Word: billets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1920
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...obscurity of some of the essays on literary matters and the dearth of good fiction. "Beneath the Cliff," by Mr. M. A. Kister, in the June number, though perhaps decadent in spirit, shows undeniable power. And in the Class-Day number the fifth of Mr. J. F. Leys' "Billet Ballads" has real fun in every line. But there are not enough such contributions. Except in the field of politics, the essays are somehow strained and dull...
Kipling is still being read by the University, and the result may be studied in several areas of the present Advocate. O. Prescott '20 has produced an original variation on Stalky by Inserting Professor Babbitt, under the title of Hugo and Humanist, into two pages of frivolous conversation; and "Billet Ballads No. 4," by J. F. Leys, '22, is a mixture of Kipling's early Indian manner with the pseudo-English of the Saturday Evening Post. One serious flaw is common 'to' both these versious. Nothing happens in them; nothing even seems to happen.- Whereas Kippling had the gift...
...describing the various stages of psychological depression, where he writes with more conviction and vividness, evidently from personal experience. The unacademic note is distinctly and pleasantly struck again in the well managed dialect and lingering atmosphere of the trenches in the story entitled "Aiming at Auntie," another of the "Billet Ballads." It is not only the tantalizing moment at which this first part of the tale ends that makes the reader look eagerly forward to the continuation in a subsequent number. Curiously enough, one of the books reviewed, "Peter Kindred,' by Robert Nathan, takes up the very theme...
...have left "Billet Ballads"--Mr. Leys--and incidentally--the prize-winning story, for the last. One feels like saying, "Who is this man--what?" and "all that sort of thing." It is easy enough to prattle admiration or censure from the easy chair. Perhaps it might be best summed up by saying that if Mr. Leys' farce doesn't sell out this number then Cambridge doesn't recognize its own true genius--in humor at least. If in judging the stories submitted a fairminded judge had seen "Spiking Spicer" first, no one--else--the rest is death--what? Certainly...