Penguin Parade I. [antikvár]

****** ÍJ: FORE WORD ******* Penguin Parade is not a new periodical but a revival, in a revised form, of an old and popular miscellany. Somé of the variations from the earlier style are accidental; for example, the comparative emaciation forced upon us by paper shortage and the irregularity of issue to which we are predestined; but, in at least one respect, the changes have been made by editorial design. Whereas the first series was devoted prin-cipally to the short story, to poetry and to reportage, the second series will emphasise critical and informative writing. The work of contemporary 'creative' artists obviously demands inclusion in any periodical that purports to reflect somé aspects of life to-day, and the work of poets and writers of fiction will be included in Parade, but short stories of quality are very rare indeed, and reportage, the utility fur-niture of war-time, has lost much of its freshness and useful-ness. Though an editor must be sooth-sayer and magician if he is to appear, on a date forecast eight months before, witli a number full of 'up-to-the-minute' articles, nevertheless when working on this diminished scale it is easier to achieve topicality than it is in normál book production. Parade sets out to be Penguin, Pelican and King Penguin on a smaller and closer projection. But topicality does not imply a devotion to modernity—an insistence on contemporary excellence or, alternatively, a determination to decry contemporary achieve-ment only distorts critical understanding and breaks violently into the continuity of the arts and of social development. There are in this number four articles that were suggested