HARVARD UNIVERSITY

SUMMER SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES AND OF EDUCATION

2 WELD HALL, CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

WILLIAM YANDELL ELLIOTT, Director
ROBERT COLDWELL WOOD, Assistant Director

DANA MESERVE COTTON, Associate Director
MARGUERITE HILDEBRAND, Executive Secretary

June 8, 1956

Mr. Henry A. Kissinger
Council of Foreign Relations
58 East 68th Street
New York 21, New York

Dear Henry:

This is just a note to say how sorry I was to hear that an appendectomy had to take place in the middle of your schedule, and to express the hope that you've recovered sufficiently to face the onrushing session. I think things are reasonably in hand here, but, as always, they've snowballed.

As per our conversation, we've scheduled a special forum for the Seminar on August 8, which I hope you'll moderate and on which I'll value your counsel and guidance when you are next up. Without any conversation, but with Bill's enthusiastic endorsement, I've also taken the liberty to schedule you as a commentator for the Little Magazine Conference, as indicated in the enclosed program. Any cries of anguish should be lifted in the direction of Washington, and, remember, I'm providing you with a free TV for your common room.

Otherwise, no problems. We look forward to seeing you
next month.

All good wishes and best regards,

RCW:ev
Enclosure

Preliminary Program

HARVARD SUMMER SCHOOL CONFERENCE

"THE LITTLE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA"

July 30 - August 1, 1956

General Chairman: Allen Tate, Professor of English, University of Minnesota

The role of the Little Magazine in contemporary literature is a matter of increasing discussion today. The Harvard Summer School has invited a distinguished group of writers, editors, educators, critics, and publishers to identify and evaluate the special functions and contributions of this type of publication. The participants will canvass these and other issues, including the opportunities and limitations which the Little Magazine poses for the serious writer, the audience it attracts, and the nature of its impact.

## PUBLIC EVENING SESSIONS

Allston Burr Hall, 8:30 p.m.

### MONDAY, JULY 30 - "What are Little Magazines for?"

Participants: Robert Giroux, Vice President, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy; Philip Rahv, Editor, *Partisan Review*; Henry Rago, Editor, *Poetry*; Robert Lowell, poet; Henry A. Kissinger, Editor, *Confluence*.

### TUESDAY, JULY 31 - "Writers for The Little Magazine"

Participants: Frederick Morgan, Editorial Director, *The Hudson Review*; William Barrett, formerly of *Partisan Review*; John Sweeney, Curator of the Farnsworth and Poetry Rooms, and William Y. Elliott, Professor of History and Political Science, Harvard University; Elizabeth Hardwick, novelist and critic.

### WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1 - "The Audience of The Little Magazine"

Ray B. West, Jr., Editor, *The Western Review*; Hugh Kenner, Contributing Editor, *Poetry*; John E. Palmer, Editor, *The Yale Review*; and others.

CLOSED AFTERNOON SESSIONS

2

Forum Room, Lamont Library, 2:30 p.m.

TUESDAY, JULY 31 - "Types of Little Magazines: Variations in Functions and Approaches"

Participants: Jarvis Thurston, Co-Editor, *Perspective*; Ralph Maud, Editor, *Audience*; George Plimpton, Editor, *The Paris Review*; Leo Raditsa, Editor, *Cambridge Review*.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1 - "The Little Magazine and the Educator"

Participants: Donald Hall, poet; Mrs. Arabel Porter, Editor, The New American Library of World Literature; John Malcolm Brinnin, poet, and Director of Y.M.H.A. Poetry Center.

JULY 23 through AUGUST 3: Exhibit of Little Magazines since 1912, in Widener and Lamont Libraries.

POETRY READING by members of the panel; time and place to be announced.

Tickets for the evening sessions will be available at the door. For admission to the afternoon sessions, please write to Robert C. Wood, Assistant Director, Harvard Summer School, 2 Weld Hall, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts.

3/15/56

HARVARD SUMMER SCHOOL

A CONFERENCE ON THE LITTLE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA

JULY 30--AUGUST 1

## Introduction

This conference will be concerned with the present condition of the Little Magazine in contemporary American Literature, in terms of its contribution, its value, and its problems. The Harvard Summer School hopes to explore the various interpretations and explanations of the present situation of these publications, and to estimate with some objectivity the status, objectives, and future of the Little Magazines, and their relevance to the contemporary literary picture. The plan for carrying out these aims is outlined in the program of public and private sessions which follows.

