SUBJECT SUGGESTION URGED FOR MAGAZINES

The judges in the Advocate's recent short-story competition seem to have made a sound choice in awarding the prize to E. A. Weeks, '22, for his story entitled "Ink", which appears in the current issue of the magazine. "Ink" is a slight story. Its heroine, a girl who "has assuredly passed the dancing debutante years" and is approaching "the gardening, auction, book-club age of thirty," receives a love letter and a piece of Bokhara embroidery from a somewhat sentimental young man in India whom she has kept dangling for years in a state of miserable uncertainty. Her niece, who is a flapper, spills a bottle of ink on the Bokhara embroidery. Then, and not until then, does the heroine realize that she is in love with the young man. Not much of a plot, as you can see; but the story is cleverly (if in places somewhat affectedly) written, and is full of keen description.

Of the two other stories, "The Unregenerate" by O. LaFarge, '21, is an amusing satire on the reformers who would take all the joy and spontaneity out of life, but is so hazy that the reader does not care very much what happens to the characters; while "Angelo," by S. S. Rogers '22, is too conventional, too theatrical, to achieve fully the effect which the author intended.

For the rest, the magazine contains a pleasant essay by Arthur M. Dobson '20, a few rather sugary poems (of which the prettiest is the "Song," by Merle Colby '24), and three little sketches which appear at the beginning of the magazine where one expects to find editorials.

The reviewer wonders as he puts down the Advocate why it is that college literary magazines, if they are not cheap,--and the Advocate is never cheap,--tend to be pale and bloodless things, useful for the purpose of enabling their writers to see their work in print, but of little general interest to the college commu- nity. Isn't it possible that this is because most of the contributions to college literary magazines are written, not to entertain the undergraduates and their friends, but to meet the requirements of some course in English Composition, and are subsequently turned over to the editors because they receive professional praise? An excellent theme may or may not be interesting to the general reader. If it is on The Abolition of the Forward Pass, it will probably be read by the college community. If it is on Sunset by the Shore, it probably will not be. The first task of the editors of a magazine is to interest their readers; and the best editors know that this can be done without vulgarity, sensationalism, or a lowering of literary standards.

Now one of the axioms of the professional magazine editor is that he cannot rely merely on the material which comes into his office through the mail. He must go deliberately to work to get able writers to write about things which he is sure will interest his readers. Whether the topic of the day--or of the morrow--is the Younger Generation or Spiritualism or the Irish Question, he must get an article on it from the man who is best equipped to deal with it. He must continually suggest subjects to his authors.

Most college library magazines would gain by systematic pursuit of a similar policy. When the Harvard Magazine recently published the results of a questionnaire on the strong points and weaknesses of the tutorial system its editors showed keen journalistic sense. At times in recent years the Advocate has had a constructive editorial policy, but only at times. There would be opportunities for interesting articles or essays in the Advocate on the technique of modern football, on the teaching of literature at Harvard, on the decline of the discussion-group idea here to select a few topics offhand. If the editors of college literary magazines edited and wrote for their readers as, for example, the editors of college comic magazines do, their creations would have vastly more vitality and probably just as much, if not more, literary merit. The aim of the editors should be not merely to embalm choice literary productions, but rather to stimulate discussion, to contribute definitely to undergraduate intellectual life.

There is no dearth of literary talent at Harvard, and the Advocate has an opportunity to employ and develop that talent in the making of a more readable and vigorous magazine than we have now at the University. The task will require journalistic foresight and considerable hard work. But it is worth doing, and the reviewer would like to see the present board of editors undertake it