Old stuff

From the January 18, 1964, Saturday Evening Post:

Lewis Lapham: "On first hearing, electronic music seems an arbitrary collection of the ghastly noises associated with the last scene of an Alfred Hitchcock film. No melody, no harmony, no flutes or even violins; nothing but a succession of bleeps, rumbles, squeakings, clanks, whooshings, blops and bongs."

The cover has some variety of quintuplets, which magazines like this were crazy about at the time.

The "Speaking Out" column has Richard Nixon, eight weeks after Kennedy's assassination, proposing a change in the presidential line of succession that would have had the electoral college vote for a new vice president rather than the automatic elevation of the Speaker of the House. Weird.

There's a very lengthy excerpt from Peter De Vries' then-latest, Reuben, Reuben. Sample yoks:

"'Jimmy's interested in comparative religion, a woman said, "and his mother was wondering if he might get into Yale Divinity School."

"He hasn't got a prayer," I said.

. . . .

A poet, I thought, shaking his hand. Why, he looks just like anybody else. In fact, worse.

Then there's a story on charming basketballer Bill Russell: "I owe the public nothing."

And finally, a Post editorial: "Don't overlook Henry Cabot Lodge." Oh, we won't.