Writing a Nation: Rationing, Scarcity, and Political Futures

In Little Magazine, World Form, Eric Bulson issues this maxim: “When it comes to the little magazine, form is material, material is form, and the analysis of one necessarily involves factoring in the other.”[1] In this piece I explore the issue of raw material availability through a transnational framework. How might directing our attention to the paper and fuel shortages in the British Commonwealth in the 1940s enliven the debates over modernist aesthetics in little magazines? More broadly, I ask how acknowledging the transits of imperialism and resource theft that undergird transnational periodical networks and modernist aesthetics can prevent global modernist studies from reinscribing colonial violence. To answer these questions, I turn to two cultural periodicals from either side of the Atlantic: Horizon from England and BIM from Barbados. Both of these magazines, I argue, attempt to imagine a postwar national culture in moments of extreme scarcity. Both Horizon and BIM started their runs during the 1940s which coincided with the application of wartime rationing and austerity measures. These measures were pervasive and began with petrol towards the close of 1939 and would grow to include an increasingly long list of foods by 1942. Other commodities like clothing, shoes, soap, and paper were also on the extensive lists of rationed items.[2] Some of these rations continued well into the following decade; paper rationing wouldn’t ease until 1952.[3]

Following the absence of Horizon’s March 1947 issue due to fuel cuts, Horizon’s editor, Cyril Connolly, responded to the scarcity by calling for a return to the imperial practice of seizing resources from elsewhere to enable cultural production:

We must consider our actual resources. . . . There remains a very large proportion of the continent of Africa. With an intelligent arrangement with France and Belgium the development of all pastoral Africa . . . could be planned in relation to the industrial output of Western Europe.[4]

Wartime rationing drew out Connolly’s anxieties about the austerity of the nation. In order to alleviate his concerns, Connolly redeployed the Berlin Conference playbook, or the decision to slice up the continent of Africa to be dispersed amongst European imperial nations. The rationing of fuel and paper exacerbated, for Connolly, postwar England’s identity crisis. Meanwhile, similar material conditions affected Caribbean literary magazines. Magazines like BIM thrived and played an essential role in decolonization because of their ability to constellate conversations around emerging national ethos. Extending these concerns further, cultural production and aesthetics in times of rationing, or manufactured scarcity, elucidates our moment of scarcity from overconsumption.

In the May 1942 issue of Horizon, Cyril Connolly wished to “say a few honest words before . . . resum[ing] the milling and grinding of our domes towards the correct Austerity glaze.”[5] The “Austerity glaze” he mentions references the rationing measures taken in response to Germany’s efforts to blockade imports to the British Isle as well as the massive need for various materials across the war front. Connolly was disdainful of art produced during the war. He calls for “a moratorium on Art. . . . The war is not conducive to good writing . . . but it is a magnificent opportunity for good reading. This, many writers have discovered, as can be seen from the constant process of revaluation and stocktaking in our heritage that is going on” (Connolly, “Comment,” May 1942).  According to Connolly, the wartime context put limitations on the quality of art. Instead of giving voice to the current moment, Connolly calls for authors to reuse the reservoir of past writings to better understand the type of Englishness that waited on the other side of the war. The “grinding of [his] dome towards the correct Austerity glaze” seemed to overwhelm his diagnosis. With so much lack around him, Connolly cannot imagine an artist having the wherewithal to make good art. Apparently, the “Austerity glaze” reached all the way to creative production for Connolly. The production limit had been reached and, for Connolly, it was necessary to take stock of what this manufactured scarcity meant for English heritage.

Meanwhile, in December of the same year the first issue of BIM was published unceremoniously without a word from the editors, Frank A. Collymore and E. L. Cozier, and only its name to speak for the contents written strictly by Barbadian authors. The name of the magazine, which means “an inhabitant of Barbados, Little England, Bimshire,” proudly declared the nationality of contributors.[6] The roll call of Barbadians in the military service also gestured towards a local pride. The appearance of a new magazine, when put into context of the height of World War II rationing measures around the Commonwealth, is nothing shy of surprising. Its debut as a collection of short stories, verse, and articles speaks to a demand for a platform for literature and art specific to the island. It was not until the fourth issue that the editors made an attempt to define what kind of creative effort would be housed in its pages. When reviewing the little magazines produced in two different islands across the globe, during the same decade of austerity measures, under the guise of a shared commonwealth, a reader might wonder what’s so different about the air in England and Barbados? Why was one magazine anxious about creative production and the other eager to house local art? By the end of the decade, Horizon would have to shutter while BIM went on to be the flagship literary magazine of the Caribbean, published semi-regularly until 1996 before being refashioned into Bim: Arts for the 21st Century. 

