the mountains near his home with his wife Doris, a patent agent by profession, who also has a
knack for constructively criticizing his manuscripts that he finds invaluable. He is fascinated by Japanese history and culture and delighted with Japanese art "because I tend to think in configurations." Indeed, a special bond exists between Drucker and Japan. His books have been translated into Japanese and sell well there, and his personal appearances draw the elite of Japanese business. Susumu Takamiya, professor of business administration at Japan's Sophia University, declares that Drucker did much to establish a management philosophy within Japanese industry. Drucker is so popular in Japan, says Takamiya, because he stresses philosophical goals, not technical approaches. Achim A. Stoehr, a McKinsey & Company consultant based in Tokyo, is "skeptical as to the degree that his concepts are actually applied." Still, he concedes, "Drucker is a great source of new thinking and new terminology, and perhaps that enriches Japanese management's horizons." In the end, what corporations and readers absorb from Drucker is his consistent reiteration of the idea that nothing is static, that the world and its institutions are in a constant state of flux. "He sees the world as evolutionary, and he sees how an organization
must change to remain viable," says Arjay Miller, former president of Ford Motor Company and now dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford. What Drucker mourns is that the ability to evaluate and study change lags behind change itself. "As a result," he says, "we are in an intellectual and esthetic crisis in every area." The crisis deeply affects business, which must not only keep abreast of change but anticipate it. "But," says Drucker, "whenever we try to be scientific, we are thrown back either on purely mechanistic and static methods, such as work measurements of individual operations or, at best, on organization rules and definitions." So Drucker sees the world-including the world of business-in something of a philosophic vacuum, awaiting a new concept of the "whole." The need is for a discipline that explains things in terms of their direction rather than their cause-a calculus of potential. "I'm an old existentialist, but that's gone, too," says Drucker, in a contemplative mood, puffing a cigar. "It is the end of ideology. We may be getting to the idea of 'Does it work?' instead of 'Is it right?' It may be all we have. We may have a better idea of not the good
society but the tolerable society-based on avoiding the negatives we don't want. We may need to be looking for the acceptable ranges of imperfection." With his own vast book, Management, out of the way, Drucker will wait a while before plunging into another. But he already has three more books in the thinking stage. One, coming directly out of his study of the management of institutions, is tentatively titled, Can Government Be Saved? A second will reflect on various formative experiences in American history that, Drucker feels, characterized the country. Finally, he is mulling over another management book, this one on the management of money in a business. Through his books, Drucker probably strikes a more responsive chord with businessmen than with business school professors, although he has an academic following, too. Some professors think him sadly lacking as a researcher and far too committed to "unscientific" generalizations. But it is his breadth of vision that- most inspires working managers. Drucker's avowed aim is to give managers a high view of their calling. To make sure they have it, he seems determined to bring to managers a strong sense of personal mission and the thrill of achievement. D
DRUCKER'S VIEWS ON MANAGEMENT Few aspects of the world of business have escaped Peter Drucker's quick mindor his equally quick pen. The following lines are excerpts from his book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, published by Harper & Row. ON MANAGING GROWTH: Growth always requires that the management of one man-or of a small handful of men-be replaced by a genuine top management team. One way in which the chief executive of a small business that has growth ambitions can prepare himself for the day when the company will have outgrown management by one man is to build a top management team at the earliest possible moment. The one way in which he himself can learn to be a true manager, rather than the boss, is by analyzing first the key activities the business needs, and his own personality. There will always be key activities that do not fit the top man, that others can do better-and then others should do them. ON THE GROWTH COMPANY: A business that grows at an exponential ratelet alone at so high a rate as the much pro-
claimed 10 per cent each year-would soon panies should test themselves to find the gobble up the worldand all its resources. The point beyond which further size no longer growth company is not a sound investment. produces economies of scale but on the Such a company sooner or later-and usually contrary produces dis-economies. At that sooner-runs into real difficulties. Sooner or point the management should think through later it runs into tremendous losses, has to how to give birth to new independent busiwrite off vast sums, and becomes, in effect, nesses that then have the capacityfor growth and can benefit from economies of scale. unmanageable. ON DIVERSIFICATION: One major ON MANAGING THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: As soon as more pressure for diversification is psychological. than a very small fraction of a company's People get tired of doing the same things business is multinational, top management over and over again. They want to do something different. Otherwise work is a bore. has to divorce itself from running anyone national or regional component or any proON MANAGEABILITY: There is a duct area. This means that the traditional point of complexity beyond which a busiorganization in which top management is ness is no longer manageable. When top both the top management of the over-all management has to depend totally on abcompany and that of its largest single com- stractions, such as formal reports, figures, pany is the wrong structure. and quantitative data, then a ,business has ON OPTIMUM SIZE: Very big com- become too complex to be manageable.
MULTINATIONALS AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: .
â&#x20AC;˘ 'TBS AID BIILITIIS In this provocative and lucid article, management pundit Peter Drucker exposes the fallacies of four generally accepted myths about multinational corporations.
