MISCELLANY

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26509, 25 August 1951, Page 3

MISCELLANY

e,, Gai? n Allen X , nd°TT anS: By Marz!eh anen and Unwin. 176 pp. thp St tastefullv Produced book tells of the impact of Persian life and i saTd re f UP u n ViCt ° rian England ’ « is said to have found its public demonstration in the visit of the Shah J n 1873, described with some wit he opening chapter. But the oriJin r ’d°e f half ’ Persian - half-American origin, demonstrates in a swift series Persian Lqnm” 101 *® “ Gramma r of the s °h f P S l r Wil ’ iam Orientalism ii' v , shows how along with? ihi E ogiand stumbled although t thJ‘ t « le , of^ cial recognition was somehn g J' eat lm Perial pattern in th SO v eho . w being woven- at home ing-hmJeT 1 T n he° deb hts of aloof more pressing demands And so L/h ernment: ? l relationships, vnd so we have, entwined in the grev rore of Middle Eastern diplomacy a creative an t d . g ’ eamin « thread.’ a interest introduced by men Prow^ 1P t P h pot9mas ” Murray, Edward erowne the great scholar, George Burton ’ ,¥ att £ ew Arnold. Sir Richard Burton ( perhaps the most murky and complex of Victorians") and of course, Omar” Fitzgerald. In them h?g" Se a e na h r puz ?? d “eastward yearn.and their work we underfl.ema.iOmetfhlng,uOf the Victorians’ voluobm? f ° r thll l gs . Orien tal, that voluptuous surrender mixed with ononth e a Ce wh ’ ch eventually bequeathed us much impossible furniture as well as limp-leather “gift” ■poetr” 8 ° f Wlldly misunderstood

The Human Use of Human Beings. By Norbert Wiener. Eyre and bpottiswoode. 241 pp.

_„T his volume has the formidable sub-title Cybernetics and Society.” me author, a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute l) i Technology, explains his new term thus: "I made up the word from the Greek word for ‘steersman’ (of a ship), it comes from the same root as governor’ and refers to control and communication in the animal and the machine.” It is the thesis of the book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machine and man and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part. It is held that the operation of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication ma chines <or “brains") are precisely parallel in interesting ways and that our habitual analysis of society leaves out of account a human attribute which the research into “mechanical brains” with "built-in memories” has em-phasised—-the central regulatory apparatus which stores, orders and trims information so that it is available for further stages of performance, man’s two-way relationship with the world, the negation of automatism. the factors of entropy and progress. Those grasping for power tend to reduce human beings to the level of effectors for a supposedly higher nervous organism. This book is a protest, in semi-technical but lucid form, against such an inhuman use of human beings, a reaffirmation of human worth in the face of mechanical perfectibility, and a plea for the wise use of human abilities. The professor uses a shiny new gadget for fishing in deep waters. His cast is efficient, his catch edible, interesting and not over-strange.

In a Harley Street Mirror. By R. Scott Stevenson. With drawings by the author. Christopher Johnson. 278 PP-

Dr. Scott Stevenson, an eminent British oto-laryngologist, has pursued medical journalism as an avocation throughout his life. This book of essays, mainly autobiographical, is written in the easy natural style of the journalist but is full of the interest that the author’s professional experience and contacts have brought him. Pen-portraits of famous British and American surgeons alternate with descriptions of Spain or Gibraltar, an absorbing account of the growth and organisation of the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, New York (“the greatest example of group medicine in the world”) is followed by a short history of laryngology, or of lip-reading, or a discussion of the essentials of singing and the diseases to which singers and public-speakers are subject. Politics come in when Rudolf Hess is a patient at the hospital to which the doctor was attached during the war; the drama enters when he describes the first nights he has seen and how he introduced Charles Laughton to fame through his friend Harold Brighouse, author of “Hobson’s Choice.” There 'is a little of everything here for the interested layman, as well as the doctor. You and Your Marriage. By Edward Kaufmann. Naldrett Press, through Oswald-Sealey (N.Z.), Ltd. 165 pp.

Some well-intentioned advice for married people is contained in this little book which is the work of an American lawyer who has had three decades of experience as a specialist in divorce. He is convinced that the starting points of marital conflicts and subsequent developments” are nearly always the same. They can be arranged in patterns, he declares. And this leads him to the conclusion that divorce need not be so freejuent, if these patterns are understood in advance and the dangers they represent are circumvented. Forewarned is forearmed. Women readers, though finding many useful tips, may feel that the book is directed more at them than is warranted Husbands will appreciate the advice to wives to greet the returning warrior with “a welcoming smile . . . his dressing robe ready, a clean bath towel, a fresh package of cigarettes etc., though they too will find less comforting passages in the book. Fpr those of either sex who fell they need suggestions, or can still benefit from them there are plenty here, and all very 'sane and rational-if only human nature were the same!

Haven. By Elizabeth Bibesco. Barrie.

382 pp. Daughter of Mr H. H. Asquith, a Prime Minister of Britain, by his second marriage with Margot Tennant. Elizabeth, who married ? rlnc % An ‘°‘" e Bibesco and lived mainly in Pans created quite a reputation for herself between the wars primarily with her short stories which reflect in a highi y civilised and individual way the kind of life led by the quieter international set in poltical and literary circles. Collected in this volume are her best stories a number of slight but charming poems and a quiver of aphorisms that show her to have been a woman of sharp but not corrosive wit. Elizabeth Bowen contributes a perceptive foreword telling how this t 5' t r ’ nI X vacious and generous, mi the first p a e inspired by sensibility, desired for her expression a language at which the intelligent should not mock, and how she spoke for the silenced, the dead of the Great War, and wrote, w'th nerves and senses keyed up.. of the beauties, incongruities and f ul . fll T® - in life which many could not shareShe represented a subsiding part of sostructure and placed on record its conversations, with their febcitie. and turns of phrase, largely unre corded. Some characters seem so idealised as to possess an ° yer -Iy’ Jl L 1 y ant sensibility, others are bleakly enough drawn: very often the interior drama consists in showing the imwc of the insensitive upon the sensitrve. This “cosmopolitan writing, by one who was an intimate of Proust, is at times iridescent and always compelling and eager, even while it discharges a barb There are at least half a dozen stories here which do not deserve oblivion.