“Our standards are aesthetic, and our politics are in abeyance.” 

In the inaugural issue of Horizon, Connolly lays out the intention of the magazine in the recurring “Comment” section. Within this “Comment,” we see Connolly reflecting on the conditions that affected Horizon’s production and his expectations for what the magazine would contain. Because “a magazine should be the reflection of its time, and one that ceases to reflect this should come to an end,” the magazine would not be a bastion of “revolutionary” opinions or technique. Therefore, “the aim of Horizon is to give to writers a place to express themselves, and to readers the best writing we can obtain.”[7] Connolly’s writing seems to reflect the conditions of the times and the resulting limited supply of quality writing. Later in the “Comment,” Connolly outlines a tagline that would speak to the aspirations of the magazine:

Our standards are aesthetic, and our politics are in abeyance. This will not always be the case, because as events take shape the policy of artists and intellectuals will become clearer, the policy which leads them to economic security, to the atmosphere in which they can create, and to the audience by whom they will be appreciated. At the moment civilization is on the operating table and we sit in the waiting room. (Connolly, “Comment,” January 1940)

Here, Connolly is reaching for the ideal of aesthetic autonomy. Yet, “abeyance” indicates a sentiment of transition or temporariness. The world cannot remain at bay—politics sit at the horizon for the forward-looking editor and the creative working to cast an image of her moment. And, as Connolly describes, we, the populace, sit in “the waiting room” as the future is stitched together, Connolly and Horizon look back to the “prehistorical necessity of Keeping Alive” in the meantime (“Comment,” January 1940).  Connolly would maintain this tendency to look back in history to make sense of the foreclosure of the English empire and the encroaching material limitations during the decade of Horizon. Connolly’s aim to divorce aesthetics and politics was a struggle throughout the magazine’s run: we rarely find a “Comment” that doesn’t elaborate on the geopolitical events affecting the magazine’s contents.

Connolly’s desire for the magazine to remain outside of time is also represented in the magazine’s cover. This was usually composed strictly of the magazine title and listed issue contents with the font, font color, and text alignment the only aesthetic choices. Connolly explains the appearance as “intentional . . . not old fashioned, but out of fashion, out of fashion because the editors believe that the fashionable cover, a functional applied-abstract design which incorporates photography and heavy sans-serif, is as out of date as a rubber topped chromium table in a neon lit cafeteria.”[8] The cover design and the editor’s description motion towards a sense of shifting culture. The aesthetic choices are not only interesting in their attempt to avoid the ephemerality inherent to the genre, but also in the attempt to relegate the contents of the magazine as also atemporal. Connolly elaborates on the reasoning behind the magazine’s dedication to aesthetic autonomy as “a reaction away from social realism . . . its roots in the country were not sufficiently deep, and it failed to flower. The Marxist attack on the Ivory Tower dwellers, on Proust, Joyce, Virginia Woolf etc. was far more vigorous, and set fire to a lot of rotten timber. But the fire grew out of hand, and, now that it is burning itself out, we can see that many green young saplings have been damaged” (“Comment,” February 1940, 70).  In the eyes of the editor, the critique of literature distantly reflective of the moment had gone too far. The “Marxist attack” had burned itself out and damaged literary production in the aftermath. Connolly’s description of the critics’ pursuit of social realism as a fire that burns so hotly as to damage even the “green young saplings” is an implicit reaction to the growing concern around limited resource supply, especially when so many little magazines had shuttered in response to paper rationing in 1937. The violent economies of resource refinement and production clouded the artist’s vision. A similar anxiety would find itself in the last “Comment” of Horizon’s run.