Four assumptions are commonly made in the discussion of multinationals and the developing countries-by friends and enemies alike of the multinational company. These assumptions largely inform the policies both of the de~eloping countries and of the multi-, national companies. Yet, all four assumptions are false, which explains in large measure both the acrimony of the debate and the sterility of so many development policies. These four false but generally accepted assumptions are: (1) the developing countries are important to the multinational companies and a major source of sales, revenues, profits
and growth for them, if not the mainstay of "corporate capitalism"; (2) foreign capital, whether supplied by governments or by businesses, can supply the resources, and especially the capital resources required for economic development; (3) the ability of the multinational company to integrate and allocate productive resources on a global basis and across national boundaries, and thus to substitute transnational for national economic considerations, subordinates the best national interests of the developing country to "global exploitation"; (4) the traditional 19th-century form of corporate organization, that is, the
"parent company" with wholly owned "branches" abroad, isthe form of organization for the 20th-century multinational company.
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What are the realities? In the first instance, extractive industries have to go wherever the petroleum, copper ore or bauxite is found, whether in a developing or in a developed country. But for the typical 20th-century multinational, that is a manufacturing, distributing or financial company, developing countries are important neither as markets nor as producers of profits. Indeed it can be said bluntly that the major manufacturing, distributive and financial companies of the developed world would barely notice it, were the sales in and the profits from the developing countries suddenly to disappear. Confidential inside data in my possession on about 45 manufacturers, distributors and financial institutions among the world's leading multinationals, both North American and European, show that the developed twothirds of Brazil-from Bello Horizonte southward-is an important market for some of these companies, though even Brazil ranks among the first 12 sales territories, or among major revenue producers, for only two of them. But central and southern Brazil, while still "poor," are clearly no longer "underdeveloped." And otherwise not even India or Mexico--the two "developing" countries with the largest markets-ranks for any of the multinational companies in my sample ahead even of a single major sales district in the home country, be it the Hamburg-North Germany district, the English Midlands or Kansas City. On the worldwide monthly or quarterly sales and profit chart, which most large companies use as their most common top-management tool, practically no developing country even appears in my sample of 45 major multinationals except as part of a "region," e.g., "Latin America," or under "Others." The profitability of the businesses of these companies in the developing countries is uni-f0rn11ylower by about two percentage points than"that of the businesses in the developed countries, except for the pharmaceutical industry where the rate of return, whether on sales or on invested capital, is roughly the same for both. As a rule, it takes longer-by between 18 months to three years-to make a new operation break even in a developing country. And the growth rate-again excepting the pharmaceutical industry-is distinctly slower. -Published data, while still scarce and inadequate, show the same facts. Only for the e~tractive industries have the developing
countries-and then only a very few of them -been of any significance whether as a source of profits, as loci of growth, or as areas of investment. The reason is, of course, that-contrary to the old, and again fashionable, theory of "capitalist imperialism" -sales, growth and profits are where the market and the purchasing power are. To the developing country, however, the multinational is both highly important and highly visible.
'Neglect and indifference rather than "exploitation" is the justified grievance of the developing countries' about multinational corporations. A plant employing 750 people and selling $8 million worth of goods is in most developing countries a major employer-both of rank and file and of management-and a big business. For the multinational parent company, employing altogether 97,000 people and seIling close to $2,000 million worth of goods a year, that plant is, however, at best marginal. Top management in Rotterdam, Munich, London or Chicago can spend practically no time on it. Neglect and indifference rather than "exploitation" is the justified grievance of the developing countries in respect to the multinationals. Indeed, top management people in major multinationals who are personally interested in the developing countries find themselves constantly being criticized for neglecting the important areas and for devoting too much of their time and attention to "outside interests." Given the realities of the business, its markets, growth opportunities and profit opportunities, this is a valid criticism.
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The second major assumption underlying the discussion of multinationals and developing countries is the belief that resources from abroad, and especially capital from abroad, can "develop" a country. But in the first place no country is "underdeveloped" because it lacks resources. "U nderdevelopment" is inability to obtain full performance from resources; indeed we should really be talking of countries of higher and lower productivity rather than of "developed" or "underdeveloped" countries. In particular, very few countries-Tibet and New Guinea may be exceptions-lack capital. Developing countries have, almost by definition, more
capital than they productively employ. What "developing" countries lack is the full ability to mobilize their resources, whether human resources, capital or the physical resources. What they need are "triggers," stimuli from abroad and from the more highly developed countries, that will energize the resources of the country and will have a "multiplier impact." The two success stories of development in the last hundred years-Japan and Canadashow this clearly. In the beginning, Japan imported practically no capital except small sums for early infrastructure investments, such as the first few miles of railroad. She organized, however, quite early, what is probably to this day the most efficient system for gathering and putting to use every drop of capital in the country. And she importedlavishly and without restraints-technology with a very high multiplier impact and has continued to do so to this day. Canada, in the mid-1930s, was far less "developed" a country than most American republics are today. Then the liberal governments of the 1930s decided to build an effective system for collecting domestic capital and to put it into infrastructure investments with a very high "multiplier effect"-roads, health care, ports, education and effective national and provincial administrations. Foreign capital was deliberately channeled into manufacturing and mining. Domestic capital and entrepreneurs were actually discouraged in the extractive and manufacturing sectors. But they were strongly encouraged in all tertiary activities such as distribution, banking, insurance and in local supply and finishing work in manufacturing. As a result a comparatively small supply of foreign capital-between a 10th and a 20th of Canada's total capital formation-led to very rapid development within less than two decades. A developing country will therefore get the most out of resources available abroad, especially capital, if it channels capital where it has the greatest "multiplier impact." Moreover, it should channel it where one dollar of imported capital will generate the largest number of domestic dollars in investment, both in the original investment itself and in impact-investment (e.g., the gas stations, motels and auto repair shops which an automobile plant calls into being), and where one job created by the original investment generates the most jobs directly and indirectly (again an automobile industry is a good example). Above all, the investment should be channeled where it will produce the largest number of local managers and entrepreneurs and generate the most managerial and entrepreneurial competence. For making resources
ently wanted to do-as it is to mobilize the local business community against the "wicked imperialist multinational."
