Man, the animal that writes, has been at work on his autobiography since the Eastern branch of the family, somewhere deep in the Middle Flower Kingdom, invented a way to carve graphs upon bone for the sung vowels and pinging consonants of Archaic Chinese. The Western kin began writing near Port Said, strictly for commercial reasons. If you are so minded, you may reasonably trace the preoccupation of Western literature with property rights, and even the novel’s obsession with real estate and matrimony, to our alphabet’s original purpose, the scribbling of waybills, trademarks, and receipts.
Radcliffe, by David Storey. Coward-McCann, $4.95
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