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Spaceways, v. 4, issue 4, whole no. 27, April 1942

Page 25

SPACEWAYS                                                              25
[centered] THE READERS ALWAYS WRITE

Wells' "The Brothers" took place, but it seems more likely the latter. The end-ing was not entirely satisfactory, but rate it 8. ' ' .....Beacon Light con-tains some rather odd arguments about anonymity, which are prepunctured by Chau-venet's letter. Anybody who is curious about who an anonymous writer is is a busybody. You'd think from the way he says it that Doc is against busybodies. Aren't most progressives and reformers busybodies? But that's beside the point. Now Doc seems to think that there is a considerable advantage to the quality of a piece of writing if it's published anonymously. I can see a very slite advan-tage, provided the writer is sucessful in keeping too-personal viewpoints out of it, but the Cynic hasn't always been successful on that. It seems at first that it should have been, since several people checked it, and then you realize that they were all Futurians. Well, anyway, regardless of the multiple origin of the items, the column is one person's idea, and one person puts it into shape and types it up and sends it in, and that person is probably Lowndes, and I'll con-tinue to hold him accountable for what appears in Beacon Light. The argument that the latest Lensman saga is all a hoax is rather strongly presented, but I'm very suspicious of any story that is supposed to have been written that way (like they say Martian Odyssey was), and the individual parts of the argument can be refuted in many cases. The weakest of these is his assertion that great-er freedom prevailed in Boskonia. Boskonia was oriented toward a sengle aim, like any totalitarian state, and a person who "worked his way up" could work up in only one direction. In Civilization, on the other hand, individuals were free to direct their energies and abilities as they wished, to anything from fanzine publishing to pirate-hunting. The Lensmen are partially an exception to this, because a culture must defend itself, but they were not forced to be Lens-men. Give Beacon Light 7. ' ' 8 to The Readers etc. Rothman's assertion that the factories can be beautiful could be developed into a very long discussion on the nature of beauty, but I've partly covered that in Uber der Schonheit. His description of that episode from the Widneride was a beautiful fragment. Stanley's solution of 31 in the mathematical game is amusing. "... the l. l. SGW..." reminds me of "beating about the w. k. bush", on which I took so many months to figure out what w. k. stands for. I suppose l. l. means long lost [text in parenthesis underlined] (I suspect late lamented. HW) Webster's is another letter which could be com-mented on at length, but I must save paper for national defense. Suffice this, then: I haven't read [underlined] Bibliophan, but I can't imagine a completely impartial cri-ticism. I object to criticism "from the Marxist viewpoint" or from various other viewpoints, however. The criticisms in my literature courses generally seem satisfactory to me. They are delivered by very well educated men, who have a wide acquaintance with literature, and are based on [two words underlined] generally accepted cri-teria. Trouble arises when there is no generally accepted rule to cover a par-ticular passage and recourse must be had to more controversial opinions, and a now generally accepted criterion which runs counter to an earlier idea--I'm thinking now of the ban against sentimentality--seems to me to be carried too far.
[underlined] Poll Results: As usual, little room. Our heartiest thanks go out to the following faithful raters: Rustebar, Chauvenet, Schultz, Jenkins, Spencer, Mul-rain, Senour, Boggs, Raines, Shaw, Bronson, Bromstrand, Palmer, Thompson, Con-ner, Evans, Moffatt, Vogenitz, Robinson, and Speer. Twenty sets this time, and the final rating for the entire issue, 6.89, were both highest since vol. 3, no. 4. Tucker's installment of If I Werewolf led the issue, with 8.1. Second was the letter section, 7.60, and a very close third, Cherchez la Fanne, 7.56. Aft-er those follow: Beacon Light, 7.4; Control Room, 7.0; Legerdemain, 6.9; and What They Are About, 6.74. Fantasy on the Air and the front cover tied at 6.72. Into the Inscrutable, 6.33; Mood, 6.28; the back cover, 5.8; and So You Want To Record, 5.3 (6.1 for the entire three parts of the article). THanks also to Rennison, Burke, and Macdonald for their ratings on vol. 4, no. 2. Now how about comments and ratings on this issue from all of youse?

