Books in Brief

The Spyglass: Views and Reviews 1924-1930, by Donald Davidson, selected and edited by John Tyree Fain (Vanderbilt University Press, $4). The highest public literacy culture in the South is embedded deep in the Sunday issues of newspapers—the Book Page. Donald Davidson, the gifted professor, poet, and essayist of the Fugitive and Agrarian movements of the thirties, took over the book page of the Nashville Tennessean in 1924 and elevated it to one of the most aware and literate commentaries in the country. This collection of Prof. Davidson’s contributions, selected from his column “The Spyglass,” and, later, “The Critic’s Almanac,” covers an amazing range of subjects, from poetry to sociology, from criticisms of critics to charming, polite essays on any subject at all. New York and New England have so dominated our critical thinking that the idea of a regionalist critic seems a contradiction in terms. The integrity of these essays is therefore a lesson in American culture, and a hopeful argument to anyone interested to see local excellence and regional distinctiveness in the arts as in the general culture of America. The historical —and nostalgic—value of this collection is obvious. The student of Prof. Davidson’s later and more painstaking work will recognize the haste in some of the more ephemeral pieces, but for the most Mr. Fain, the editor, has chosen work from which our interest has not evaporated. The book is a delightful one for reading around in, and a mine for the researcher into opinion and the history of ideas. G. DAVENPORT

On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt (Viking, $6.50). If there has to be someone to express the dream of sudden transition that dominates this age, that someone couldn’t be more delightful than Hannah Arendt. Miss Arendt has one of the most alert and active minds of our day, but not surprisingly she is unsound on the role of revolutions in today’s political context. She is the philosopher of politics when she points out that “every attempt to solve the social question with political means leads into terror”; but she is a purveyor of prevailing ideology when she resists the idea that twentieth-century revolutions tend inherently to end in one-party dictatorships. She moves close to this conclusion in her discussion of the role of “councils” (Rate, Soviets), but away again in expatiating on “the betrayal” of the revolutions of Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ben Bella, Sukarno, etc. Nor does her conclusion that fear of revolution has been the hidden leitmotif of recent American foreign policy come any closer to reality. The mystique of revolution has been our leitmotif: witness Truman on the fate of the J British Empire; Eisenhower on Suez or the world-role of Nehru; Kennedy on Cuba, Africa, or just about anything. w. d. jacobs

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The Spyglass: Views and Reviews 1924-1930, by Donald Davidson, selected and edited by John Tyree Fain (Vanderbilt University Press, $4). The highest public literacy culture in the South is embedded deep in the Sunday issues of newspapers—the Book Page. Donald Davidson, the gifted professor, poet, and essayist of the Fugitive and Agrarian movements of the thirties, took over the book page of the Nashville Tennessean in 1924 and elevated it to one of the most aware and literate commentaries in the country. This collection of Prof. Davidson’s contributions, selected from his column “The Spyglass,” and, later, “The Critic’s Almanac,” covers an amazing range of subjects, from poetry to sociology, from criticisms of critics to charming, polite essays on any subject at all. New York and New England have so dominated our critical thinking that the idea of a regionalist critic seems a contradiction in terms. The integrity of these essays is therefore a lesson in American culture, and a hopeful argument to anyone interested to see local excellence and regional distinctiveness in the arts as in the general culture of America. The historical —and nostalgic—value of this collection is obvious. The student of Prof. Davidson’s later and more painstaking work will recognize the haste in some of the more ephemeral pieces, but for the most Mr. Fain, the editor, has chosen work from which our interest has not evaporated. The book is a delightful one for reading around in, and a mine for the researcher into opinion and the history of ideas. G. DAVENPORT

On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt (Viking, $6.50). If there has to be someone to express the dream of sudden transition that dominates this age, that someone couldn’t be more delightful than Hannah Arendt. Miss Arendt has one of the most alert and active minds of our day, but not surprisingly she is unsound on the role of revolutions in today’s political context. She is the philosopher of politics when she points out that “every attempt to solve the social question with political means leads into terror”; but she is a purveyor of prevailing ideology when she resists the idea that twentieth-century revolutions tend inherently to end in one-party dictatorships. She moves close to this conclusion in her discussion of the role of “councils” (Rate, Soviets), but away again in expatiating on “the betrayal” of the revolutions of Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ben Bella, Sukarno, etc. Nor does her conclusion that fear of revolution has been the hidden leitmotif of recent American foreign policy come any closer to reality. The mystique of revolution has been our leitmotif: witness Truman on the fate of the J British Empire; Eisenhower on Suez or the world-role of Nehru; Kennedy on Cuba, Africa, or just about anything. w. d. jacobs