This Month

A Scottish reader wrote us a letter some months ago which we have been pondering ever since. It was a complaint against an argument of David Cohn’s which had appeared in this section of the Atlantic, entitled “For a Revival of Dueling” — a seriocomic plea for dueling in the absence of effective libel and slander laws, as a defense against those who lightly blackguard a public figure. The main tenor of his argument was that insults and abuse are not funny, not to be laughed off.

“We may note, by contrast,” Mr. Cohn wrote, “that the case is otherwise in Great Britain. The humorless Britons do not think it is funny to ruin a man’s or a woman’s reputation, or to permit journalists to bring down the contempt of the community upon the heads of others. . . . These stuffy people, tradition-ridden, still cling to the quaint concept that to besmirch a man’s name is almost equivalent to taking his life. . .

The letter from our Scottish reader falls into the category of difficult, if not insoluble, mail. He begins by denouncing Mr. Cohn as an advocate of “anarchy and chaos.” He continues: “He says the British are humourless. Because we have progressed beyond the custard-pie stage in our humour, it is no reason to be called humourless. We are merely different from America. . . .

“Tradition-ridden, I grant Mr. Cohn, we are. But then tradition has many things in its favour where it is founded on experience gained over centuries.”

We hope our literal-minded Scot will not read Howard Hayes’s “Keeping Up With Spring” in this May Atlantic, for he would find it an impractical case, no doubt. A program of travel beginning in the South and moving northward at a rate of ten miles a day would strike him as out of the question. The ten-mile move might land the traveler in the middle of a cane field or some inadequate suburb. Where would one spend the night ? What if no rooms were available? And how could anyone make his schedule fit in with the “last killing frost ”? As to Mr. Cohn’s new proposal, that our corporation executives should disclose more candidly their views on the life of the spirit, and their own inner thoughts about themselves, our Scottish reader will probably reject it.

We mention all this because it illustrates the fine little muddle which a non-regimented section of light writing is bound to encounter sooner or later. One way of avoiding it would be to turn out each month a staff-written section, to depend for the material on a capable, even inspired, battery of the same authors. If the Scot did not understand them, he would at least get used to them. The other choice, which appeals to us, would be the constant search for new writers and their unexpected ideas. Vehicles for light writing are all too few, we believe, and we take satisfaction in having brought into the Atlantic’s Accent on Living some dozens of new writers each year. Its contributors approach a total of 150 since July, 1942.

It’s foolish for any editor to try to explain what he does not want to publish and why. He will barely have done so when some reader will show him up in the next mail and confront him with a rejectionproof piece on the very subject which the editor has just tabooed. If he has announced his determination never to entertain a text on pets, or on the eccentricities of grandfathers or hired girls, family reminiscence, or hobbies, the unbeatable exception will be staring him in the eye within the week.

So far, our record is clear with respect to the light side of domestic service, senility, and the family memoir, but two months ago we found ourselves publishing an account of the odd dogs a man used to own — something which we should not have believed possible in view of our prejudices in that direction. If we ever do commit the comedy hired girl to print, it will touch off such a volume of writing as to dominate our affairs for months to come. Far better to have faith that our readers can come up with something better than the hired girl, or Grandpa’s spells.

The decision to depend on our readers and contributors rather than on schemes of our own still holds good for this part of the Atlantic. Its results have been just as surprising to us as to anyone else. Accent on Living has contained, for instance, an explanation that corn is really a grass and not whatever else we may have thought it was; the diet and folkways of the burying beetle have claimed our space; we have published the demerits of processed cheese and slick magazine stories and have praised the recorder or vertical flute and the sugar-cured method of roasting a leg of lamb. Supporting drip coffee and William S. Hart, we have opposed unlisted telephone numbers and Roy Rogers. We are for the helicopter, against the tone of voice which most ministers assume for radio purposes.

These attitudes seem to us correct, worth expressing; but for them we are indebted not to our own editorial initiative but to the numberless enthusiasms, misgivings, prejudices, and drolleries of our readers. We could not have thought them up and prescribed them as subjects even if we had wanted to. Once in a great while, we’ll make the effort, but then only to help an energetic author without a subject in hand.

Two years ago, a man came into our office on his way to Peru. “Have you any subjects in mind which I could try out from Peru?" he asked. The only thing we could think of to reply was, “Vicuña.”Very well, our visitor would send us a piece about vicuña. It arrived in fine order the other day, just too late to catch this May Atlantic, but it will supply, in the June issue, the information so greatly needed about vicuña.