Books in Brief

centers around the book’s Sharon Falconer episode, and throws in the titillations of Elmer’s randy rovings, the interior of a brothel, and sundry revival meetings where converts bark like dogs. Jean Simmons as Sharon the Gospel Queen is quite enchanting, playing the role much better than Aimee the brassy original ever could have done. She is getting just the least bit stringy in the throat; the dew of Black Narcissus has evaporated, but I am sure she could still convert most males to almost anything. At the outset she tries hard to assume a mid-Western accent (“Oh Gahd!”) but before the reel is out the crisp consonants and modulated dipthongs pop out with the old precision. I must say the holocaust of the final gospel meeting was enjoyable, particularly for any old members of the Box 57 Association in the audience, but I was sorry to see Jean go up in smoke and Elmer emerge with only the hair singed. That was the way it happened in the book, but there wasn’t much of the book left in any case. I don’t know about those under-sixteeners, but Billy Graham in his mountain retreat has nothing to fear.

Dr. Schweitzer of Lambarene, by Norman Cousins (Harper, $3.95). The Liberal orthodoxy has its own hagiology, according to which there is no greater saint than Albert Schweitzer. To his shrine Norman Cousins goes on pilgrimage, and comes back with a revelation on nuclear testing. The air of incense in this book makes us remember that Liberalism is a Christian heresy—the divorce of virtue from doctrine, commonly known as do-goodism. The do-gooder is more aware of his own good act than of that action’s proper goal. (Schweitzer repeatedly says that his curing of natives is an argument, a paradigm presented to the world. It is here that the heretic differs from the Christian saint.) When an evolutionary élan replaces the solid spirit-world of truth—as it does in Dr. Schweitzer’s theology—then men can no longer love a defined God or man outside themselves. They “simply love,” and that inner twitching is itself their “God.” All definition—not only of the Trinity’s nature, but of the human person. the claims of truth, and even of national boundaries—is dissolved in this religion of inner impulse. The hydrogen bomb is not nearly so destructive. g. wills

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centers around the book’s Sharon Falconer episode, and throws in the titillations of Elmer’s randy rovings, the interior of a brothel, and sundry revival meetings where converts bark like dogs. Jean Simmons as Sharon the Gospel Queen is quite enchanting, playing the role much better than Aimee the brassy original ever could have done. She is getting just the least bit stringy in the throat; the dew of Black Narcissus has evaporated, but I am sure she could still convert most males to almost anything. At the outset she tries hard to assume a mid-Western accent (“Oh Gahd!”) but before the reel is out the crisp consonants and modulated dipthongs pop out with the old precision. I must say the holocaust of the final gospel meeting was enjoyable, particularly for any old members of the Box 57 Association in the audience, but I was sorry to see Jean go up in smoke and Elmer emerge with only the hair singed. That was the way it happened in the book, but there wasn’t much of the book left in any case. I don’t know about those under-sixteeners, but Billy Graham in his mountain retreat has nothing to fear.

Dr. Schweitzer of Lambarene, by Norman Cousins (Harper, $3.95). The Liberal orthodoxy has its own hagiology, according to which there is no greater saint than Albert Schweitzer. To his shrine Norman Cousins goes on pilgrimage, and comes back with a revelation on nuclear testing. The air of incense in this book makes us remember that Liberalism is a Christian heresy—the divorce of virtue from doctrine, commonly known as do-goodism. The do-gooder is more aware of his own good act than of that action’s proper goal. (Schweitzer repeatedly says that his curing of natives is an argument, a paradigm presented to the world. It is here that the heretic differs from the Christian saint.) When an evolutionary élan replaces the solid spirit-world of truth—as it does in Dr. Schweitzer’s theology—then men can no longer love a defined God or man outside themselves. They “simply love,” and that inner twitching is itself their “God.” All definition—not only of the Trinity’s nature, but of the human person. the claims of truth, and even of national boundaries—is dissolved in this religion of inner impulse. The hydrogen bomb is not nearly so destructive. g. wills