BEHIND THE TIMES SIR—The dignified protests about Mr. Levin's review
of Oliver Edwards are surely barking up the wrong tree. The umbrage Mr. Levin took was the common outlook of the professional to the amateur, and Mr. Levin ought to be told that we have a high regard for amateurs in this country. Mr. Levin is a profes- sional writer; Mr. Edwards an amateur one, and admits it. That, to some readers, is part of his attrac- t ion, as it is part of the attraction of The Times itself, which is a very amateur newspaper indeed compared to, for instance, the Daily Express, as Mr. Cockburn has pointed out.
I can imagine Sir William Haley calling in Oliver Edwards and saying : 'Look, we're thinking of doing a literary page. Some of the chaps don't like the way the TLS comes in and collars all the best books sent in to us. We want someone to do a sort of leader for us. Chatty stuff, you know, not too highbrow. Whim- sical, if you can do it, but definitely not donnish. We think you are just the man. You always seem to be reading round the office, and you write pretty quickly when you have to. Will you try it? Same rate as for obits, of course.'
And he's done it, and several people have liked it, and said his pieces ought to be in a book as all these sorts of pieces come in books sooner or later, and he's done that, too, and now Mr. Levin falls on him even snore savagely than Mr. Amis fell on Keats, who was another amateur sort of chap, come to think of it.
Pretty hard, I personally think, and I regard as very far-fetched the suggestion that Mr. Levin is really getting at Sir William Haley, because he thinks Sir William is Oliver Edwards.
But if Mr. Levin really wants to do this sort of thing, why doesn't he look at his home ground? Taper, for instance. I should like Mr. Levin to get Taper in a corner and say, 'Now this business of parentheses. See my reference on page 839 about over-addiction to the parenthesis, which is not, in parenthesis, a device for including afterthoughts in a sentence already planned. And then, in two successive Issues, you produce thirty-seven, including one "I have just noticed" and two "Incidentally," which clearly points to afterthoughts as well as over-addiction. Now Jay off. Enough is enough. Apart from anything else, the printers are running out of brackets.' Someone recently suggested to me that he deduced, from internal evidence, that Mr. Levin is Taper. That is, of course, just silly, for Mr. Levin is obviously a most professional writer. So could he have a quiet word with Taper? He ought to be quick, or Taper will be putting his pieces in a book, and Mr. Levin might have to review it.—Yours faithfully,
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