Education: Writer’s School

A map through the maze of the literary market, with all financial short cuts plainly marked, will be drawn for 50 students at the Bread Loaf Conference, branch of Middlebury College (Vt.) summer session, which opened this week. “The interests of creative writing” are chiefly nurtured, say the bulletins. Actually the conference is unique in that it tells what the editors (who sign the checks) want. Long-maned poets, arriving to discover how to make poetry pay, will be told that poetry never pays.* People who “think they would like to write” will find themselves rudely face to face with a pencil and a sheet of blank pa per. People who have written a lot, and badly, will be asked to stop writing. Those who have the “literary impulse” and show some signs of obeying that impulse successfully will be instructed how to obey it profitably. The aim is to save a writer five years, commer cially. There will also be much inspirational and critical instruc tion in the form of lectures and personal conference.

Last year’s conference students produced a novel, short stories, articles, verse, all printable. They were paid for these—a novelty to all. John Farrar, aggressive, sensitive editorial director for Publisher George H. Doran, is again the principal. Currently, John Farrar, editor, and Publisher Doran have relinquished control of the Bookman (monthly) to Burton Rascoe, Seward B. Collins and associates (TIME, April 18). In a farewell editorial, Mr. Farrar has explained that one of his chief aims was to make the Bookman “a friendly magazine” for readers, contributors and the writers whose books were criticized therein. For his friendliness, Mr. Farrar gained, among more just thanks, a reputation for “undue optimism.” Said Mr. Farrar in his farewell: “Think of all the adjectives I can now employ! Where I have been accustomed to using ‘great,’ ‘magnificent,’ ‘heart-rending,’ I can now say ‘bunk,’ ‘babbittry,’ ‘balderdash.'”

*Rudyard Kipling is said to be the only high grade poet alive whose poetry royalties alone would keep him warmly clothed, well fed, adequately amused.