The Constant Flirt

A healthy profit, to say nothing of simple self-support, is generally conceded to be far beyond the reach of today's intellectual journals. They measure their success on another level--by the quality, if not the quantity, of their audience, by the impact of their ideas on people who may never have heard of them. Judged by these criteria, the Anglo-American monthly Encounter is a success indeed.

Founded 13 years ago, Encounter nurtured C. P. Snow's Two Cultures attack on the gulf between the arts and science; it introduced Nancy Mitford's delineation of what is U and non-U, and it published H. R. Trevor-Roper's celebrated massacre of Arnold Toynbee and his theory of history. Encounter also ran Katherine Anne Porter's contention that Lady Chatterley's Lover is a dull, dirty book after all, and it offered the first English translation of the pseudonymous Soviet critic Abram Tertz. Last week with its September issue, the magazine was again on top of a literary cause celebre. It printed the first English translation of the open letter written to Tito in July by Mihajlo Mihajlov. The letter politely explained why the Yugoslav writer felt that he must persist in his intention to found an "opposition newspaper." Four weeks after writing it, he was arrested (TIME, Aug. 19).

New Angel. Provocative, timely, unpredictable and thoughtful, the London-based magazine is a lively combination of articles on all subjects, book reviews, theater and film critiques, short stories and new poetry from the likes of Robert Lowell and W. H. Auden (who appears in the current issue). Article contributors are usually paid -L-100 ($280), though "intellectual birds of paradise" such as Trevor-Roper, says Editor Melvin Lasky, get -L-200. The rate has held steady from the beginning, despite the magazine's increasing success. The first issue had 80 pages and a 10,000 press run; today there are 96 pages and circulation is up to 40,000, one-quarter of which is in the U.S.

Losses are down from $100,000 a year to $30,000, and there are other financial changes. There were recurrent rumors that in the past the deficit was being partly made up by the CIA--a suggestion that is hard to understand and that Lasky vehemently denies. But there is no question of who is handling the bills now. The current angel is British Press Lord Cecil King, whose only stipulation is that he have no editorial control, even though he has agreed to pick up the tab through 1971.

Limited to Nothing. With King's people helping in promotion and circulation, the magazine now boasts color ads, uses modern mailing-list techniques as well as offering come-on cut-rate subscriptions. King's help also gets Encounter a position of unaccustomed prominence on British newsstands. As a result, circulation is steadily rising. There are hopes that it will reach 50,000 readers and the financial break-even point by 1969. "I would like to have it said that this is the first intellectual magazine to stand on its own feet," says Editor Lasky.

While King's business guidance has been indispensable, it is generally conceded by friend and foe that what makes Encounter go is Editor Lasky. The magazine has always had two editors, one British and one American, in line with its avowed purpose of reinforcing "transatlantic Western civilization." Lasky became the second American representative in 1958; his co-editor is British Critic Frank Kermode. But Kermode, who is a full-time professor of English at the University of Bristol, only comes into the office once a week, and limits himself to the literary sections. Lasky does not conceive of himself as limited to anything--or, for that matter, by anything.

Re-Evaluate the Mess. A shortish (5 ft. 8 in.), Trotsky-bearded New Yorker, Lasky lines up politically as a firm antiCommunist, "though I still consider myself a Socialist, if you take the term with a sense of humor." In his eight years, he has edited the magazine into what Kermode calls a combination of "scholarship and high journalism." Well aware that Encounter's success depends as much on being interesting as on being learned, Lasky dislikes impersonal treatises and is a booster of the largely unpracticed art of polemicism.

He happily welcomed Vladimir Nabokov's abusive February riposte to Nabokov Knocker Edmund Wilson. The issue sold out.

A student once asked Lasky if Encounter deliberately built something up, then tore it down and then re-evaluated the whole mess. At first taken aback by the thought, Lasky eventually decided that it described things neatly. The magazine was an early fighter for easing restrictions on pornography; now it is running articles that argue "the floodgates are open too far." Once a strong supporter of a united Europe, Lasky has recently found that the growing bureaucracy of it all is stifling. Soon he will try to persuade a writer friend to pursue the point. Encounter, says he, should engage "in a constant flirtation with ideas without marrying any of them finally."

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