Audience

The new, big-league Audience has stated its purpose in rather negative terms. The editors say it is not i.e., for i.e., was based on a false view of the community. It is not a magazine with a crusade. And it is not any of the other Quarterlies, because they are all pseudo-academic and dull. Audience's aims never become more positive than this, and we must infer them--its aims are to be psuedo-unacademic and, above all, undull. In attempting to avoid dullness the editors of Audience have collected a strange assortment of contributors including I. A. Richards and names normally associated with the Advocate. The impression on glancing at the table of contents is one of a literary Cat'n Racquet.

In this flotsam, however, the editors do reveal a general attitude in their preference for the humorous. Guy Davenport's cover reflects the nature of their rebellion against the dust-dry Quarterlies, his artsy Greeks standing about whimsically in one-eyed observation. If Audience champions anything, it is laughter as a respectable occupation of the literati.

I. A. Richards' "The Ruin" is perhaps representative of the sly laughter which runs through much of Audience. Professor Richards' preoccupation is with words ("And words it is, not poets, make up poems./Our words, we say, but we are their's too/For words made man and may unmake again.") And he plays with them through every verse of his poem, using them with calculated elfin obstructiveness to make sure the reader sees nothing but ruins, to make sure that he senses mysteries but does not penetrate them.

Donald Hall deals in much the same coin in his commentary on Ezra Pound's almost circle of order, his "introvert sestina." One wonders whether the subject is worth the bother. Hall's joke provides its own criticism--"When we are bound to a tedious conversation,/We pay attention to the words themselves/Until they lose their sense.." Roger Moore's whimsical dealings with a similar subject turn out to be fun, but that is all. James Reiger's piece on the fall of the Civitas (of Troy or of God?) may be intended as humorous, but the subject does not strike one as very funny. Whatever Reiger's attitude, his irony collapses in confusion with the mock melodrama of "O tell it not in Askelon,/Let not the daughters of Gath rejoice!" Reiger himself seems undecided whether to take his subject seriously.

While Audience's poetic whimsies represent the prevailing tone, the three most interesting poems are in a more serious vein. Arthur Freeman's two pieces remind one of the psychological narrative of Ford Madox Ford: the first one with its use of colors, the second with its mutely horror-stricken irony and its dramatic development. Freeman's contributions are by far the most sincere and effective ones in the issue. John Hollander's and Richard Howard's joint whirl into impressionism is the only other serious poem which need be taken seriously. Sandra Hochman's two poems, however, at least have an appealing delicacy and simplicity. John S. Coolidge's Mare Imbrium, despite its inclusion in the anti-dull Audience, is dull. At the bottom of the heap, however, is Richard Eberhart's rather heavily-scented war-drama "I see a man in blue denim walking walking Through the halls of conscientious objection...." Here, at least, Audience seems not to be holding true to its announced intention.

If some of the poetry is a bit soggy, almost all of the prose--narrative and expository--is delightful. Juan Alonso presents the story of a dream and Peter Heliczer continues to live one. Both concern themselves with sex in perfection and both wind up in slight and lively disappointment. Heliczer's "White Strawberries" is one of the best things that he has yet published.

The appearance of the names of Alonso and Heliczer may suggest that Audience is attempting not only to fill the i.e. vacuum, but to leech the Advocate, either healing it or killing it by draining away its bloodier contributors. There is not a serious duplication of function, however, for Audience appears to be bent upon being a full-fledged review, not merely a vehicle for undergraduate-prose-and-poetry. The difference in approach is illustrated most clearly in the Audience reviews and articles. Guy Davenport in "The Nymph in the Spark Plug" is concerned not merely with the "literary standards" of a literary mode but with its movement in intellectual history. The interest is in observation rather than in literary pomp. Audience's casual observations, however, can carry it astray. Donald Van Eman sets up a paradigm only so as to have an excuse for commenting on several Westerns; he wanders all over the lot and then attempts to pull a point out of it all.

The Audience emphasis on observation, as opposed to crusade, seems rather low-pressure for a new-born magazine. Yet if it maintains what energy and life it revealed in its first issue, it may well be a good bit more interesting than the lethargic Advocate.