A handsomely printed beige booklet has appeared in a number of buildings on campus, a pamphlet published by Yale’s own Movement for Beauty & Justice entitled, “Unexpected Beauty.”  Justine Kolata, the editor and only board member, says in her introductory note that the “publication is a collection of everyday things in which people have discovered beauty.”  What it really is is a series of quotes that have some vague connection to “beauty” or aesthetics, some from famous poets and philosophers, others from the homeless poets of New Haven’s streets.

Unfortunately, the content does not make good on the title’s promise, and little of the book is actually at all unexpected or beautiful.  In assembling the book, the editor(s?) seem to have ignored the way cliché can cheapen a beautiful thought or phrase.  There just isn’t much justice in the fact that this book probably took money from the Sudler fund that could have gone into a publication or production whose project is actually to examine beauty in an aesthetically sound manner.  I want more justice and less beauty!