Reviewed in Brief

India: The Awakening Giant, by W. S. Woytinsky (Harper, $3.75). Mr. Woytinsky assumes that man is exclusively an economic animal; and that therefore the purpose of mankind is the abolition of Poverty. He accordingly ignores most fundamental problems of human society. Nehru’s Five-Year Plans, the villages and cities of India described in these pages belong to a world as unreal as talk in the United Nations or the dreams of an opium eater. But the world of reality is governed by laws that will continue to operate, however tightly Mr. Woytinsky and his fellows may close their eyes. If the transformation of India projected by Nehru and his “intellectuals” is to be carried out, it will first be necessary to subvert and destroy the ancient and venerable culture of the Hindu people, which is based on the doctrine of metempsychosis and karma. And when a nation’s soul is destroyed, all that is left is the animal instinct of barbarism. The only possible result in India is a social explosion that may loose upon the world another bandit horde of 400 million. r.p.o.

Thomas Wolfe’s Characters, by Floyd C. Watkins (University of Oklahoma, $3.75). Unless society changes very radically, it is hard to imagine five-year-olds who will not be enchanted with Pooh Bear; twelve-year-olds who won’t fight with pirates on Treasure Island; and eighteen-year-olds who won’t identify their pimply urge to write with Thomas Wolfe’s portraits of the poet as a voracious young provincial. Wolfe had power certainly (Gertrude Stein once compared him to Niagara Falls, adding that “the water at the bottom is no better and no different than the water at the top”), but what he disgorged is less useful to adults than to post-puibescents. His greatest popularity was in Germany; and he cannot easily be read after twenty, except by people who have read him earlier and are resavoring their own past. Wolfe’s truest readers will not care any more about Mr. Watkins’ professorial soundings of his real-life family than admirers of Christopher Robin will care to know that their hero’s legal name was Milne, R.P.

Featured Tags

India: The Awakening Giant, by W. S. Woytinsky (Harper, $3.75). Mr. Woytinsky assumes that man is exclusively an economic animal; and that therefore the purpose of mankind is the abolition of Poverty. He accordingly ignores most fundamental problems of human society. Nehru’s Five-Year Plans, the villages and cities of India described in these pages belong to a world as unreal as talk in the United Nations or the dreams of an opium eater. But the world of reality is governed by laws that will continue to operate, however tightly Mr. Woytinsky and his fellows may close their eyes. If the transformation of India projected by Nehru and his “intellectuals” is to be carried out, it will first be necessary to subvert and destroy the ancient and venerable culture of the Hindu people, which is based on the doctrine of metempsychosis and karma. And when a nation’s soul is destroyed, all that is left is the animal instinct of barbarism. The only possible result in India is a social explosion that may loose upon the world another bandit horde of 400 million. r.p.o.

Thomas Wolfe’s Characters, by Floyd C. Watkins (University of Oklahoma, $3.75). Unless society changes very radically, it is hard to imagine five-year-olds who will not be enchanted with Pooh Bear; twelve-year-olds who won’t fight with pirates on Treasure Island; and eighteen-year-olds who won’t identify their pimply urge to write with Thomas Wolfe’s portraits of the poet as a voracious young provincial. Wolfe had power certainly (Gertrude Stein once compared him to Niagara Falls, adding that “the water at the bottom is no better and no different than the water at the top”), but what he disgorged is less useful to adults than to post-puibescents. His greatest popularity was in Germany; and he cannot easily be read after twenty, except by people who have read him earlier and are resavoring their own past. Wolfe’s truest readers will not care any more about Mr. Watkins’ professorial soundings of his real-life family than admirers of Christopher Robin will care to know that their hero’s legal name was Milne, R.P.