VEBLEN AND LAUGHING GAS
Meyer, Ernest L.
Veblen And Laughing Gas THE INNOCENTS AT CEDRO, by R. L. Duffus. Macmillan. $2. Revieived by Ernest L. Meyer MR. DUFFUS subtitles his book "A Memoir of Thorstein Veblen and Some Others." You...
...But you'd be wrong...
...There is enough laughter in "The Innocents" to tide us over for a long space in a season of tears...
...He has insight and humor, and he has the rare gift of recapturing the moods, often muddled, of a sensitive college sophomore contemplating the whys and wherefores of the world...
...Here is a book to read slowly, and re-read for the ripe flavor of its phrases—including its ribald footnote's...
...The book, then, is mostly concerned with the "Some Others^" And by rare good luck it is centered chiefly on the thoughts and activities of Mr...
...You might think, therefore, that the volume is an appraisal of the life and works of Veblen, that brilliant philosopher-economist-radical who wrote Theory of the Leisure Class, Business Enterprise, and other clinical reports on the cockeyed crust of earth we inhabit...
...And he's eminently worth knowing...
...R. L. Duffus himself...
...It was good," as he says, "to be under the partial anesthetic of immaturity, the laughing gas of youth, and not know all that was happening to myself...
...And it is good for us today to share this laughing gas, this brief moment in Arcady, remembering the economic upheavals and two bloody wars to come...
...For in this memoir Veblen is but a vague Olympian presence more or less presiding over a weird and wonderful household of students, an occasional lady, and innumerable cats, hens, cows, and amateur cooks in Cedro Cottage, near Stanford University, California, in the blissful year of 1907-08...
Vol. 8 • March 1944 • No. 13
