With the March issue, "Radditudes" has become a magazine. It used to seem more like an experiment: readers weren't so interested in getting forty-five cents worth of reading enjoyment as they were in backing a good thing, in giving what was an embryonic collection of writings a chance to grow into something better and more permanent. "Radditudes" has responded to this philanthropic support. It has reduced its price to a reasonable twenty-five cents and increased the interest value of its appearance by throwing some color on its cover and some cartoons and futuristic are through its contents, thereby making a bid for more readers on the grounds of giving them their money's worth. What was a promising idea has grown into a full fledged publication and must stand or fall on its merits as such.

Although several stories in the current issue almost are good, none quite ring the bell. With amateur authors, this sort of just-miss effect is bound to be prevalent, and unless a skillful and thorough editorial hand guides the magazine more carefully in the future, "Radditudes" will find itself with a chronic weakness. In "Afraid of Happiness," for instance, Miss Susan Seidman makes a brave attempt at satirizing a special horrid type of love-story--the sort that appears in periodicals of the "True Romance" ilk. For the most part, she achieves her effect subtly, but she spoils the total impression by an occasional broad and incongruous touch. The borderline between burlesque and satire is a hazy one; nonetheless, the two don't mix well. A few enlightened omissions from "Afraid of Happiness" could have avoided the combination of these techniques and made the story into a consistently amusing piece, instead of an entertaining but periodically annoying one.

Again in Austryn Wainhouse's "The Cigarette Lighter," the addition of editorial perspective to the author's marked literary and dramatic talents could have saved the story from its present confusion. It is the longest work in "Radditudes," and most ambitious; its study of a student suffering from some sort of war neurosis leaves the reader impressed and bewildered. If there had been no attempt at symbolism, if Wainhouse had limited himself to a simple character sketch, the story would have been clear and good. Once he decided to have the cigarette lighter mean something, he should have made its meaning more apparent.

In still another story, "The Secret," by Miss Ann Allison, everything is there but that final coherence which makes a story come together. It is written well, and with a feeling for character and mood, but it seems to have Implications. Nothing is wrong with Implications, except when it isn't clear what they imply. This adolescent profundity produces the most irritating literature known to man, and "Radditudes" should put up a special mechanism to keep it out. It is a constant threat in the March issue. Especially in the poetry.