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SPACEWAYS 25 [centered] THE READERS ALWAYS WRITE Wells' "The Brothers" took place, but it seems more likely the latter. The end-ing was not entirely satisfactory, but rate it 8. ' ' .....Beacon Light con-tains some rather odd arguments about anonymity, which are prepunctured by Chau-venet's letter. Anybody who is curious about who an anonymous writer is is a busybody. You'd think from the way he says it that Doc is against busybodies. Aren't most progressives and reformers busybodies? But that's beside the point. Now Doc seems to think that there is a considerable advantage to the quality of a piece of writing if it's published anonymously. I can see a very slite advan-tage, provided the writer is sucessful in keeping too-personal viewpoints out of it, but the Cynic hasn't always been successful on that. It seems at first that it should have been, since several people checked it, and then you realize that they were all Futurians. Well, anyway, regardless of the multiple origin of the items, the column is one person's idea, and one person puts it into shape and types it up and sends it in, and that person is probably Lowndes, and I'll con-tinue to hold him accountable for what appears in Beacon Light. The argument that the latest Lensman saga is all a hoax is rather strongly presented, but I'm very suspicious of any story that is supposed to have been written that way (like they say Martian Odyssey was), and the individual parts of the argument can be refuted in many cases. The weakest of these is his assertion that great-er freedom prevailed in Boskonia. Boskonia was oriented toward a sengle aim, like any totalitarian state, and a person who "worked his way up" could work up in only one direction. In Civilization, on the other hand, individuals were free to direct their energies and abilities as they wished, to anything from fanzine publishing to pirate-hunting. The Lensmen are partially an exception to this, because a culture must defend itself, but they were not forced to be Lens-men. Give Beacon Light 7. ' ' 8 to The Readers etc. Rothman's assertion that the factories can be beautiful could be developed into a very long discussion on the nature of beauty, but I've partly covered that in Uber der Schonheit. His description of that episode from the Widneride was a beautiful fragment. Stanley's solution of 31 in the mathematical game is amusing. "... the l. l. SGW..." reminds me of "beating about the w. k. bush", on which I took so many months to figure out what w. k. stands for. I suppose l. l. means long lost [text in parenthesis underlined] (I suspect late lamented. HW) Webster's is another letter which could be com-mented on at length, but I must save paper for national defense. Suffice this, then: I haven't read [underlined] Bibliophan, but I can't imagine a completely impartial cri-ticism. I object to criticism "from the Marxist viewpoint" or from various other viewpoints, however. The criticisms in my literature courses generally seem satisfactory to me. They are delivered by very well educated men, who have a wide acquaintance with literature, and are based on [two words underlined] generally accepted cri-teria. Trouble arises when there is no generally accepted rule to cover a par-ticular passage and recourse must be had to more controversial opinions, and a now generally accepted criterion which runs counter to an earlier idea--I'm thinking now of the ban against sentimentality--seems to me to be carried too far. [underlined] Poll Results: As usual, little room. Our heartiest thanks go out to the following faithful raters: Rustebar, Chauvenet, Schultz, Jenkins, Spencer, Mul-rain, Senour, Boggs, Raines, Shaw, Bronson, Bromstrand, Palmer, Thompson, Con-ner, Evans, Moffatt, Vogenitz, Robinson, and Speer. Twenty sets this time, and the final rating for the entire issue, 6.89, were both highest since vol. 3, no. 4. Tucker's installment of If I Werewolf led the issue, with 8.1. Second was the letter section, 7.60, and a very close third, Cherchez la Fanne, 7.56. Aft-er those follow: Beacon Light, 7.4; Control Room, 7.0; Legerdemain, 6.9; and What They Are About, 6.74. Fantasy on the Air and the front cover tied at 6.72. Into the Inscrutable, 6.33; Mood, 6.28; the back cover, 5.8; and So You Want To Record, 5.3 (6.1 for the entire three parts of the article). THanks also to Rennison, Burke, and Macdonald for their ratings on vol. 4, no. 2. Now how about comments and ratings on this issue from all of youse?