Horizon folded in December 1949, two years into the Cold War and two years after Connolly was forced to forgo an issue due to fuel cuts (confirming his fears of having to alter the form and content of the magazine due to material pressures). The magazine rebounded in April with an issue only showcasing American poetry. Ultimately, Connolly would characterize the decade of Horizon’s run as: “‘no bad thing gets any better; you can’t be too serious.’ . . . there seems no escape, for it is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.”[9] Connolly’s claim that the forties brought about such sufferings and the end of the “gardens of the West” points to the isolation England was beginning to feel as it became relegated to a supporting role on the world stage. In the same dramatic vein, Connolly’s last call for the “gardens of the West” echoes the anxiety of resource availability in the 1940 issue. It appears Horizon’s attempt to reverse the effects of social realism weren’t successful or able to raise from the ashes a new literary tradition capable of filling the shoes of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, or Virginia Woolf. For Connolly, the soil of Western creation had become arid and its stewards might as well abandon their projects.

If Horizon’s modernist aspirations hinged on the desire for art separated from politics, the mid-century material stresses on English empire broke them down. During the height of the British empire, the gardens of the colonies had been over-harvested at best and destroyed at worst. Connolly’s last comment communicates a solitary and bleak path forward for the Western artist, as a result of the disrupted supply chains symptomatic of the war. Connolly’s editorials emphasize the reliance on overabundance in past ideas of English nationhood and cultural production. Thomas Davis notes, “If [Horizon] can tell us anything about mid-century, it might be that the separation of art and politics is desired most fiercely in those moments when it is least possible.”[10] It appears then that the limited accessibility of resources made unattainable the separation of art and politics and, in so doing, highlighted the problematic of aesthetically autonomous ideals. Meanwhile, across the ocean, the editors of BIM curated a body of literature and art that would navigate scarcity through a vastly different approach while fostering a budding national and regional ethos. 

“Above all, in writing, regard things from your own viewpoint and experience.”

Horizon’s legacy is its curation of wartime literature and the chronicling of end-stage empire. BIM’s curation of a nascent West Indian literature and art, meanwhile, seeded the globally recognized genre of West Indian literature. BIM’s success seems to be largely due to its reliance on and confidence in local material, partially due to an underdeveloped literary market.

The editors, Collymore and Cozier, spoke directly to the need to cultivate the island’s talent in the fourth issue of the magazine. In fact, Cozier and Collymore clearly demonstrate that the magazine is a collaboration between them and the public in both the opening and closing sentences of the editorial. The “Editor’s Comeback” offers this solicitation:

We, the Editors, fully realise the shortcomings of our production, but it is partly up to you, the public, to help relieve the situation. We welcome:–

(i)               Criticism, provided of course it’s not really nasty.

(ii)             Short stories, provided they’re written in reasonably good English (or Bajun) and are not pale reflections of other, and possibly better, short stories. Of course, you don’t have to be too original.

(iii)            Verse; but please don’t let it jingle too much.

(iv)            Articles: not too heavy. We don’t feel that we can conscientiously sponsor anything that claims omniscience.

(v)             Drawings in black and white: that is, if they’re no worse than those we’ve been able to muster.

(vi)            Above all, in writing, regard things from your own viewpoint and experience. Why worry to write about the rigours of the Alaskan winter when you can spend the month of February in St. Joseph’s parish? And you don’t have to travel all the way to Chicago to find crooks. No…

Last of all, we hope you’ll have as much fun reading BIM as we’ve had in editing it.[11] 

There is a marked tonal difference between the editorials, but what might be the starkest difference is BIM’s requirement that art utilize the experiences of its creators. A close second might be the refusal of articles that “claim omniscience.” In fact, the magazine from Barbados requested writing that specifically reflects the island and its people. The editors, instead of relying solely on their taste, recognize the partnership with the public into which they are entering.

