The American Spectator

Outwardly the new number of the super-editorial page, edited by the most important literary trust outside of the Book of the Month Club Board, presents nothing to waken the suspicions of its devotes. But the headlines (or whatever they are called) will give away the bad news that the editing quintet, in which Ernest Boyd represented the "unknown," has passed on much of its editorial space to complete "nobodies" in the literary world, obscure amateurs and pot-boiled professionals. It was the hope of almost every original Spectator subscriber that he would receive a short-and-easy-to-read newspaper in which he would only have to read the works of well-known, well-liked authors, many of them officials of this homey paper. But it now seems that the spectator, like every other American publication, is a shop for earning literary reputations, rather than a gymnasium for proving them (and in the case of Branch Cabell a hospital for desperate measures.)

There is nothing really good in the April Spectator, not even the quips. Walter Winchell launches a first low-brow article among the high-brows. There is a poorly written, poorly thought-out article on Freudianism before Freud. Cabell uses more new words for us than ever in another soliloquy. But most of the items are by names unfamiliar, and one of them "Low Down" by Charles Angoff, is the most disingenuous attack on the best sellers in the last few years which has ever been published. It all sounds very jealous and stupid, and aggravates by getting at the popular books, by damning the New York Critics.

The Colophon

Apparently unscathed by the vagaries of finance. The Colophon continues on its leisurely way as a publication of more than ordinary distinction. Aristocratic in tone and appearance, catering as it does to la limited number of booklovers, it fulfills its function adequately. In Part XII for the first quarter of 1933 one notes especially the high standard of craftsmanship and typographic excellence, an excellence that is already a tradition with the Colophon.

Since each item is the work of an individual press, variety is the keynote of the whole, and there are several instances of remarkable ingenuity in the adaption of format and typographic technique to the spirit of the text. The rendering of Lawrence Wroth's capable essay on Juan Ortiz, the first wood engraver to practice his are on the American continent, by the Southworth. Press is particularly apt in this respect.

Besides Mr. Wroth's piece, one finds an author's reminiscences (Mrs. Buck); two reminiscences about authors (Mr. Wilde & Mr. Brooke): two scholarly essays on bookish subjects: three items of rather fusty Americana: a humorous sketch: and a single woodent.

The travelog of Oscar Wild's voyages among the barbarians of Eastern America is very choice, and give short mention to the time when the precieux lecture in Boston was broken up by fifty Phillistines from Harvard who charged the theatre, all dressed in purple velvet and yellow lilies. Oscar took it very nicely.

The New Yorker

The New Yorker, which has faithfully narrated the lighter side of Mr. T. S. Eliot's adventures at Harvard this year, presented in last week's number one of its choice bits of Eliot-gossip. We at Harvard have little first-hand knowledge of this one because it all happened at Brown.