Ranging at Large Through Literature:
FOULKE, ADRIENNE
Ranging at Large Through Literature A Clerk of Oxenford. By Gilbert Highet. Oxford. 272 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by Adrienne Foulke Free-lance editor and translator IN 1952, Gilbert Highet, already...
...In another talk, the author asks what readers in the year 3000 will make of us, judging us from our fiction, which does help emphasize what he then proceeds to point out--the paucity of fictional descriptions of sports and of places, the relative neglect of our chief occupations, our business, industry and science, as compared to the great emphasis on the emotional aspects of personal relationships...
...Actually, Mr...
...Popularizers (Mr...
...They can afford both, if they want them...
...Whereas the earlier clerk of Oxenford was a cloistered scholar who would rather "have at his beddes heed, twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed, of Aristotle and his philosophye, than robes riche," the clerk of WQXR ranges far and wide, and for him "twenty bookes" would probably be a very modest monthly stint...
...On the other hand, one does not expect creative criticism to be produced to rigorous schedule...
...Reviewed by Adrienne Foulke Free-lance editor and translator IN 1952, Gilbert Highet, already Professor of Latin Literature at Columbia University, author of numerous books, and book-review editor for Harper's Magazine, filled some improbably idle hour by accepting an invitation to appear as a weekly hook commentator on radio station WQXR...
...The response must have been warm, for we are now offered a sequel, A Clerk at Oxenford...
...Highet assumes, probably rightly enough, that his listener-readers need not face the old clerk's choice between "bookes" and "robes riche...
...And, in a talk on the Japanese haiku, he discusses sympathetically a little-known poetic form in a way that would convey something even to the person who never pursues the subject further...
...Highet in avoiding offense to the extremes who may variously suspect him of smuggling in the contraband of "culture" or charge him with huckstering it...
...Highet's analysis of the Gettysburg Address would refresh almost anyone's sense of it...
...Decently but appropriately packaged for sale at perhaps 20 per cent of its hard-cover cost, it might have reached many more readers...
...Highet moved recently from Harper's to the Book-of-the-Month Club board) do not have a completely easy time, nor are they always everywhere welcome...
...I doubt that many practitioners are as skilful as Mr...
...Mr...
...Nor is he without his irreverent moments, as when he gently disposes of that current publishing mainstay, the historical romance, or asserts that Yeats "never managed to produce a single great work of poetry...
...Highet put together a collection of essays based on his radio programs, People, Places and Books...
...The comparison of Finnegan's Wake with the Jabberwocky poem is delightfully surprising and apposite...
...Highet borrowed his title, and at a correspondingly high price...
...Last year, Mr...
...In his present collection, he wanders from paperback industry to university press, from science fiction to semantics to the slightly bald come-on, "What Use Is Poetry...
...Given a chance, reading is a habit that can grow on us...
...It is no reflection on this book, which can probably provide pleasure and entertainment to a sizable readership, to ask a question that occurred several times to this reviewer: Since even the author probably does not feel that this particular collection of radio talks is of imperishable importance or appeal, why can't it be produced in less imperishable form...
...Perhaps most important, one senses how he has been beset by the necessity of finding a fresh topic each week...
...A number of these essays bear certain marks of radio presentation --in scope, organization, even sentence structure--which does not necessarily make for the best in essay or article form...
...So, with amiable perseverance, he encourages us to push ahead...
...Highet or his publisher has subtitled this book "More conversation about ...," and the author is at his most successful when he is simply sharing some of the relish he has derived from his own reading...
...Instead, it is issued in a form as substantial as the collected Chaucer, from whom Mr...
Vol. 37 • December 1954 • No. 49
