Volume 10, Issue 8, page 2

1 If there are any readers
who couldn't enter the spirit
of things last summer and get
any reality from our Christmas
wishes, we kow-tow to orthodoxy and wish you all the expensive presents, unsigned
cards, hangovers, and snow and
ice you've wished for. (Isn't
that what Christmas means? Or
is the eye with which we judge
the annual mid-winter carnival
a bit inclined to brash antinympholepsy? )
1 Because
both Ye Ed
and Ye Pub
are "dropouts" from
art school,
covers for
The ABERREE
have been a
major problem, which
we've tried
to solve by
subscribing
to art prepared for newspapers and advertisers. It's "nice" art, but
in most instances, it requires
a bit of ingenuity with paste
pot, photo enlargements and reductions, and scissors to get
"effects" we want in adapting
these drawings for use as ABERREE covers. Therefore, we
feel a bit of, we hope, pardonable pride inasmuch as last
month, we were awarded a special prize by the firm from whom
we purchase our art service for
the "unusual adaptations ". For
"proof", we reproduce the certificate, which, incidentally,
will not add a single letter to
the degrees preceding the "ad
infinitum after our names
on the editorial masthead...
1 'Tis said persons are proudest
of achievements in fields where
they are least proficient, which
may explain this bit of braggadocio on our part. Anyhow, it
may reveal to puzzled readers
why covers of The ABERREE might
at times resemble some local
advertisers' illustrations. It
doesn't mean they were plagiarizing The ABERREE, nor we them .
It was just a "country cousin"
of "mass production", since
neither they nor we can afford
our own special artists, artists no longer being a class
that starves in garrets on rat
cheese and water, leaving it to
their descendants to get rich
from their productions...

The first automobiles were
nicknamed "horseless carriages"
because that's exactly what
they looked like -- even to the
socket for a whip. That's because the early - day inventors
of the motor car couldn't divorce themselves completely
from old habit patterns -- and
today, even with its sporty
lines, the automobile is nothing but a slow evolution from
the buggy -- and it may be centuries before someone comes up
with a completely new system --
only to suffer from the nonacceptance of new ideas as did
Chrysler when he almost killed
his firm with his "Airflow" a
couple decades ahead of time.

Which is, probably, no
way to introduce Subscriber
Irving Fiske of Rochester, Vt.,
who is trying to take the buggy whip out of Shakespeare.
He has completely rewritten the
play "Hamlet" into understandable English, but can he get
it accepted and a new bard on
the boards? Methinks not -- even
tho his work was endorsed by
the late George Bernard Shaw,
who called Fiske "the Beethoven
of modern playwrights", and a
few other non-buggy-type writers , such as Saroyan, Huxley ,
Henry Miller, etc. Recently,
the SATURDAY REVIEW printed a
page review from Mr. Fiske 's
modern "Hamlet", with comparative quotes, and believe it or
not, some of the die-hards who
want their Shakespeare unadulterated with today 's vernacular
took pens in hands and began a
vitriolic campaign to save the
"good old days" for the good
old fuddy-duddies. Maybe, this
"Henry Ford of drama" should
just let the "Bard of Avon"
and the plays credited to him
molder in the archives of the
era to which they belong;-we
ourselves like the "copy work"
of Eugene O'Neill, such as in
"Strange Interlude"... 1 Did
someone deny O'Neill's "Strange
Interlude" was any attempt to
copy Shakespeare? You did?
Well, maybe that's what we like
about it; it's original, and
was written for the era in
which it was to be staged...
i Subscribers who neglect
to send us their new address
when they move, or who have
neighbors who can't seem to
keep their cotton-pickin' fingers off their copy of The ABERREE, now have an outlet in
the Los Angeles-Hollywood area
where copies can be picked up
(if you don't already know
this -- and we suspect most of
you do). It's at the office of
The COSMIC STAR -- 6311 Yucca
Street, Hollywood, which also
has other good appearances as
well as The ABERREE. We hope
they sell 50,000 copies monthly (of The ABERREE, naturally)...

Jack and Beth Kramer felts
check some poetry entries.
1 Modern art, poetry, and
commercial writing -- and their
part in the threatened destruction of America -- was the
theme of the writers' conference held in Tahlequah Oct.
19 and 20. Ye Ed attended to
discuss "Copyright and Libel",
again. By this time, we suppose, regular attendees of the
conference probably are convinced that's all we know
anything about (or -- horrible
thought ! -- they may have discovered we don't know too
much about this.) Anyhow, Jack
Felts had announced earlier
that he wanted "at least one
genuine freak to spice his conferences -- and since the remark
was part of our invitation to
attend, we accepted it as a ly
"oowand performance"...