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fully effective depends on the supply and competence of the managerial and entrepreneurial resource. According to all figures, government money has a much lower multiplier impact than private money. This is, of course, most apparent in the communist-bloc countries; low, very low, productivity of capital is the major weakness of the communist economies, whether that of Russia or of her European satellites. But it is true also of public (e.g., World Bank) money elsewhere: It generates little, if any, additional investment either from within or from without the recipient country. And "prestige" investments, such as a steel mill, tend to have a fairly low multiplier impact-both in jobs and in managerial vigor-as against, for instance, a department store which brings into existence any number of small local manufacturers and suppliers and creates a major managerial and entrepreneurial cluster around it. For the multinational in manufacturing, distribution, or finance locating in a developing country, rapid economic development of the host country offers the best chance for growth and profitability. The multinational thus has a clear self-interest in the "multi¡ plier impact" of its investment, products and technology. It would be well advised to look on the capital it provides as "pump priming" rather than as "fuel." The more dollars (or pesos or rupees) of local capital each of its
own dollars of investment generates, the greater will be the development impact of its investment, and its chance for success.- For the developing country the same holds true: To maximize the development impact of each imported dollar. What every developing country needs is a strategy which looks upon the available foreign resources, especially of capital, as the "trigger" to set off maximum deployment of a country's own resources and to have the maximum "multiplier effect." Such a strategy sees in the multinational a means to energize domestic potential-and especially to create domestic entrepreneurial and managerial competence-rather: than a substitute for domestic resources, domestic efforts and, even, domestic capital. To make the multinationals effective agents of development in the developing countries therefore requires, above all, a policy of encouraging the domestic private sector, the domestic entrepreneur and the domestic manager. If they are being discouraged¡ the resources brought in from abroad will, inevitably, be wasted. For by themselv~s multinationals cannot produce development; they can only turn the crank but not push the car. It is as futile and self-defeating to use capital from abroad as a means to frighten and cow the local business community-as the bright young men of the early days of the Alliance for Progress [U.S.Latin American economic partnership] appar-
The multinational, it is said, tends to allocate production according to global economics. This is perfectly correct, though so far very few companies actually have a global strategy. But far from being a threat to the developing country, this is potentially the developing country's one trump card in the world economy. Far from depriving the governments of the developing countries of decision-making power, the global strategy of the multinationals may be the only way these governments can obtain some effective control and bargaining leverage. Short of attack by a foreign country the most serious threat to the economic sovereignty of developing countries, and especially of small ones (i.e. of most of them), is the shortage of foreign exchange. It is an absolute bar to freedom of decision. Realizing this, many developing countries, especially in the 1950s and early 1960s, chose a deliberate policy of "import substitution." By now we have all learned that in the notso-very-Iong run this creates equal or worse import-dependence and foreign-exchange problems. Now a variant of "import substitution" has become fashionable: A "domestic content" policy which requires the foreign company to produce an increasing part of the final product in the country itself. This, predictably, will eventually have the same consequences as the now discredited "import substitution," namely, greater dependence on raw materials, equipment and supplies from abroad. And in all but the very few countries with already substantial markets such a policy must, inevitably, make for a permanently high-cost industry unable to compete and to grow. The policy creates jobs in the very short run, to be sure; but it does so at the expense of the poor and of the country's potential to generate jobs in the future and to grow. What developing countries need are both -foreign-exchange earnings and productive facilities large enough to provide economies of scale and with¡ them substantial employment. This they can obtain only if they can integrate their emerging productive facilities -whether in manufactured goods or in such agricultural products as fruits and wine-with the largest and the fastest-growing economy around, i.e. the world market. But exporting requires market knowledge, marketing facilities and marketing finance. It also requires political muscle to overcome strongly entrenched protectionist forces, and especially labor unions and farm blocs in the
developed countries. Exporting is done most successfully, most easily and most cheaply if one has an assured "captive" market, at least for part of the production to be sold in the world market. This applies particularly to most of the deÂĽeloping countries, whose home market is too small to be an adequate base for an export-oriented industry. The multinational's capacity to allocate production across national boundary lines and according to the logic of the world market should thus be a major ally of the developing countries. The more rationally and the more "globally" production is being allocated, the more they stand to gain. A multinational company, by definition, can equalize the cost of capital across national lines (to some considerable extent, at least). It can equalize to a large extent the managerial resource, that is, it can move executives, can train them, etc. The only resource it cannot freely move is labor. And that is precisely the resource in which the developing countries have the advantage. This/advantage is likely to increase. Unless there is a worldwide prolonged depression, labor in the developed countries is going to be increasingly scarce and expensive, if only because of low birthrates, while a largescale movement of people from preindustrial areas into developed countries, such as the mass movement of American blacks to the Northern cities or the mass movement of "guest workers" to Western Europe, is politically or socially no longer possible. But unless the multinationals are being used to integrate the productive resources of the developing countries into the productive network of the world economy-and especially into the production and marketing systems of the multinationals themselves-it is most unlikely that major export markets for the production of the ~eveloping countries will actually emerge very quickly. Thus, the most advantageous strategy for the developing countries would seem to be to replace-or, at least to supplement-the policy of "domestic contl?nt" by a policy that uses the multinationals' integrating ability to develop large productive. facilities with access to markets in the developed world. A good idea might be to encourage investment by multinationals with definite plans-and eventually firm commitments-to produce for export, especially within their own multinational system. As Taiwan and Singapore have demonstrated, it can make much more sense to become the most efficient large supplier worldwide of one model or one component than to be a high-cost small producer of the entire product or line. This would create more jobs and provide the final product at