## First Public Session - What are Little Magazines for?

This session will undertake to define the distinct functions of the Little Magazines and what contribution they can make which big magazines cannot. For example, what can be said about the capacity of the Little Magazine to express in sustained fashion a particular literary movement, school, or attitude which has common characteristics? Again, how important is the Little Magazine in providing a forum for young writers who wish to develop a specific form of literary expression? Does the Little Magazine provide an effective vehicle for the writer who is clearly talented but whose material may not be marketable elsewhere, as in the case of criticism?

In addition to identifying and describing the special functions of the Little Magazine, this session will also try to assess the importance and uniqueness of these functions and, in particular, to make some judgment about the value of continuing them even under subsidiary operations. One speaker might appropriately devote himself to the functions: another to the importance; while the commentator will serve, together with the chairman, to bring the subjects together.

## Second Public Session - Writers for The Little Magazine

What is the present relationship between the serious writer and the editor of the Little Magazine? What differentiates the writings in the Little Magazine from those with more popular appeal? How often does the Little Magazine provide entrance into positions of authority in the popular market or in criticism? Can a serious writer

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develop successfully without a satisfactory relationship to the Little Magazine, and what influence do the editors of these publications have on American literature in general.

One speaker might outline the positive encouragements which the Little Magazine offers the young as well as the established writer; while the second might speak of the limitations and disadvantages which Little Magazine writing might impose. Once again the chairman and the commentator will be expected to strike a balance.

## Third Public Session - The Audience of the Little Magazine

Is the audience of the Little Magazine necessarily limited? What kind of people subscribe to them, and how do they vary with subscribers of better popular magazines? Is there a common ground between the two audiences? What steps might be suggested to increase the audience without detriment to Little Magazine standards?

We would hope here that one speaker might try to assess whether or not there are natural limitations implied in the reading of good literature, while another might concern himself with the possibilities of changes by the Little Magazines themselves, with the chairman and commentator providing synthesis. These topics might provide a basis for discussing the question of whether subsidy or bankruptcy is the inevitable fate of the Little Magazine and, if so, why.

Closed Sessions:

### First Session - Types of Little Magazines: Variations in Functions and Approaches

This session is designed to follow up the discussion of the first public session, by enabling a more detailed consideration of the variations in objectives and functions and aims of the different types of publications generally classified as "Little Magazines." It is expected that this further discussion and clarification of ideas would be of special interest to the professional participants in the conference.

### Second Session - The Little Magazine and the Educator

This session will consider the present relationship between university teachers of literature and editors and writers of the Little Magazines; whether or not these relationships are satisfactory; what special problems exist; and what might be done to improve them.

COPY

COPY

August 13, 1956

Mr. Charles Sumner Bird
East Walpole
Massachusetts

Dear Charlie:

I want to thank you very much indeed for the check that
you have sent to the Harvard Summer School, which I will have credited
as you directed - one-half to go to the Conference on Political Geography
next year, and one-half to be devoted to the contingency fund of the
Summer School for conferences and lectures for which we have to work
out underwriting from outside our budget.

Of course this is a most generous contribution on your part,
and if other members of the Visiting Committee were able to parallel
it my job as Director would be a very much easier one, since I find
fund raising a somewhat unpleasant duty. It is extremely good of you
to undertake to add something further to this after the first of next
year, and I hope I may get some advice from you on the nature of this
conference.

I would, in any case, very much appreciate talking to
Christopher about his own plans. You know that he was very helpful
to us once or twice before in minor ways with the Middle Eastern
conference and with some of the International Dance Festival arrange-
ments. I hope that this time he can be prevailed upon to do some more
systematic work, including working in with the International Seminar
group, where a man of his background and experience would be most
helpful. This is something I will have to talk over with Henry
Kissinger, but of course the first thing is to find out whether
Christopher is willing to get back into the academic round that he
left in order to gain experience earlier. I very much hope that he
can and will.

The very best to Julia and to you, and my sincere gratitude
for your generous gift which, of course, the University authorities
will more suitably acknowledge in a more formal way.

