CLEVER NONSENSE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 153, 26 December 1931, Page 17

CLEVER NONSENSE

The Red King in tho "Alice" books was a somnolent monarch who looked upon his dreams as vastly important to humanity. In "The Red King Dreams"; C. G. Crump has made Mm dream1 again —not,, be it noted, of cabbages or his follow-monarchs, but of strange universities and stranger dons, of newspaper, .magnates and perfect .wives, and last, Slit nb't least, of ". inverted space "and tho-trouble it caused to various folk.

This story is a hilarious experiment in fiction, mad enough, perhaps, to scare off some readers, but clever enough to be labelled as brilliant satire. Unfortunately, it is • almost impossible in a paragraph to give even the roughest idea of the riotous course which the Royal dream" takes, of, the mirth-pro-voking scenes that are encountered, or of the truly delightful folk who laugh their way through the .book. At the beginning Mr. Pogeys is „■ the Junior Fellow of St. Friths College, an estimable mathematician , waiting patiently to be married to his Gladwin. But he discovers "inverted space," about which the author knows as little or much as the average reader. Tho newspapers discover Mr. Pogeys, and the colossal importance of his discovery, and Mr. Pogoys discovers that ho has become absurd, and, sends himself down, and invents something rather more tangible than "inverted space," and so makes more .than enough money to transform the University of Weston Poggs—he is heir to its Chancellorship —from one man's dream to a real centre of learning.