Evening star., 1937-09-11
MEDICAL QUACKERY EXPOSED
Cronn Builds Novel Around the Less Savory Aspects of Doc
torng Eng and-H. G. Wells Has Written Another Book
and Cosmos Isn't One of the Characters

|
among his countrymen, Chang Kai-
shek weakens Chinese nationalism.
The book contains a highly interesting
chapter on the kidnapping" of the
general last December.
1t is hardly possible for any one
lacking vast frst-hand information
to declare for or against the accuracy
of such a viewpoint as this work ex-
presses. Readers can only draw their
own conclusions. Certainly MIR.
Cannes is in disagreement with GER
tain other writers on Chinese politics.
and unquestionably there is an emo
tional quality in his prof. Communist
argument which speaks somewhat for
wishful thinking. However, his book
is one side of the matter. AS has been
said, readers can draw their own con-
| clusions.
LET YOUR MIND ALONEl By James
Thurber. New York: Harper Il
Brothers.
I Asst week it was the reviewers
pleasure to commend a work
which had for its purpose no less ad-
mirable an undertaking than the ri
diculing OF the success" textbook.
Ihat was Irving d. Tressler's How
to Lose Friends and Alternate People"
This week another work on this never
sufficlently-to-be encouraged endeavor
comes to hand. 1t is a collection of
essays by the always diverting James
Thurber, and 1t makes sport about
equally OF the success salesman and
the popular psychiatrist All hail!
Mr.. Thurber is, Of course, as every
one knows, very funny. He can write
the most fantastic nonsense when it
pleases him to do so. He can abandon
the common hree-dimensional world
when he wishes, and step blithely out
into serenity OF complete madness.
He does these things. too, in an inter-
pretive manner; staid citizens-even
book critics-are able to follow him
into his excursions into the unpre-
dictable. But in the present collec-
alon OF essays-or in the first half of
lt-one detects certain seriousness.
Plainly the success" text and the full
some Establishments of the improve
your mind boys have gotten under
MS skin. He Is now returning their
fire and he does it with disconcertinp
logic and precision.
His method is take up claim
made by this or that messiah of the
newer mental efficiency and examine
its reasoning. its truth. its practically
and its grammar He is funny, as usual
but he is serious, too. He marches
into the assemblage of quacks and laws
about him. That he DISCUSSES the old
weapons Of truth, logic and ANALYSIS
with slapstick coverings In no way
weakens the effectiveness of his blows.
Such work as this Is a downright
pleasure.
He takes up the claims made bv the
violently optimistic Dorothea Brande,
she of the gorgeously profitable Wake
Up and Livei" He likewise goes into
the advice offered by Dale GLOW to
Win Friends and Influence People')
Carnegie to the suckers who contrib
utea to his royalties. James L. Mursell.
author of ''Streamline Your Mind" is
another who comes in for his devastat-
ing examination, and one of the most
revealing expositions of this variety of
quackery is contained in chapter
devoted to work called How to De-
velop Your Personality" by DR.. Sadie
Myers Shellow. The reviewer has
never seen this work, but on the basis
of Mr.. Thurber's quotations from 1t
concludes that 1t must be the archtype
of ali self-improvement texts, vulgar.
hastily slapped together, silly, gro
tesque.. (The reviewer may add that,
naturally, she would not have seen
this book One thing which she avoids
as the plague is development of the
personality. A colorless life is likely to
be long one, or anyway that is her
opinion.1
His battle against these works con-
sumes half of Mr.. Thurber's volume.
The other half is made up Of miscel-
laneous essays which, for the most part
have been published in the New Yorker.
While, in the reviewers personal case,
they do not satisfy any long standing
hatred, as do the anti-success and
anti-self-improvement pieces, they are
delightfully."- entertaining. But If you
know Mr.. Thurber you hardly need to
be told that.
The book is one to get, and that is
much to say of whole volume of
"humor" in this or any day.
BED OF NEURosEs. BY wolcott
Gibbs. New York; Dodd, Mead 81
Co.
THE New Yorker is well represented
on publishers lists this month,
for the same week which sees book
publication of James Thurbers essays
from that magazine also sees col
lection from the pen of Wolcott Gibbs.
And Mr.. Gibbs has been on the New
Workers. staff for some 10 years. His
present collection, like Mr.. Thurbers,
has had publication in the insouciant
pages Of Manhattan's favorite weekly.
Like Mr.. Thurber's again, it is emf
nently worth getting 1t, too, is su-
perior work of humor, as works of
humor 60
From the name of the volume, to
be sure, readers might conclude that
there is even third resemblance
between the work of Mr.. Gibbs and
that of Mr.. Thurber. Bed of Neu-
roses" strongly suggests another satire
on the quack psychiatrist. But this
is not the case. The title implies not
q satire, but the delicate variety of
Mr.. Gibbs own humor, which is con-
| cerned with those states of the hu-
| man mind wherein familiar things
take on shocking and malignant as
poets, and the old, well-marked line
between the real and the nightmare
fades wickedly from view. No one
except Mr.. Gibbs, as far as the re-
viewer is aware, has produced Just
this kind of short story. 1t is, in
essence, a horror tale with humor-
Gus twist. But the horror lies in the
threat of the mind to betray its owner,
/ and the humOr lies in the halnlaSS