The Essay Today
Sta,—On reading Spectator Harvest, I agree with your reviewer; it demonstrates that the essay is not dead. But one thing strikes me Very forcibly. That the restriction of each essay to almost exactly the same size produces an effect of monotony. Some essays, of course, gain by being short; but the effect of a salutary brevity is lost through having everything short. One understands that periodicals today have little space; but is the best solution for the problem this gives rise to, to reduce everything4o the same approximate minimum? Instead of having half-a-dozen or so small leacjing articles at the front of the paper, would not readers sometimes be glad to have five, of which one was double the usual length ? This would add pointedness to the brevity of the rest. Perhaps some of the shorts could gain by being shorter (as does Mr. Gilbert Harding's excellent little piece in Spectator Harvest) if a long could occasionally produce a sense of the scale of spaciousness.—Yours, &c., STEPHEN SPENDER. 15 Loudoun Road, Sr. John's Wood, N.W.8.
[Theoretically Mr. Spender's point is certainly sound; but what he proposes raises greater technical difficulties than perhaps he fully realises. Did the essays of Addison and Steele differ much in length? And Harold Nicolson provides an outstanding example of writing to a given space. Incidentally, the contributions to Spectator Harvest are not for the most part essays.—Ed., Spectator.]
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