BEWARE THE JABBERWOCK
SIR,—By now it should be clear to all that Mr. Kingsley Amis reviews books the way he does more to air his meticulously malicious views on Eng. Lit. and his fellow-men than to give a true criticism of the books; but, at the risk of seeming to rise too promptly to his bait, I must protest at the quite erroneous impression he produces of More Comic and Curious Verse. Were Mr. Amis less busy inventing ideal 'light-verse lovers' in order to tweak their ideal noses, he might have time to marvel at the real variety and balance which the editor of this second comic selection has achieved; here, even more so than in its predecessor, the choice of poems is catholic enough for any- one not hopelessly bigoted—and surely a good mixture of types of verse rather than of literary 'ages' is the essence of this kind of anthology? Mr. Amis has a surprisingly between-wars allergy to the Victorian Age: still, sixty-four years is a pretty long 'age', and it did produce a fine and varied crop of comic writers. But Mr. Amis thinks it clever and new (Heaven help him) to mock at great chunks of England's Literary Past, especially those two bugbears Carroll and Lear, who's incidentally he should know better than to bracket together in this context. I know why be hates them, thank you, but why does he hate them so much?
And, unkindest cut, how can he call Mr. Ogden Nash unwitty, who has carved out his own inimitable groove and produces from it such lines as (page 56): I will pen me my memoirs. Ah, youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!
Rhyme apart, doesn't this embody the shY kind of wit which is Mr. Nash's forte?—No, as a literary critic Mr. Amis is just not euphorian enough.—Yours faithfully,
A. B. STABLES
4 May Terrace, Barnsley, Yorkshire
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