WYE:hw

December 11, 1956

Mr. William Jackson
Executive Offices of the President
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Jackson:

At the suggestion of Bill Elliott I am sending you the three
most recent issues of Confluence which I understand he has discussed
with you. I think I can describe our aims best by quoting from a letter
I wrote in 1952 when Confluence had just started and when it was confined
to a dialogue between Europe and the United States. Let me add that we
have since expanded our circulation to include Asia.

I am writing to acquaint you with Confluence, an international
quarterly published under the auspices of Harvard University. It
is a review designed to give European and American intellectuals
an opportunity to exchange views on contemporary problems of politics,
philosophy and the humanities. We do this because we believe that
one of our most pressing problems is to afford an opportunity for
the men who represent our real values to have their voices heard
above the propagandistic and political debate. Each issue is in
the form of a symposium on two subjects of mutual interest with
each topic carrying through two issues. We distribute about ten
thousand copies equally divided between Europe and the United States.

Our effort grew out of the 1951 session of the Harvard
International Seminar which brought together twenty young Europeans
for a discussion of contemporary problems. The very flattering
response we have received both in Europe and in the United States
expressed in a large volume of correspondence and in reviews in many
major European journals has encouraged us to continue our effort.

That the impact of Confluence has been considerable is I think
attested to in the enclosed quotations from letters we have received
about the magazine.

I am sorry to overwhelm you with so much material, but I thought
you might be interested in having the background of Confluence. May I
add that I have had the pleasure of meeting an associate of yours, Tim
Hoopes, on a project I am engaged in for Nelson Rockefeller and that I
have been very much impressed with him.

Kind regards.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Department of Government
PROFESSOR WILLIAM Y. ELLIOTT

LITTAUER CENTER M-26
CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

February 20, 1957

Mr. Christopher Bird
4009 Roundtop Drive
Honolulu, Hawaii

Dear Chris:

I am returning your letter from Rogers, which does not look
too promising, in spite of his somewhat enigmatic reference to the need
of new creative ideas. Perhaps it may yet work out.

In the meantime, I would like you very seriously to consider
coming back and taking part in this Conference on Political Geography and
Cultural Anthropology which we are staging next Summer here at the Summer
School. I am asking Tom Crooks to send you a description of our thinking
so far on it, and it would be very helpful if you could make some suggestions
of your own as to how we could develop some of these topics. Gilbert White
is coming from Michigan, and Sir Dudley Stamp from England. Hartshorne and
a few others of national note will be here, and Ed Ackerman is going to
preside--a disciple, I believe, of Whittlesey here.

It promises to be a very interesting conference and one in which
we hope to have outstanding figures from abroad, as well as from this country,
to give the subject a thorough going-over. It may have some use in the
future consideration in Political Geography here at Harvard as a useful
discipline and a tool for the other social sciences.

I understand from your father that there is some prospect of your
taking a job at Yale of some kind, and I would like to know more about it.
I hope it will not interfere with the Summer School proposal. We could
offer you a useful fee, for helping to run this Conference and taking care
of the scheduling and some of the program, of $250. I hope in any case
your plans will permit your returning for a visit home that will fit in
with the dates, which come from July 29-31. Of course it would be very
useful if you could get here beforehand.

I had also thought that you might take some part in the International
Seminar, about which you already know something because you helped to get it
set up. These 45 cultural leaders from all over the world are particularly
in need of someone who understands the Asians, and especially the Southeast
Asians. I think you would find it a useful part of your own educational
development and background. Do let me know what your possibilities are.
I could not make them out from your reply to my letter of the 9th of January,
but I will need a reply, if possible, earlier than April.

Christopher Bird

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February 20, 1957

Your own impression about Talbott, by the way, jibes with mine. I don't quite know why you feel that the best place to take a doctorate degree is either in London, Cambridge, or Paris, since we are building up a very strong field of studies on the Middle East here. But perhaps you feel that you have seen too much of Harvard already.

I will look forward to seeing your translation of the novel when Regnery puts it out. By the way, would you think that Professor Kish, whom you mention as giving a seminar on political geography of Europe, would be worth inviting to the Conference? I would appreciate a frank judgment on this point. I hope you are having time to look in on your seminar while you are doing your Ph.D. out there in Hawaii.