lower prices to the country's ~wn consum~rs. , Adela, the multinational venture-capital firm And it should result in large foreIgn-exchange in Latin America, and by far the most sucearnings. cessful of all development institutions in the I would suggest a second integration re- world today, has confined itself from its start, quirement. That developing countries want to 10 years ago, to minority participation in its limit the number of foreigners a company ventures, and so on. brings in is understandable. But the multiBut it is true that, historically, IOO-per-cent national can be expected to do that anyhow ownership has been considered the preferred as much as possible-moving people around form, and anything else as likely to make is expensive and presents all sorts of problems unity of action, vision and strategy rather and troubles. Far more important would be difficult. Indeed, restriction of the foreign ina requirement by the developing country that vestor to less than lOO-per-cent control or to the multinational integrate the managerial a minority participation, e.g., in the Andean and professional people it employs in the Pact agreements or in Mexico's legislation country within its worldwide management regarding foreign investments, is clearly indevelopment plans. Most especially it should tended as restraint on the foreigner. assign an adequate number of the younger, abler people from its affiliate in the developing country for from three to five years of 'A few years hence, "antimanagerial and professional work in one of foreign" sentiment may take the the developed countries. So far, to my knowledge, this is being done systematically only form of demanding lOO-per-cent by some of the major American banks, by foreign-capital investment' in Alcan, and by Nestle. Yet it is people and a developing country's firm. their competence who propel development; and the most important competence needed is not technical, i.e., what one can learn in..a - Irilt increasingly the pendulum is likely to course, but management of people, marketing swing the other way. (Indeed, it may not be and finance, and first-hand knowledge of de- too far-fetched to anticipate that, a few years hence, "anti-foreign" sentiment may take the veloped countries. In sum, from the point of view of the de- form of demanding lOO-per-cent foreignveloping countries the best cross-national use capital investment in the national company in of resources which the multinational is-or the developing country, and moving toward should be-capable of may well be the most outlawing partnerships or joint ventures with positive element in the present world eco- local capital as a drain on a country's slender nomy. A policy of self-sufficiency is not pos- capital resources.) The multinational will find sible even for the best-endowed country today. it increasingly to its advantage to structure ownership in a variety of ways, and especially Development, even of modest proportions, cannot be based on uneconomically small, in ways that make it possible for it to gain permanently high-cost facilities, either in access to both local capital and local talent. manufacturing or in farming. Nor is it likely Capital markets are rapidly becoming to occur, let alone rapidly, under the restraint "polycentric." The multinationals will have of a continental balance-of-payments crisis. to learn so to structure their businesses as to The integration of the productive capacities be able to tap any capital market-whether and advantages of developing countries into in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, the world economy is the only way out. And Brazil, Beirut or wherever. This the monothe multinational's capacity for productive lithic "parent company" with wholly owned integration across national boundaries would branches is not easily capable of. But capital is also likely to be in short supseem the most promising tool for this. ply for years to come, barring a major global * * * * * That lOO-per-centownership on the part of depression. And this might well mean that the "parent company" is the one and only the multinationals will only be willing and corporate structubre for the multinational, able to invest in small, less profitable and more while widely believed, has never been true. In slowly growing markets, i.e. in developing so important a country as Japan it has always countries if these countries supply a major been the rather rare exception, with most share of the needed capital rather than have non-Japanese companies operating through the foreign investor put up all of it. That this is already happening, the exjoint ventures. Sears, Roebuck is in partnership throughout Canada with a leading local ample of Japan shows. Lifting restrictions on retail chain, Simpson's. The Chase Manhat- foreign investment was expected to bring a tan Bank operates in many countries as a massive rush of take-over bids and IOO-per-cent minority partner in and with local banks. foreign-owned ventures. Instead it is now in-
creasingly the Western investor, American as well as European, who presses for joint ventures in Japan and expects the Japanese partner to supply the capital while he supplies technology and product knowledge. Perhaps more important will be the need to structure for other than 100-per-cent ownership to obtain the needed managerial talent in the developing country. If the affiliate in the developing country is not a "branch" but a separate company with substantial outside capital investment, the role and position of its executives become manageable. They are then what they have to be, namely, truly "top management," even though in employment and sales their company may still be insignificant within the giant concern. And if the multinational truly attempts to integrate production across national boundaries, a "top management" of considerable stature becomes even more necessary. For then, the managers of the affiliate in a developing country have to balance both a national business and a global strategy. They have to be "top management" in their own country and handle on the local level highly complex economic, financial, political and labor relations as well as playas full members on a worldwide "system management" team. To do this as a "subordinate" is almost impossible. One has to be an "equal," with one's own truly autonomous command.
