Greenhorn at Yale

Alexis de Tocqueville once said that he had "not attempted to see differently from others, but to look further." In a sense, this is the purpose of the Yale Review.

--The Yale Review

By the prevailing chronological standards at Yale University, the Yale Review is as green as any freshman. It did not appear on the New Haven scene until the 200th year of a university already laden with antiquities. It is much younger, for example, than old Connecticut Hall (completed 1752), the tavern known as Mory's (b. 1861), or even Boola Boola (1897).* But last week, as it observed its 50th year with an anniversary issue, the Yale Review could take pride in having become, in a mere half a century, one of Yale's--and journalism's--more imposing institutions.

Strictly speaking, the Review is not a Yale institution but a literary offshoot, born on campus and nourished by the university. Yale undergraduates rarely read it, and the new faculty member who thinks it exists mainly to reprint his lectures soon learns otherwise. Nor is it a house organ; the university would no more dream of telling Review Editor John J. E. Palmer how to run a national quarterly than would Editor Palmer (Louisiana Polytechnic Institute '35) consider telling Yale President A. Whitney Griswold how to run a university.

Prescience & Authority. Free of all pressures, even economic (the university meets its modest annual deficit), the magazine has flourished handsomely. Its contents are widely reprinted in anthologies, textbooks and the nation's press. Such is Review's prestige that authors whose bylines command healthy fees elsewhere send unsolicited manuscripts to the Review--which pays them next to nothing ($75-$300). And since it can afford to be, the Review is singularly difficult to please.

Founded in 1911 as a forum for public affairs, literature and the arts, the Review reached high right from its birth. Its first issue reprinted a remarkably prescient article. "War,'' originally written in 1903 by Dr. William Graham Sumner, Yale professor of political and social science and author of 15 books. "There is only one thing rationally to be expected," wrote Sumner, "and that is a frightful effusion of blood in revolution and war during the century now opening.'' In 1914 the Review published a trenchant appraisal of "The Powers of the President'' by an acknowledged authority on the subject: former U.S. President (and Yaleman) William Howard Taft.

To these distinguished early contributors, the Review has added many more. Henry Adams, Winston Churchill, Max Beerbohm, Leon Trotsky. Robert Frost, Andre Gide, Thomas Wolfe, Thomas Mann, Rebecca West, Aldous Huxley and Dr. James Bryant Conant, former president of Harvard, have all appeared in the Review. The Review's range of interest is wide, running all the way from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter ("Law and Order") to the late Humorist Robert Benchley ("The Typical New Yorker"). The Review was one of the first U.S. publications outside of little poetry magazines to publish the singular verses of French Poet Saint-John Perse--who went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1960. The current anniversary issue features a political reminiscence by Dean Acheson and a study of Anglo-American relations by Historian Denis Brogan.

"Concerned, Intelligent." The power to attract such talent does not rest in the magazine's circulation (barely 10,000), its plant (space in a university-owned residence on Hillhouse Avenue), or its two-man editorial staff (Editor Palmer and Managing Editor Paul Pickrel), both of whom work only part-time. Editor Palmer, a tweedy, 47-year-old bachelor and Rhodes scholar who came to the Review after editorial work on two other academic quarterlies (the Southern Review and the Sewanee Review), conducts a seminar in creative writing for Yale's department of English. In this respect Palmer is no different from the other two editors in the Review's 50-year history. Its first editor, Wilbur L. Cross (1862-1948) also served as dean of Yale Graduate School, remained editor of the Review during four terms as Connecticut Governor. David M. Potter, Palmer's immediate predecessor, was a full professor of history.

The Review's influence is best explained in terms of its role as a literary arbiter of no fixed prejudices and of considerable skill. Says Editor Palmer: "I suppose we're those concerned, intelligent, interested nonspecialists we're publishing for."

*The date of its birth as a popular song, originally entitled La Hoola Boola. Yale undergraduates adopted the song in 1900 and, with unpredictable undergraduate ingenuity, changed the name.

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