LISPING IN NUMBERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 784, 30 July 1954, Page 5

LISPING IN NUMBERS

Sir,-Our. attention has been called to your editorial which denounces our new quarterly. It is difficult for us to comprehend your particular interpretation of our purposes, or to understand the reason for your departure from the usual principles of editorial writing. We imagine that it is usual, in an editorial, to deal with a sub‘ect arising from contents of the news pages-or alternatively, with some fact or situation wellknown to the reader. The first issue of our quarterly was launched without benefit of a publicity campaign, and to deal with it in art editorial which mentions nothing of its origins-or from where it may be ob-

tained#seems a discourtesy. That the reader may be given an opportunity to make up his own mind, we feel that he should be told that copies and subscriptions to Numbers may be obtained from Box 5121, Lambton Quay, Wellington, Your comments were confined to the matter of editorial statements in Numbers, and’ no attempt was made to analyse the quality of the literary work in the issue, Had this been done, it would have given a much clearer idea of what the new quarterly is about. The merit of this work is the journal’s real justification-and not what may be said about it, or about other things, in the editorial or the accompanying leaflet. The purpose of the magazine is to put forward worthwhile work for which there is not, at present, a means of publication. This fact is well known to a great number of those who are still actively writing, and the fact. that so many of our better-known writers are in the journal, is proof that there are not enough sources of publication in the country for them to exhibit new departures in their work, let alone for younger writers who are always making this complaint. Your editorial would have it both ways-‘that we have no room for this adolescent nonsense" while, at the same time, you say that the names of contributors "include, several poets of distinction who seem to have no difficulty in publishing their work." You obviously have been chasing the wrong kind of inspiration for welcoming our new periodical, and must have overlooked our stress upon the importance of a sense of humour. This was not lacking in our editorial.

THE EDITORIAL COMMITTEE.

Numbers_

(Our correspondents assure ~us that they have a sense of humour, and we must believe them, though it is hard to do so after reading the first six words of their letter. Editorials .are not tied to published items. The "fourth leaders’ of The Times, for example, are on any subject which happens to interest the leader-writer. If we were discourteous in not mentioning the "origins" of Numbers, it was because the origins were nowhere revealed in the journal. Box numbers are decidedly anonymous. Even now, as may be seen from the letter’s collective signature, the editorial features remain heavily veiled. The editorial in the first issue of a new journal may be taken as a staternent of policy, and is therefore an obvious subject for discussion. What we noticed most about the literary work was that 12 of the 32: pages seemed on internal evidence to have been written by one person, and that a story by: another contributor had already been published elsewhere.

-Ed.)