CONTAINING plays, essays, poetry, fiction, and dreams of twenty-nine writers, "New Directions," a volume of experimental writing, has much that is good, much that is not good, and some that must be left uncriticized.

James Laughlin is not alone in his quest for the purging of our language. At the end of his selection of the last year's best books, Clifton Fadiman made a plea to young authors that they write with more care towards the use of words. Wilson Follett complained that the definition of a sentence as "a complete thought expressed in words" had become obsolete. The economist, Stuart Chase, in a recent provocative article, urged that the way to make language a better vehicle for ideas was to pursue the science of semantics, which teaches that the two main sins of language are identification of words with things and the misuse of abstract terms.

Laughlin applauds the sociological approach of Chase to language and quickly adds that linguistic change must lead the way for social change. Regarding language from the poet's point of view, he recognizes its value as the life-breath of civilization and also its mortality. But language has become the master of thinking, and to check this corruption Laughlin advocates a system of education that will teach words and ideas separately. His ideas no language and experimental writing--which tries to remedy language deficiency--form one of the essays in his volume. It is convenient to criticize the other work on the basis of these doctrines.

If this is done, one will like George O'Donnell's poem "Evening to Morning" for its simple but convincing imagery; he will think Laughlin's own poetry too simple, too bare. Because of its vivid picture, like a penetrating flash, "Mannikin," by Francis Fergusson, has strong appeal. On the other hand, one used to conventional poetry will tire of playing anagrams with the poems of Cummings; he will laugh at Robert Fitzgerald's surrealism, which Laughlin explains as the principle of redefinition by incongruity:

"Seventy times seven the actual inexpugnable colorless formless and insentient night flows through the well-veined nasal passages with an odor of stale crickets and pale tea."

When he looks at Kenneth Rexroth's formless verse, he will think of Hamlet's replay to Polonius upon being asked what he read: "Words, words, words!"

With her scrambling of familiar word groupings to break down associated ideas in the reader's mind, making a complete denial of the usual meaning, Gertrude Stein contributes intangibly in her "play" on Daniel Webster. Saroyan's "The Pool Game" proves that he can create an objective tableau which has artistic form. "Letters to Christopher," by Mcrle Hoyleman, are strangely captivating. Perhaps the best writing is found in Delmore Schwartz's two stories, of which "The Commencement Day Address" is admirable for its moral as well as verbal edge.

If Stein and Cummings appear to go too far in the bypath of experimental writing, Saroyan and Schwartz advance exactly far enough. Granted that the fight against the decay of language must be positive and militant, the leaders of semantics should realize that their experimental writing cannot be absurd or incomprehensible to that sector of society against whom their offensive must be strongest: to the mass.