(also first image with hgt=300)
|
|
| Cover shown is for 1979 paperback edition (also first image with hgt=300) |
| GENERATION OF VIPERS (annotated ed.) Philip Wylie New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1955 (1942) |
Rating: 5.0 High |
|||
| LibCong 55-6424 | 331pp. | HC | $24.95 | |
| Page 13: | "Science set out to increase worldly goods. Classical men in the business may grow black in the face denying this, but—so far—science has contributed virtually nothing else to mankind and I hold that a ninety-nine percent total of circumstantial evidence is fairly convincing." |
| Among the categories of science that Wylie dismisses as "virtually nothing" are astronomy and medicine. At least, I can suppose he might have argued that study of the stars confers no material benefit, and while medicine does, it contributes only indirectly. And note how he "pre-denigrates" anyone who might dare to question. (Is my face growing black?) But this misses the point; what Wylie means is that there is as yet no effective scientific palliative for the distressed conditions of modern society. |
| Page 20: | "The integrity of thinking and acting that enters into the radio set on the common man's bedside table is a thundering rebuke to the reliability of the cluck beside it and the macaroon singing over it." |
| OK, that's a slang use of "macaroon", meaning what today we call a dim bulb (or sometimes a "maroon"). The attendant word "cluck" confirms the fact. |
| Page 25: | "In some cities, on special occasions—all manner of citizens dressed up as animals..." |
| Mismatched punctuation: S/B "cities—on special occasions—. |
| Page 50: | "...to wangle sesterce from women..." |
| Sesterce: an ancient Roman coin equal in value to 1/4 denarius. |
| Page 57: | "Freud's studies weigh, in the prejudices and vanities of the Iowa yut, with no more significance than the maunderings of a New Deal economist or..." |
| I still have no idea what a "yut" is, except to infer from context that it's a poorly informed person. Perhaps Wylie feared that players among the yuts may one day rise up and ignite the Iowa pogroms. You can't tell the player yuts without a pogrom. (ducking...) |
| Pages 119-20: | "Aristotle's "golden mean," the ideal spiritual goal, represented a point of awareness at which all the overweaning opposites had been accepted and understood." |
| Spelling error: S/B "overweening". |
| Page 132: | "...a land thoroughly impoverished and miserable—a land which had descended from the overweaning attitude of arrogance into the equally overweaning opposite of self-pity." |
| Spelling error: S/B "overweening". |
| Page 136: | "Here too is the reason people, believing in themselves as a bunch, believe in a quantum they cannot budge collectively and can tackle only man by man." |
| Wylie uses this word "quantum" several times in the book. I'm never quite sure what he means by it, unless that meaning is just some general indivisible object or quality. |
| Page 142: | "But he will not stand the subjective arrogance of a herd. His instincts tell them that there is no superiority of herds..." |
| S/B "him". |
| Page 163: | "But certainly you, as a human being, are able by subjective means to contrive, under divers circumstances, fever, rashes, fits, swellings..." |
| And how little most of us know about that underwater world... |
| Page 164: | "...to spring him upon his startled fellows in the overweaning and enlightened possession of some corner or giblet of eternal truth..." |
| Again, S/B "overweening". |
| Page 171: | "In my own lifetime, the medical profession has condemned itself time without number..." |
| S/B "times". |
| Page 177: | "...but who actually require immediate succor by men in white bearing straight jackets ..." |
| Usually spelled as "straitjackets"; but Wylie uses an accepted variant. |
| Page 207: | "...and their ruby lips casehardened into pliers for the bending males like wire." |
| Missing word: S/B "the bending of males like wire". |
| Page 237: | "One of the shrewdest contemplations to date (and this should dumfound liberals) is the work of Herbert Hoover." |
| Spelling: S/B "dumbfound". |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.