Understanding Blue Mother

By Christopher T. Cory

LETTER TO THE ALUMNI by John Hersey. 145 pages. Knopf. $4.95.

Author-Reporter John Hersey (A Bell for Adano, Hiroshima, The Algiers Motel Incident) got out of Yale with the class of 1936. The subject of his book is Yale during last spring's May Day demonstrations, when undergraduates supported eight Black Panthers accused of murder, kidnaping or conspiracy in New Haven. Hersey was no blimpish Old Blue come back for the weekend to gnash his teeth.

Five years ago, Yale President Kingman Brewster invited Hersey to join the Yale staff as a sort of nonprofessorial gadfly-in-residence. He accepted and became "master" of Pierson College. He watched sympathetically as national events and the evolving youthful counterculture led Yale to the brink of what he regretfully came to call "confrontational hysteria."

Letter is addressed to Hersey's fellow alumni, whom he upbraids for the "disturbing . . . gap in understanding between you and your Blue Mother." Upon a clear and reasonable narrative of last spring's events Hersey has strung a series of uneven but perceptive observations about young people. He finds them thirsty for moral leadership, not totally liberated about sex, "hyper-energetic," and capable of astonishing maturity when given enough trust.

The book's most interesting parts are insider's reports. One reason that a tense faculty voted to make academic work voluntary during the crisis weekend was the startling speech of Kurt Schmoke, the normally fire-breathing black secretary of the senior class. Instead of spouting abusive rhetoric, Schmoke spoke "only five or six brief sentences, to this effect: The students on this campus are confused, they're frightened. They don't know what to think. You are older than we are, and more experienced. We want guidance from you, moral leadership. On behalf of my fellow students, I beg you to give it to us.' "

Hersey is at his best in his human vignettes, as when he describes Mike, a dedicated radical, during an intramural baseball game, "running to catch a fly, face upturned, thick glasses mirroring fleecy clouds, beard flying in the April wind, an outsized cap cupping his flowing hair--and then the thud of the ball in his glove and the companionable cheers of men who didn't agree with Mike on one damn thing."

After the flood of "I-was-there-during-the-campus-rumpus" memoirs, Mersey's common humanity is a welcome relief. Christopher T. Cory

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