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Domestically, we long ago learned that "control" has been divorced from "ownership" and, indeed, is rapidly becoming quite independent of "ownership." There is no reason why the same development should not be taking place internationally-and for the same two reasons: (I) "ownership" does not have enough capital to finance the scope of modern large businesses; and (2) management, i.e. "control," has to have professional competence, authority and standing of its own. Domestically the divorce of "control" from "ownership" has not undermined "control." On the contrary, it has made managerial control and direction more powerful, more purposeful, more cohesive. There is no inherent reason why moving away from "lOO-per-cent ownership" in developing countries should make impossible maintenance of common cohesion and central control. On the contrary, both because it extends the capital base of the multinational in a period of worldwide capital shortage and because it creates local partners, whether businessmen or government agencies, the divorce between control and direction may well strengthen cohesion, and may indeed even be a prerequisite to a true global strategy.
At the same time such partnership may heighten the development impact of multinational investment by mobilizing domestic capital for productive investment and by speeding up the development of local entrepreneurs and managers. Admittedly, mixed ownership has serious problems; but they do not seem insurmountable, as the Japanese joint-venture proves. It also has advantages; and in a period of worldwide shortage of capital it is the multinational that would seem to be the main beneficiary. Indeed one could well argue that developing countries, if they want to attract foreign investment in such a period, may have to offer co-investment capital, and that provisions for the participation of local investment in ownership will come to be seen (and predictably to be criticized) as favoring the foreign investor rather than as limiting him.
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The multinational, while the most important and most visible innovation of the postwar period in the economic field, is primarily a symptom of a much greater change. It is a response to the emergence of a genuine world economy. This world economy is not an agglomeration of national economies as was the "international economy" of 19th-century international trade theory. It is fundamentally autonomous, has its own dynamics, its own demand patterns, its own institutions-and in the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) even its own money and credit system in embryonic form. For the first time in 400 years-since the end of the 16th century when the word "sovereignty" was first coined-the territorial political unit and the economic unit are no longer congruent.
The multinational's allocation of production according to its global strategy is the one trump card of developing countries in the world economy. This, understandably, appears as a threat to national governments. The threat is aggravated by the fact that no one so far has a workable theory of the world economy. As a result there is today no proven, effective, predictable economic policy: Witness the impotence of governments in the face of worldwide inflation. The multinationals are but a symptom. Suppressing them, predictably, can only aggravate the disease. But to fight the symptoms in lieu of a cure has always been tempting. It is therefore entirely possible that the multi-
nationals will be severely damaged and perhaps even destroyed within the next decade. If so, this will be done by the governments of the developed countries, and especially by the governments of the multinationals' home countries, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, Holland and Switzerland-the countries where 95 per cent of the world's multinationals are domIciled and which together account for at least threequarters of the multinationals' business and profits. The developing nations can contribute emotionalism and rhetoric to the decisions, but very little else. They are simply not important enough to the multinationals (or to the world economy) to have a major impact. But at the same time the emergence of a genuine world economy is the one real hope for most of the developing countries, especially for the great majority which by themselves are too small to be viable as "national economies" under present technologies, present research requirements, present capital requirements and present transportation and communications facilities. The next 10 years are the years in which they will both most need the multinationals and have the greatest opportunity of benefiting from them. For these will be the years when the developing countries will have to find jobs and incomes for the largest number of new entrants into the labor force in their history while, at the same time, the developed countries will experience a sharp contraction of the number of new entrants into their labor force-a contraction that is already quite far advanced in Japan and in parts of Western Europe and will reach the United States by the late 1970s. And the jobs that the developing countries will need so desperately for the next 10 years wiII to a very large extent require the presence of the multinationals-their investment, their technology, their managerial competence, and above all their marketing and export capabilities. The best hope for developing countries, both to attain political and cultural nationhood and to obtain the employment opportunities and export earnings they need, is through the integrative power of the world economy. And their tool, if only they are willing to use it, is, above all, the multinational company-precisely because it represents a global economy and cuts across national boundaries. The multinational, if it survives, will surely look. different tomorrow, will have a different structure, and will be "transnational" rather than "multinational." But even the multinational of today is-or at least should bea most effective means to constructive nationhood for the developing world. 0
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SCIENTIPIC -. WONDEBS PBOII A PBOZEN CONTINENT
Covered with a mantle of ice and snow that is almost two kilometers thick, the continent of Antarctica is hostile to most living things. By contrast, the sea around it teems with marine life (see photos on these and following pages). To study this sea life, as well as the geological and meteorological aspects of Antarctica, scientists from the U.S. and other nations migrate every summer to this icy world. Their findings suggest that this 'barren' continent and the rich sea surrounding it is a treasure trove of two things that the world sorely needs today-petroleum and fish protein.
Far left: The Antarctic krill, a shrimplike crustacean, is being studied by American scientists as a potential food source for humans. Left: Two American scientists with their prize catch-a tasty codlike fish. Top of page: U.S. scientists ride an ice floe with a pair of seals. Antarctica's seal population has increased in the past year and scientists want to know why. Above: This large algaelike bacteria cell (magnified 1,250 times) wasfound at a depth of 68 meters and is estimated to be around 600,000 years old. By defrosting these ancient bacteria-some of which are a million years old-scientists have actually brought many of them back to life.
