BOOKENDS

WHEN two university professors sit down, as Messre Brennecke and Clark have done, to wire a "how to do it" book for professionals, the resulting opus is almost always full of old and obvious data mingled with much misleading and impertinent material. Even, if by some freak of good fortune, the academic mind should produce a sane work on some subject like article writing, the successful contributor to magazines can be heard to dismiss it with "I don't like it, even if it is good."

Thus, with prejudice and the precedent of failure to overcome, the authors of "Magazine Article Writing" deserve extra congratulations for the work they have turned out. They both either lecture or teach at Columbia University, yet manage to keep their ears very close to Fleet Street. They get down to brass tacks at the outset, and keep themselves right at work in a businesslike, lucid manner, until they have led the reader through the various processes of article writing, recognizing and planning material, writing, and getting the work printed. There are chapters on various types of articles, interviews, biography, book criticism, etc, and the book ends with a valuable chapter on the "Writer and the Law."

It is clear that this book must of necessity have a fairly limited audience, but to persons who can or who merely believe they can write 'articles, there is sure to be information of value. The authors do not claim to make of every reader a successful contributor to the Sat Eve Post on the Atlantic, but they do offer a good orderly compendium of facts that will save many "trials and enters" for the potential contribution to contemporary non flection.