Cheerful Little Earful

Talents and Geniuses (Oxford, $5.00) is the third collection of Gilbert Highet’s radio talks to be made into a book, and in its forty essays, he is again discussing writers, writing, the arts in general, and a nice, self-satisfying something which his subtitle calls “the pleasures of appreciation.” As always, he is a quick, easy, flattering cicerone, and people will buy his book for the same reason they buy frozen pizza-pies which only have to be popped into the oven for ten minutes before serving.

He can look at Etruscan tombs, Picasso’s murals, or William Faulkner’s face, and make all three equally cheerful and edifying. He can admire Colette’s prose, deplore Baron Corvo’s pride, or conclude that Huysmans “lacked love” with the same untroubling ease that soothes, relaxes and amuses his readers. There can hardly be a subject which he cannot water down, smooth out and pretty up until it is presentable enough to appear in living rooms throughout the land.

RP

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Robert Phelps

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Talents and Geniuses (Oxford, $5.00) is the third collection of Gilbert Highet’s radio talks to be made into a book, and in its forty essays, he is again discussing writers, writing, the arts in general, and a nice, self-satisfying something which his subtitle calls “the pleasures of appreciation.” As always, he is a quick, easy, flattering cicerone, and people will buy his book for the same reason they buy frozen pizza-pies which only have to be popped into the oven for ten minutes before serving.

He can look at Etruscan tombs, Picasso’s murals, or William Faulkner’s face, and make all three equally cheerful and edifying. He can admire Colette’s prose, deplore Baron Corvo’s pride, or conclude that Huysmans “lacked love” with the same untroubling ease that soothes, relaxes and amuses his readers. There can hardly be a subject which he cannot water down, smooth out and pretty up until it is presentable enough to appear in living rooms throughout the land.