I
nthe vast expanse of ice at the bottom of the world, scientists are examining strange phenomena and reporting bizarre discoveries that will modify accepted theories about the world we live in. The results of their research could change our way of life. Among the oddities: Bacteria frozen for as long as a million years that become reanimated when thawed; fish with built-in antifreeze systems to keep them active at temperatures that would freeze other animals solid; birds that go a third of a year without food and walk 80 kilometers for a meal. These exciting discoveries, little noted outside the scientific community, barely scratch the surface of continuing research projects in the most remote and most nearly perfect natural laboratory on earth: the Antarctic Continent. More than 3,000 scientists and support personnel from a dozen nations migrate to this barren and inhospitable icy expanse during the Antarctic summer (which corresponds with the northern hemisphere's winter). A few hundred stay through winter in the frozen wasteland of 160-kilometerper-hour blizzards and air temperatures that have skidded to minus 87 degress C.-the coldest naturally produced reading on our globe. Last summer, 175 U.S. scientists (support personnel boosted the total to about 1,000 people) conducted more than 65 separate projects. Several of these investigations are readily identifiable as providing possible practical benefits to mankind. Meteorologists, studying the severe and unpredictable Antarctic weather, hope to find new ways to improve worldwide weather forecasting methods. Geologists, drilling in the Transantarctic Mountains, have found copper deposits and indications of other recoverable minerals. Off the Ross Ice Shelf, the ship Glomar Challenger has struck methane and ethane-convincing explorers that the area contains huge deposits of oil and natural gas. Most important, marine biologists believe teeming life in the icy oceans surrounding the 14.3-millionsquare-kilometer continent may provide one answer to feeding a global population expected to skyrocket from 3,900 million today to 6,500 million by the year 2000. 0
Above: Antarctic penguin wears mask to measure oxygen intake as it walks a treadmill in a U.S. project studying how penguins can make long journeys to their nesting grounds.
Top left: American biologist in her Antarctica lab. Top right: Geodesic dome at U.S. South Pole station encloses three buildings, housing labs and living space for about 50 people.
GLOBAL APPROACH NEEDED TO COMBAT TERRORISM The attempted highjacking of an Air India 'jumbo jet' in Europe last December was another reminder that no nation is immune to terrorism. The article below, by the U.S. State Department's Co-ordinator for Combating Terrorism, argues that only international co-operation can stop 'this global epidemic' that 'threatens the very fabric of international order.' It also reminds us that political passion cannot justify 'criminal violence against innocent persons." The world has lived with violence and terror since the beginning of time. But we now are experiencing new forms of international terrorism that have reached the point where innocent people anywhere can be victimized. Consequently, terrorism has now become the legitimate concern of all governments. The international community, however, seems unable to agree on effective means of successfully combating the problem. The United States, mindful of its responsibility to provide a defense against violent attacks by politically or ideologically motivated parties, is pressing ahead on every front. American laws have been expanded to provide increased protection for foreign officials and their families within the United States. Customs and postal employees are taking special precautions against letter bombs. And a rigorous airport security program has successfully curbed hijacking attempts since it was instituted early in 1973. Internationally the United States has been in the forefront of those nations that have sought tightened security against aircraft piracy, including adoption of three international conventions, the two most recent of which are aimed at denying hijackers and saboteurs a safe haven from prosecution. The U.S. had modest expectations when we sent a delegation to two joint air security conferences in Rome in August and September of 1973 in the hope that the international community would advance a step forward in tightening controls on skyjackers and aerial saboteurs. Despite our disappointment over the meager results in Rome, we are confident that there remains a sufficient sense of international responsibility to make possible other steps to discourage those who would threaten international air travelers. The steady stream of accessions to the three conventions by countries representing all ide-
ologies has been encouraging. If in spite of all our efforts, an act of terrorism should occur, we are prepared to deal with it swiftly and effectively. Within the Department of State, task forces can be assembled promptly. These task forces are composed of selected specialists who can call on the full resources of the U.S. Government to rescue, or at least to monitor, the beleaguered parties. By swift and intelligent action we hopefully can overcome the terrorists by one means or another. Tactics vary in each crisis situation, but one consistent factor should be understood by all parties concerned: The U.S. Government does not pay monetary ransom to kidnappers. We advise other governments and individuals to adopt the same position, to resist other forms of blackmail, and to apprehend the criminal attackers. We do not glibly sacrifice hostages for the sake of this admittedly firm policy. We believe that firmness, if applied with the best diplomacy, can save lives in the long run and probably in the short run as well. The U.S. approach to counter terrorism is based on the principle derived from our liberal heritage, as well as from the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms that every human being has a right to life, liberty, and "security of person." Yet the violence of international terrorism violates that principle. The issue is not war. The issue is not the strivings of people to achieve selfdetermination .and independence. Rather the issue is-and here I quote from an address of former Secretary of State William Rogers: "The issue is whether millions of air travelers can continue to fly in safety each year. It is whether a person who received a letter can open it without fear of being blown up. It is whether diplomats can safely perform their duties.