With warmest regards to you and your wife, I am

WYE:hw

cc: Mr. Henry A. Kissinger

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

February 20, 1957

Mr. Henry A. Kissinger
Weld 10

Attention Mr. Stephen R. Graubard

Dear Henry:

I hope that you and Steve Graubard will think seriously about adding Chris Bird to your group of American participants in the International Seminar. He is, as you know, a perfectly extraordinary young man, commanding enough languages to move around the world without finding himself at a loss, and, as you will see from his enclosed letter, maturing in every way in his appreciation of the facts of life. He wants to go to Afghanistan; is finishing up his Ph.D. in languages and Far Eastern cultural programs at the University of Hawaii; and, as you will see from my letter, will take a considerable part in our Summer Conference on Political Geography.

He has been offered some kind of job at Yale, but I am not yet clear quite what. In the meantime, I can't think of anyone who could better assure that the members of the Seminar got a useful impression of a young American who is devoted to the service of his country and who had trained himself systematically and rigorously to that end in his work abroad.

I want to sit down with you and Graubard about the Seminar. Pierre Emmanuel is very enthusiastic about a young Frenchman named Nicolet, as far as I can remember it, and promises to write about him-- and we have had our usual quota of letters, which I have been forwarding to the Seminar, recommending others. I will be seeing you today, but before this letter reaches you,

WYE:hw

Encls.

cc: Heura Klaeujer.

WAE:pm

William Y. Elliott

Sincerely yours,

Warmest regards to you,irlsda.

count on keeping in touch with you and with hom. hyusus.
which it would be nice to get you to go. In such case, I shall
and you may not have time to settle down for the kind of job
have sent me. He may be fully poked for American barterplansa,
sending him a coba of hom letter and the cilt-print which you
get you to look in on the International Seminar, and I am
the United States. I think Henry Klaeujer would be glad to
Do look me up in Cambridge this Summer. If you are in
certainly in a more intimate form.

come when you can hump him in a moreorky aeraton and
exactly from hom undergratuate theaters. I pobe the time will
I am sorry to see what they did to your early neglect

Dear Dick:

Oxford, England
Mutfield College
Mr. Richard H. Niffman

September 38, 1964

PROFESSOR WILLIAM Y. ELLIOTT
Department of Geology

CAYANESOR 38, MYERSCHUDEL
ILLVATER CEILERS M-30

BACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

March 5, 1957

Mr. Henry A. Kissinger
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc.
22 West 55th St.
New York 19, N. Y.

Dear Henry:

I am sending you along a schedule which will show you how booked
up I am. The Planning Board takes up Mondays and Fridays. I am absolutely
committed to Tuesday here for lectures and Seminars, and I have made
commitments to talk to Barnett's group in Chicago and to Principia on
Thursday, the 4th of April, and to a FRASCO meeting in Washington on
March 20. There is a Defense Studies meeting on March 27 that I must be
at here in Boston, so I am somewhat boxed in. I could manage a meeting
with you either the 14th in New York, or the 21st, and, of course, if you
run down to Washington on any of the Mondays or Fridays, except the 15th
of March, I would be there.

In April I have two possible clear days on the 2nd and 3rd,
since that comes in the holiday period, and I could manage coming down
to New York for one or both of these days, if you liked.

Jim Conant's address was at the Hotel Algonquin for a while,
but is now likely to be Randolph, New Hampshire, for mail forwarding.
I think he would be an ornament to the kind of final summary group and
would carry some weight. However, this is a matter for Nelson and you
to determine, and I merely forward the suggestion for what it is worth.

If you come down to Washington on a Monday or a Friday, or would
prefer to see me there instead of in New York on any of the days I have
mentioned, namely, the 14th or 21st of March, or the 2nd or the 3rd of
April, we could work out a luncheon with Huntington Cairns, or perhaps
dinner if that were more suitable. The latter may be a little more
difficult to fit into his schedule.

I am stumped on the matter of a good political scientist, or
even a good historian, for our Seminar. Of all the people here, I think
only Merle Fainsod has the requisite qualities. There is, however, a
possibility that Bob Bowie, if he took the other job that we were talking
about, might be available for it, and this is something to ponder. He
may not want to do it, but it would give him a chance to work into his
prospective set-up here and to get ready for it if he has made up his
mind to accept the offer that is outstanding.