A change of pace as well as some changes of place serve to bolster the Commencement issue of the Advocate and make the magazine a better-balanced literary effort than it has usually been in the past. The balance, however, is mainly achieved through the fiction, for the poetry on the whole conforms to the magazine's traditionally esoteric and personalized pattern.

Humor works itself into the Advocate this month in Robert Jokovski's story, "My Uncle Tom Was a Burgler." The youthful narrator's critical appraisal of his uncle's fumbling attempts at a criminal career is delightful reading at times. The ending is a bit off-key; the improbable coincidence leading to a happy ending goes poorly with the matter-of-fact tenor of the rest of the story. But the story is enjoyable and should show both local writers and editors that light fiction has a place in the Advocate.

James Chace's "Rebecca and the Child" is a short narrative piece, told without dialog. Its static form is made up for by Chace's evocative description and understanding control of the central character. Slightly similar in theme, "Sweet Forever" by Nathaniel LaMar is more successful as a story. LaMar mixes dialogue with description to give a forceful picture of the barren life of a Southern girl and her fitful reaching for love.

"The World on the Ceiling" by Russell David has to fight the essential mawkishness of its theme: two lightly wounded soldiers are shamed back to the front by the death of another soldier. For the most part it reads well, but occasionally it slips into triteness ("That poor, sad bastard of a kid." . . . "Then he felt embarrassed, and he added, 'Now I sound like a jerk.'")

In "Admission Blank to Thorndike" by Ralph Maud an old man suffers through a heart attack while a group of people, including a doctor who is "a lecturer at the medical school and doesn't have a State license to practice," sit around and mope. Though it might have happened, the story has such an air of unreality that all belief in its problems or characters vanishes.

Robert Layzer's treatment of the decline of love in "Brownstone," this year's Garrison Prize Poem, is at times difficult, but his language merits extra effort. Unfortunately this is not always true of much of the magazine's other poetry.

The worst parts of the magazine are the least important. "A Note to Readers" is a defensive justification of the magazine which serves mainly to prepare the reader for the worst. And the "Advocate Notes" on its contributors are pretentious in content and awkward in execution.