In short, the issue is whether the vulnerable lines of international communication-the airways and the mails, diplomatic discourse and international meetings-can continue without disruption, to bring nations and peoples together. All who have a stake in this have a stake in decisive action to suppress these demented acts of terrorism. We are aware that, aside from the psychotic and the purely felonious, many criminal acts of terrorism derive from political origins. We all recognize that issues such as self-determination must continue to be addressed seriously by the international community. But political passion, however deeply held, cannot be justification for criminal violence against innocent persons." There now seems to be increased collaboration among terrorist groups of different nationalities. Such groups seem to be moving farther and farther afield. There is, moreover, evidence of ample financial sources for some terrorist groups not only from ransoms collected but also from governments which, for one reason or other, are sympathetic toward certain terrorist groups. And, last but not least, there seems to be no shortage of politico-economic-social frustration to spawn terrorists on all continents. In fact, this global epidemic still threatens the very fabric of international order. We are not unmindful of the motivations inspiring the frustrated political terrorist, who feels he has no other way to fulfill his particular mission in life. As ways are found to convince him to reason otherwise, he must be made to understand now that it is unprofitable for him to attack innocent bystanders. In the long run he can only injure his own cause. Global terrorism compels nations to join in closer co-operation. against terrorist activities. Only a global approach will provide the solution. 0
THE DELHI FILM FESTIVAL The Fifth International Film Festival of India drew entries from 46 nations including such notable films as 'A Clockwork Orange,' 'The Godfather,' 'Amarcord' and 'Dreaming Youth.' Rare stills from old Indian classics greeted visitors to Delhi's Vigyan Bhavan. A British director couldn't take his eyes off them. "Where does one get these stills?" he kept asking. Two floors above, reporters traded wisecracks with Gina Lollobrigida. Some miles away, a college student talked excitedly to a cluster of friends: He had seen Godfather. The Fifth International Film Festival of India was on. More than 100 delegates from abroad came to Delhi for the two-week festival, and films from 46 countries were shown, exemplifying the festival's mottoVasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The world is one family). Said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Export Association of America: "Filmmaking is not a national art at all. It is totally international; geographic borders and boundaries have no place in the film world." The jury, drawn from nine countries, was headed by Satyajit Ray and included America's Frank Capra, Bert Haanstra of the Netherlands, Japan's Nagisa Oshima, Michael Relph of the United Kingdom, Oleg Tabakov from the Soviet Union, Shadi Abdel-Salaam from Egypt, Poland's K. zanussi, Italy's F. Vancini and India's Aparna Sen. The festival began on December 30 with a lively function at Vigyan Bhavan. Minister I.K. Gujral cited the early pioneers of Indian cinema such as Dadasaheb Phalke, the inspiration provided by Satyajit Ray, arid the promise held out by many young Indian filmmakers. He hoped the festival would promote better cinema. .
had bagged the best films. However, the films in the noncompetitive section were a veritable pageant of themes and styles, providing thrilling glimpses into the power and grandeur the film medium is capable of attaining in distinguished hands. Some of the festival's significant films: A Clockwork Orange. Made by Stanley Kubrick, an American director who works in England, Clockwork is an apocalypse of the future, a frightening vision of the effects of conditioning. Kubrick, who explored the control of nuclear weapons in Dr. Strangelove and the control of a spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, examines the control of the human mind in Clockwork. It shows a young man, given to insensate and sadistic violence, being "cured" by conditioning. The "cure" reduces him, however, to a robot, a helpless automaton, and drives him to suicide. He has to be "deconditioned" and he becomes a thug once more. Fellini calls Clockwork a "visionary movie" of the highest order. AWARD-WINNERS Best Feature Film (Golden Peacock):
Dreaming Youth-Hungary, directed by Janos Rosha Best Director (Silver Peacock):
Zetito Viana-Brazil, Alma Best Actor (Silver Peacock):
Behruz Vushogi-Iran,
Tangsir
Best Actress (Silver Peacock):
Barbra Streisand-U.S.A., The Way We Were Best Short (Golden Peacock):
THE FILMS
Twenty-four films competed for awards at the festival. Their general standard was not very high, Frank Capra said on behalf of the jury-one obvious reason being that the Delhi festival was the last one for 1974; other festivals
Automatic-Czechoslovakia Second Best Short (Silver Peacock):
Pearl of the Nile-Egypt Third Best Short (Bronze Peacock):
1895:How the Movies Move -Finland
Godfather. With the spaciousness and strength of a Dickens novel, it probes the Mafia world of terror and violence from which no one can free himself once he is in it. Brilliant direction by Francis Ford Coppola-who with this film established himself as an exciting talent of A~erican cinema-and great acting performances, particularly by Marlon Brando in the title role, make Godfather a gripping film. Amarcord. A charming semiautobiographical film essay by Federico Fellini, even better than his earlier classic, 8"1/2. The film recalls a year from Fellini's boyhood through a succession of richly detailed stories and images-hilarious, touching, bawdy. "It is a paradox of Fellini's work," says Newsweek film critic Paul Zimmerman, "that the more personal he makes his material, the more broadly and powerfully he casls his spell." The Way We Were. An American competitive entry, it won Barbra Streisand the Best Actress award. The film tells about a beautiful love affair between two people who are temperamental opposites. Their love survives many tiffsand endures even after they separate. The film's appeal lies mainly in Barbra Streisand's many-splendored performance. Alma. This Brazilian competitive entry won its director, Zetito Viana, the Silver Peacock award for Best Direction. As her "clients" listen, Alma, a prostitute, reads out the remarkable diary of a young man who dies of love-for her. The diary records his heartbreak and frustration as Alma proceeds from one amorous adventure to another, seeking him out only when she is helpless and abandoned. A succession of cleverly photographed and directed flashbacks make up this absorbing film. Kaadu. The Indian entry, directed by Girish Karnad, is a document of Mysore village life as seen by an eight-year-old
Left: Barbra Streisand, who won the Best Actress award/or her performance in The Way We Were. Right: Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Export Association of America, chats with Raj Kapoor at a reception for festival delegates hosted by David Schneider, Deputy Chief of Mission of the American Embassy. Below: Director Frank Capra greets Canadian delegate Maqbool Jung.
