Evergreen Review , Nos. 1 and 2

Evergreen Review , Nos. 1–2 (1957). New York: Grove Press, 1957.

The use of the "little magazine" format in contemporary publishing is a result of the wide increase in paperback publications generally; and must, I think, be first recognized as a commercial device rather than a use relating directly to contemporary writing. In fact, the little magazine per se finds itself in difficult straits these days. Increased publishing costs, more highly developed means of distribution, lack of independent subsidies, and like factors have all tended to push out any actual parallels to the old Dial, Transition , or The Little Review , which might otherwise have appeared. The increased use of little magazines by universities has also resulted in a generally academic tone which reaches over into reviews without such connection, e.g., The Hudson Review . Writers for these periodicals have usually a well determined axe to grind—not certainly their fault, but again the result of anterior preoccupations: in this case, that universities have come to expect their employees to be active in such publication, particularly the members of their English departments. The subsequent search for occasions has led to any number of specious revivals, and the independently creative writer—to use a well-worn phrase—finds himself more beside the point than ever.

What is a little magazine? It used to be, most usually, the publication of a group of writers , however restrictive that might seem. It

was not, in any case, the publication of a group of publishers or teachers. At times a sympathetic editor, such as Ford Madox Ford, could, with an English Review , publish both Lawrence and Pound, no matter what each thought of the other. Transition practiced an almost voracious eclecticism, but one clearly committed to writers, not pocketbooks. And there were as well magazines such as Broom with a more narrowly cohesive editorial commitment. The late View , for example, was dedicated to American surrealism, with Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler as mainstays. In contemporary writing only Origin (which has now stopped publication) seems to have been committed to a group—its nemesis perhaps, but also its use. The writers it published were given means to develop their own idiom, with the very significant security of knowing there was a place where they might appear free of obligating "limits"—which is a very important security indeed.

The Evergreen Review has, as yet, no "group" and it is perhaps not to be expected of an essentially commercial publication. Publishers, reasonably, use such magazines as this as a form of advance publicity; Gallimard in Paris has maintained a review of this kind for some years. But this use will explain in part the hodgepodge character of Evergreen Review No. 1, despite single excellences such as James Purdy's "Cutting Edge." The contents include Sartre, Michaux, Baby Dodds, and Samuel Beckett—and these do not relate, nor is the eclecticism of such inclusion very interesting. Sartre's essay, "After Budapest," is not demonstrably an attitude with which the editors "agree"—or on which they stake their own political commitment—or by which they define a position they intend to maintain. It is, rather, an "example"—useful, but limiting, because it is an example of Sartre, not of an editorial program or policy.

This randomness is in some sense corrected in Evergreen Review , No. 2. Here a cohesiveness is obtained by giving over the issue to San Francisco writers; and Kenneth Rexroth leads off with a confused, but certainly explicit, "letter," maintaining the importance of disaffiliation to the writers involved. This of course implies liveliness and the like, but it also involves some error of generalization as does, equally, calling Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg writers of this geographical "school," despite the impact they have had there. Michael Rumaker seems to me equally detachable. The more true members are, perhaps, Rexroth, Brother Antoninus, Duncan, Spicer, Broughton, and Josephine Miles—though these as well share many differences. There is, in any case, some danger in pro-

moting geographical relationships; they are rarely significant, and add somewhat specious labels to writers who have troubles enough.

In both issues the problem seems coherence. The first relies primarily on an unabashed eclecticism, with the use of "names" to provide interest. This is a familiar practice. The second in turn makes use of a geographical "scene" (the publisher has printed on the cover SAN FRANCISCO SCENE in fact), and again the coherence is tentative, although somewhat more clear than in No. 1. But neither seems to me a very able substitute for a literal editorial policy or program, no matter the apparent limits of that commitment. It means of course that someone will be left out. It means, too, that several writers, or, in short, a group of writers will have precedence. But it means equally that something will be aimed at, and the editors will have arrived at the liberty of inviting writers to contribute to something more than a miscellany. There exist very clear "sides" in writing today, and they are not described by calling something "good writing." I should myself hate to see the Evergreen Review become, simply, another New World Writing —which can boast it prints writers of completely divergent opinion only because it has none itself.

I make use, however, of a writer's attitude in this review; and forget that it is not here the point. Readers will find much of interest in both issues despite my qualifications. "Baby Dodds' Story" in No. 1, for example, is a fine exhibition of a very free-wheeling prose; Michaux's tour "through the hallucinated hell of Mescalin" in the same issue is also a timely subject. And Evergreen Review , No. 2, is I think the most interestingly diverse and generally excellent instance of the "little magazine" in big publishing yet to be done. So, if I hope, it is mainly that it will become the occasion for writers it can now be claimed to be for readers. That will be the day.