The stakes for each magazine varied. Horizon was participating in an established European and transatlantic literary network. BIM, on the other hand, set out to establish an audience solely within Barbados, one of the smallest islands in the Caribbean—the island’s singular offering circulating amongst the other budding Caribbean periodicals. Horizon, meanwhile, responded to the constraints of the tradition of European little magazines and an established transatlantic exchange. BIM, however, always considered Barbados in relation to the other islands in the Caribbean and the rest of the world but emphasized its intentions to represent the island alone. Imperial history also tells us that BIM was operating from a site of material deficit created by patterns of colonial resource theft. Unequal resource distribution notwithstanding, the material conditions for both magazines were similarly affected by rationing measures. Instead of worrying about the availability of material or the state of their printing machine, however, BIM saw its content as a means for survival.

The conditions of scarcity made their way on to the printing floor in the 1947 issue in which the editors comically addressed the “missing type” and the “eyestrain” this shortage had caused. “We apologise for the late appearance of BIM” the editors write, adding: “Also, too, for the lack of illustrations. But owing to Hitler and one thing and another, it is impossible at the time of going to press to obtain the material necessary to reproduce these.”[12] The work was too important to the editors to not produce and disseminate. The magazine’s necessity is described post-war and two volumes later:

Bim, we might remind our readers, came into being during the darker days of the war—a sort of light-hearted attempt to produce some home-grown material in that time of restricted imports. The name was consciously Barbadian, and the contributors Barbadian, though it must be confessed that the stories were for the greater part derivative of the popular magazine. Since those days, and in great part due to the encouragement given to Caribbean writers by the BBC, BIM is no longer so insular in content, and the themes . . .[13]

For Collymore, the magazine played an essential role in consolidating local culture. BIM’s light-hearted prose offered a respite from the violence and upheaval of the war and inescapable shortage of goods. The magazine, created out of necessity, went on to be widely read, through the quality of its content and attention given to it by the BBC. Its dispersed audience also spoke to post-war migration waves. Unlike Horizon, public interest in BIM only increased after the war—the result of its investment in platforming local and regional talent.

This investment was key to its longevity. George Lamming, in a guest editorial upon BIM’s twelfth year of existence, expounds on the magazine’s role in the bridging of West Indian literature to wider publishing networks:

There are not many West Indian writers to-day who did not use Bim as a kind of platform, the surest . . . by which they might reach a literate and sensitive reading public, and almost all . . . who are now writers in a more professional sense and whose work has compelled the attention of readers and writers in other countries, were introduced, so to speak, by Bim.[14]

Lamming praises the Barbadian magazine for its function as fertile ground for burgeoning authors and notes Collymore’s adeptness at creating an ongoing conversation among BIM’s audience and contributors. The organic quality of the magazine finds itself suited to the expanding mid-century literary market. This, in turn, created space for contributors to make writing their profession.

The separation of art and politics is impossible to sustain when necessities like paper and fuel are hard to come by. How can the art be removed from the goings on of the world when the world barges in to announce the materials for creation are in short supply? The transnational lens of modernist studies offers an opportunity to connect the dots on constellations of literature operating in subliminal clouds of opportunity drawn together in the storms of imperialism and its afterlives. British cultural production, when attempting to rigidly hold on to the desire for a separation between art and politics, is a project that requires vast overaccumulation to keep the outside at bay. Meanwhile, BIM showcases art not separated from life in the region, instead the material conditions of the lives of the creators are the inexhaustible resource of its creation. If there is something to learn from reading the projects and trajectories of these magazines together, it is that sacrificing the recognition of the conditions of a particular place at a particular time for the sake of literariness dilutes content and shuts down opportunities to dissect the forces exerting pressure on our realities. Instead, fostering generative conversations among creators about ideas of a budding nation united through shared regional experiences opens up avenues for solidarity through shared historical and environmental conditions. BIM’s success is made possible because of Collymore’s ability to work within limitations and incorporates them into the magazine’s mission, even strengthening it. Transnational little magazines circulated within systems that often seemed surprisingly boundless, yet systems of imperialism and histories of over extraction were the inciting conditions for their existence. BIM succeeds because it acknowledges that truth and Horizon falters in its refusal to. A lesson to keep in mind when we, students of global modernism, respond to Claire Barber-Stetson’s call for a “radical reorientation of modernism.”[15]