boy living with his uncle and aunt. His startled eyes discover and record many things-his uncle's faithlessness to his wife, her desperate efforts to stop it, a feud between two villages, his aunt's murder. A skilled narrator, Karnad handles the action-packed plot with restraint. Kaadu was awarded a prize at the festival by the International Union of Film Critics.
MEETING
VALENTI
Near the end of the festival, we interviewed Jack Valenti, president of the .Motion Picture Export Association of America, who had some interesting remarks both on the festival and on the state of American cinema today. "The principal results of the Delhi festival," said Valenti, "are that filmmakers from India have had a chance
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to mingle with filmmakers throughout the world, and that Indian films have had an opportunity to be seen by people in the motion picture business who market films throughout the world. 1 think this kind of exchange of cinema art is important to filmmaking." The Delhi festival could pave the way for the exhibition of Indian films in America, Valenti said. "Your great film-
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FILM FESTIVAL
",.Iiâ&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘",
maker Satyajit Ray's famous trilogy has found very appreciative American audiences because he told a story about life in Indian villages which was real, honest, poignant, sad, warm-and people of all nations responded to it. I think any time the Indian filmmaker makes such a film, it will find an audience outside India." Further discussing Ray and his films, Valenti said: "I was moved by Pather Panchali. The hallmark of any great film lies in the impact it makes, and Ray's films have had a great impact on me." Ray in person-gaunt, tall, articulate-is as unforgettable as his films. Valenti considers him one of the world's 10 greatest directors. "He is more admired in America than any other Asian director, without question." About Indian films in general, Valenti said: "I have seen a lot of bad American films and bad English films, and I have seen some good ones. I think the same could be said of Indian films. I do believe there is a growing number of skilled young. Indian filmmakers who are going to make their mark in the international market." Talking about Hollywood, Valenti said 1974 was a splendid year for American films. In fact, he felt it was America's best film year since 1946. Despite the competition provided by television, more
Above: Asha Puthli in a still from Merchant-Ivory Productions' Savages, an American noncompetitive entry. and more people in the United States were seeing films. Attendance in cinema houses had increased 17 per cent in 1973 over the previous year. The big box office grossers of 1975, Valenti said, are expected to be Funny Lady, a Barbra Streisand musical; Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather II; Bite the Bullet, a western starring Candice Bergen; Towering Inferno; Earthquake; and Airport 75. The Exorcist was the top grosser of 1974, and was expected to net over $100 million worldwide. Only three other films-Gone With the Wind, Sound of Music and Godfather-have earned more than $100 million. The big American stars of today, Valenti said, are Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen,
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and Barbra Streisand. There are also the "durable names who have been around a long time"-Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and John Wayne. The "stars of promise" are Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Jimmy Carr. "The strange thing about Hollywood today," Valenti said, "is the dearth of female stars. After you've named Barbra Streisand, you can't think of anyone else, though there's Liza MinneIli." Who are Hollywood's most influential directors today? Valenti named threeFrancis Ford Coppola, Billy Striedkin (who made The Exorcist), and Peter Bogdanovich (who has just completed Long Lost Love). European directors no longer influence young American filmmakers, Valenti said. They are now looking to the old American directors for guidance and inspiration. Valenti's own favorite directors are George Stephen, Sr., Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra. His favorite films over the past 15 to 20 years are A Man for All Seasons and Godfather. "Both these films have been made by craftsmen. They're so marvelous that one can see them over and over again." Valenti said that he had had "useful discussions" with the Government of India on the resumption of import of Hollywood films, though no agreement 0 had been arrived ,at yet.
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FASHION GENIUS OF STEPHEN
~~~RS'! ~ is only 30, but Stephen Burrows (above) is already recognized in the fashion world as one of America's most influential designers. Clean of line, devoid of excessive ornamentation, Burrows's creations-like the evening gowns at left and the two-piece outfit below-are designed for lighthearted moods. "Clothes must be fun to wear," he says. Burrows's trademark is the deft touch he uses in choosing bright, clear colors, usually combining several blocks of color as part of the basic design. "Clothes help your morale, they even dictate your morale," Burrows insists. In 1973 Burrows became the first black to win the highest of fashion honors, the Coty American Fashion Critics Award. Recently, he formed his own company, and experts predict that his first year's gross sales will hit $5 million .. Not bad for someone whose career has just begun.
COlORFUl ClOTHES BY
STEPIEN
BURROWS