Books in Brief

Literature and Western Man, by J. B. Priestley (Harper, $6.95). The pretentious title and scope of this ‘‘history of literature since the Renaissance” are belied by its style. Priestley simply wants to deliver himself of several opinions on several authors. All the rest is filling. After all, chatty essays are not chosen by the Book of the Month Club. The opinions Priestley has to offer, once unearthed, are limited but reasonable. He is intensely convinced that as the cosmos disintegrates in man’s mind, literature must suffer. Unfortunately, he has no vision of order to oppose to this chaos, and he cannot add to our understanding of authors who write out of an ordered inner world. This makes his opening sections—on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais — worthless, and leads him to omit serious treatment of men who lacked the faults he can recognize —men like Pope, Johnson, Newman.

G. WILLS

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Literature and Western Man, by J. B. Priestley (Harper, $6.95). The pretentious title and scope of this ‘‘history of literature since the Renaissance” are belied by its style. Priestley simply wants to deliver himself of several opinions on several authors. All the rest is filling. After all, chatty essays are not chosen by the Book of the Month Club. The opinions Priestley has to offer, once unearthed, are limited but reasonable. He is intensely convinced that as the cosmos disintegrates in man’s mind, literature must suffer. Unfortunately, he has no vision of order to oppose to this chaos, and he cannot add to our understanding of authors who write out of an ordered inner world. This makes his opening sections—on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais — worthless, and leads him to omit serious treatment of men who lacked the faults he can recognize —men like Pope, Johnson, Newman.

G. WILLS