Editor's Fence

EDITOR'S FENCE 1. Kipling (30 December 1865 to 18 January 1936): On learning of the Kipling issues, a venerable Westerner—he once heard of New York—who is now retired from academia and gardening when not savoring a dog-eared edition of Herodotus (in Greek), opined that the best fate to befall Rudyard Kipling since his death is that Robert W. Service remains Ronald Reagan's favorite poet. That critique aside, it isn't many years past that Paul Fussell, Jr., writing in the Journal of English Literary History, said that "one does not seriously misrepresent current critical attitudes by saying that, if Kipling is regarded at all as an artist, he is thought of as one whose journalistic virtues of pertness, bustle, and breathlessness are gravely counterbalanced by his journalistic vices of superficiality, grandiosity, and vulgarity. And with this overall critical estimate it is difficult to quarrel." Kipling nevertheless is considered very much an artist in this collection of articles, as essayists from America, Austria, Canada, England, France, and New Zealand help ELT evaluate him on the 50th anniversary of his death. I am particularly thankful to Thomas Ragle (former President of Marlboro College, now Director of Salzburg Seminar) and John Nevins (Librarian, Marlboro College) for their assistance in acquiring The Vermont Period: Rudyard Kipling at Naulakha, a memoir by Mary R. Cabot, which presents an intimate view of Kipling's years in Brattleboro, as well as an introduction to the memoir by the late Howard C. Rice (see 29:2). Thanks also go to Anna F. Holbrook and her attorney, Philip H. Suter. She retains the copyright to Cabot's work, which cannot be reprinted without her written permission. I'm told that both Carrington and Birkenhead read Cabot's reminiscences. This, however, is the first time they have been published. The renditions of Kipling, based on photographs early and late in his life, are by John Ellis, Jerome, Arizona. The sketch of Naulakha is by Marc Jacomet, Tempe, Arizona. Many thanks. 2. ELT Press: The Press will be in production in early 1987. Professor Case and I have had several enquiries and welcome more. One work has been accepted—/. M. Barrie: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him, by Carl Markgraf. We are particularly interested m considering critical biographies. While advertisements will appear in TLS and librarians will be notified, I make a forthright appeal to you. After the first book is printed please contact your university librarian and subject specialist: ask them to order books in the ELT Press series. No amount of advertising can do what you can directly. All subscribers will receive a discount on ELT Press publications. And I should again emphasize that the press, like the journal, was not established to make money; we will pay expenses and then have revenue to publish more titles. Your assistance is much appreciated. 3. Considering Computers: Loyal readers of ELT may notice a difference in the appearance of the text, and it probably comes as no surprise that this change is possible because of computer technology. Of course there is much talk these days on campuses large and small about computers, how they should and should not fit into the university. To over-simplify, there are those who "log on" and tell and those who don't "log on"—but tell anyway. Those who use computers should certainly be judicious, for as a colleague of mine said about someone who was just like himself: "All Dr. X does is conveniently discover more efficient software and more sophisticated hardware so he doesn't have to think about his own work. He is so busy toying with his toys, you know." There are, too, those who hold a rather different viewpoint: "I don't care where those silly contraptions will carry you," say the perfectly dubious. "There simply is no substitute for a horsedrawn carriage.' This peaceful defiance is appealing. But the fact remains; computers have become another intractable of late twentieth-century life, like the wretchedly wonderful automobile: we must at least try to keep frustration from undermining common sense. To some, the role of the computer in modern life and its effects on humanism...