The Harvard Advocate

Mother Advocate is back! Her complexion somehow freshening in the spring sun, her wheel-chair gliding effortlessly as if oiled by vernal juices, she sits serenely by various newsstands in the Square, happily disproving the pessimists who bet this doughty octogenarian would never live the winter through.

More significant, perhaps, is the news that Mother has three interesting pieces hidden in the folds of her apron. Whether this development shows a) a remarkable talent for double incompetency, i.e., she reads a good piece, doesn't like it but prints it anyway, or b) that good writers and poets aren't really ashamed to see themselves appear in her pages, is hard to say. One should talk sweet of the aged, and of the performance in her current issue, such talk need be neither hypocritical nor gratuitous. If a reader wishes there were a little more of her, he can comfort himself by sensing that she is, at least, there. A fellow can ask little else of a woman, particularly in springtime.

Richard Robinson publishes Chapter Five of his novel, a segment of which was widely appreciated by Advocate readers several months ago. This excerpt, titled "Afternoon in Formia," concerns a ruse devised by two rakes giro and Lorenzo, to acquire bank funds that do not belong to them, and also, a devilish trick that Giro plays on Lorenzo, in which the latter, in an effort to demonstrate that a person consumed by pity blinds himself to reality, receives, for his services, not the roses that he anticipates, but rather, an unfortunate pelting of old artichokes and rotting lettuce heads.

Robinson displays a sure hand in manipulating the high humor of the quaint incidents which divert him. While his characters are not burdened with realism, they do have considerable vitality to them. If their language is complex and perhaps even elusive at times, it has a consistency and logic that emerge in a second reading. The logic and consistency seem a sign that the author has planned precisely where he is taking his characters; if their destination is not clear in the excerpt, readers doubtless will find clarification when they see the whole.

Thomas Whitbread publishes seven of his poems, poems that give a tolerant and patient look at life and nature, a look simply and often beautifully expressed. Whitbread's work has a raffish, sentimental quality about it; the poetry dotes on objects familiar to everyone, and a reader is not ashamed to chuckle and sigh along with the poet. Among the seven, "To a Doting Parent" is the most light-hearted, "Hill" the most serious. The former, set in staccato three-line stanzas and concluding with a jolly exhortation, "So cram your baby full of candy:/What quicker way to make a dandy?," has a gay and terse rhythm. The latter, perhaps less clear in its contemplation of man's past seen as a view from a high hill, moves quietly to its assertion that every crag achieved on the climb is part of the final reward, the vision from the summit. Other poems in this gracious vein are "Words from the Genius of a Place," "Deaths," and "Morning After Wedding Night."

(Publishing several examples of a poet's work seems like a much better idea than a former Advocate one, that of printing small snatches of many poets, often not too good. With Whitbread, as with Stephen Sandy in an earlier issue, this new notion has worked out well.)

Finally, Elias Kulukundis publishes The Gold Girl, a story which demonstrates a fine talent for telling neatly and quickly an arresting yarn. The subject of the piece the narrator, becomes involved, over the telephone, with a fantasy girl who sheds her anonymity but cannot pierce his almost inhuman exterior. Initially, the telephonic association of the pair seems implausible because it is such an appalling coincidence. Yet as she herself emerges as the subject of her own fantasy, the elements of the tale fall tidily into place, leaving the cold sensation of hard and real characters existing only as shatterproof shells. Without evidence of conscious effort, Kulukundis has managed to sketch characters who develop as they interact with each other, not with the author's conception of them. And his fast and clean style complements the carefully woven story he tells.

Despite the interest that her apron holds this time, an optimistic reader leaves Mother Advocate hoping she can put on weight. Slight as a pamphlet, Mother Advocate has only 20 pages, five fewer than the number of editors. She inspires the memory, in the mind of a reader 35 cents poorer, of a line commonly attributed to T.S. Mathews: "You held me on my tippy-tip-toes, but you never kissed me."