on. The reviews, seldom more than a couple of hundred words, didn't claim to be definitive; but they were, as you see, "lively," together with being basically "sound." Quentin inserted formidable bylines, such as O. Seltnizt and D. R. S. M. Mainwairing, names that tended to correspond to numbered bank accounts here and abroad. On the rare occasions on which Quentin felt bound to commission reviews he would get Celia to type them out and return them with a printed slip reading:
Dear Sir/Madam: The Editor regrets that he is unable to use the contribution kindly submitted to him and returns it herewith.
Quentin never bothered to cross out the Sir or the Madam, and yet he always bothered to write on the back:
I've seen some shitty pieces in my time but by Christ
your —— really takes the cake. Unimaginative,
sloppily written, poorly reasoned, ill-informed—I could go on. Were you drunk when you wrote it, or is the whole thing a joke? Either way, I shan't be needing any work from you. QV. Return the book immediately.
Two months later the review would appear, usually in the Round-Up columns, partly reshuffled and totally rewritten. The contributors often suspected malpractice but they were too young, baffled, and ashamed to take the matter further. The fierce esteem in which Quentin was held quickly silenced any direct complaint to the university and in most cases the only reprisals Quentin received were sheepish letters asking for another chance.
As regards the political side of the paper Quentin filled his pages with hate pieces too scabrous and extreme to be printed elsewhere; his correspondence columns were acknowledged to be the most compelling in modern journalism. The writers didn't care about payment, and besides Villiers explained that Yes was nonprofit-making. The remainder of the magazine was bulked out with vicious gossip about imaginary persons ("Anthea K. tells me that Henry W.'s erection problems continue to torment them"), rather good satire, exposes culled from celebrity acquaintances, Andy's erudite though often loosely argued contemporary music page (unpaid, but he wanted the records and concert tickets), and Quentin's excellent film and theater reviews. Production was handled, for a derisory wage, by little Keith, who had been brought several times to physical collapse with printers' errands and whose eyesight had been reduced from 20-20 to partial blindness by the speed-perpetuated galley-reading sessions that Quentin forced him to complete.
Yes was an astonishing success. Quentin charmed the big names into contributing and everyone else into subscribing. Circulation tripled, and, after a turquoise-suited Quentin was photographed on the front cover (caption: Yes Editor Quentin Villiers talking at conference to James Altman and Professor English Hoenikker, both off camera), the magazine won out- : spoken praise from William Burroughs, Gore Vidal, Angus Wilson, and a quorum of distinguished intellectuals.
Quentin is a superman. The versatility of the fellow I He can talk all day to a butcher about the longevity of imported meats, to an airhostess about safety regulations in the de Gaulle hangars, to an insurance salesman about postdated transferable policies, to a poet about nontypographical means of distinguishing six-syllable three-line stanzas and nine-syllable two-line ones, to an economist about pre-war counterinflationary theory, to a zoologist about the compensatory eye movements of the iguana. Just so, he can address a barrow boy in rhyming slang, a tourist in yokel French, a Sunderlander in Geordie, a Newmarket tout in genteel Cambridgeshire, a gypsy in Romany. He can mimic not only types but intimates too. He can bring Giles out of his room calling "Mother?" send Whitehead scurrying into the garage with a cackle from Mrs. Fry, cause Andy to rebuke the wordless Diana from going on at him, convince his own wife that it is not he who sits in a darkened room. These imitative gifts are matched by the
Dear Sir/Madam: The Editor regrets that he is unable to use the contribution kindly submitted to him and returns it herewith.
Quentin never bothered to cross out the Sir or the Madam, and yet he always bothered to write on the back:
I've seen some shitty pieces in my time but by Christ
your —— really takes the cake. Unimaginative,
sloppily written, poorly reasoned, ill-informed—I could go on. Were you drunk when you wrote it, or is the whole thing a joke? Either way, I shan't be needing any work from you. QV. Return the book immediately.
Two months later the review would appear, usually in the Round-Up columns, partly reshuffled and totally rewritten. The contributors often suspected malpractice but they were too young, baffled, and ashamed to take the matter further. The fierce esteem in which Quentin was held quickly silenced any direct complaint to the university and in most cases the only reprisals Quentin received were sheepish letters asking for another chance.
As regards the political side of the paper Quentin filled his pages with hate pieces too scabrous and extreme to be printed elsewhere; his correspondence columns were acknowledged to be the most compelling in modern journalism. The writers didn't care about payment, and besides Villiers explained that Yes was nonprofit-making. The remainder of the magazine was bulked out with vicious gossip about imaginary persons ("Anthea K. tells me that Henry W.'s erection problems continue to torment them"), rather good satire, exposes culled from celebrity acquaintances, Andy's erudite though often loosely argued contemporary music page (unpaid, but he wanted the records and concert tickets), and Quentin's excellent film and theater reviews. Production was handled, for a derisory wage, by little Keith, who had been brought several times to physical collapse with printers' errands and whose eyesight had been reduced from 20-20 to partial blindness by the speed-perpetuated galley-reading sessions that Quentin forced him to complete.
Yes was an astonishing success. Quentin charmed the big names into contributing and everyone else into subscribing. Circulation tripled, and, after a turquoise-suited Quentin was photographed on the front cover (caption: Yes Editor Quentin Villiers talking at conference to James Altman and Professor English Hoenikker, both off camera), the magazine won out- : spoken praise from William Burroughs, Gore Vidal, Angus Wilson, and a quorum of distinguished intellectuals.
Quentin is a superman. The versatility of the fellow I He can talk all day to a butcher about the longevity of imported meats, to an airhostess about safety regulations in the de Gaulle hangars, to an insurance salesman about postdated transferable policies, to a poet about nontypographical means of distinguishing six-syllable three-line stanzas and nine-syllable two-line ones, to an economist about pre-war counterinflationary theory, to a zoologist about the compensatory eye movements of the iguana. Just so, he can address a barrow boy in rhyming slang, a tourist in yokel French, a Sunderlander in Geordie, a Newmarket tout in genteel Cambridgeshire, a gypsy in Romany. He can mimic not only types but intimates too. He can bring Giles out of his room calling "Mother?" send Whitehead scurrying into the garage with a cackle from Mrs. Fry, cause Andy to rebuke the wordless Diana from going on at him, convince his own wife that it is not he who sits in a darkened room. These imitative gifts are matched by the
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