The registration issue of a student publication, formed as it is out of the literary vacuum of the summer, can be a fine diagnostic test of a publication's vitality. Such an issue can be patched together by one lonely editor, trapped with paste and scissors at the end of Summer School, desperately violating back issues. Or it can be last-minute original work by one talented editor, as were the Updike Lampoons. Ideally it is the product of material sent in by and solicited from contributors the whole summer long. The new Advocate, despite some obvious filler, appears to belong to the last category.

The most interesting thing about the issue itself is the dominance of two reviews, Konrad Kaplowitz's dissection of David Riesman and James Buechler's analysis of Faulkner's Fable. The reviews are comparatively free of Advocatish pedantry and critical generalizations; they are both above the standards of the Sunday Times, the Saturday or Partisan reviews.

Buechler, unlike most of those who have struggled with the Fable, takes the book neither as an opportunity to grovel before the master nor to throw dirt in his face. Nor is he mesmerized by the Christ analogies, but instead considers the equally important Faulknerian themes of sacrifice and human dignity as they appear in the book. My only quarrel with the review, in fact, is its conclusion, wherein Buechler, after making what seemed like a good analysis of a bad book, urges it upon the unsuspecting reader: "Any book of Faulkner's deserves to be read and considered simply because of what it is about, what is to be found in it." A book in which important but helpless ideas are ineptly roughed up does not necessarily deserve to be read. Any book of Faulkner's no more deserves to be read than any books of Melville's. In short, why read bad books by good authors when there are so many good books left unread?

David Riesman, who rocketed from the internecine warfare of the Partisan Review to the cover of Time in the course of the summer, plays the part of a flea upon the body intellectual, continually spurring it on to new efforts. Like any such insect, he occasionally gets under the skin of the host upon whom he depends for existence. It is not surprising that Mr. Kaplowitz, plagued to distraction by Riesman, petulantly scolds him for lacking virtues he never attempted to possess. "Riesman's plethoric insights never come together to form a conscious, let alone conscientious stand." What flea ever took a conscientious stand!

Kaplowitz also unfairly implies that Riesman thinks political apathy should be encouraged as a protection against McCarthyism, whereas he merely cites it as such with no idea of encouraging it. Had Kaplowitz really wanted to demolish Riesman he could have pointed to his advice about making "The America we would like to see in the future . . . What will make America a more interesting and lively place to live in?" Riesman's hopeful view of the American future seems to be that of a spectator at a good three-ring circus.

There are two short stories in this Advocate, both unpretentious and excellently written. Except for a few lines of mutually embarrassing dialect ("Da Jevvys don't want no one screwin' roun' wi dat pia-ano . . ."), Frederick Kimball's account of an artist in Jesuit clothing moves serenely to its well-ordained conclusion. Christopher Lasch's story of boy's despair before a more accomplished, less dependent companion never loses subtlety at the expense of clarity.

The issue contains a brace of sketches by Sean Sweeney (one of them quite effective), and three poems (one Eliot, one Yeats, one new American). The deft Mr. Kimball, who was obviously in charge of the issue, has a last-minute space-filler which isn't half so trite as it would have been in lesser hands.

The year's first Advocate is not a big issue, but it is a good one. Freshmen should be impressed, if not dazzled.