Potpourri

In the course of conducting a television show about the English language, BERGEN EVANS collected a vast number of odd questions from his audience, the answers to which he has now incorporated in COMFORTABLE WORDS (Random House, $4.95). This book is not a treatise, though full of learning and also, happily, peppered with confessions of ignorance. It is not an essay, although bristling with opinion and argument. It is not a dictionary, for it contains what interests Mr. Evans, rather than what the reader may want to look up. It is amusing and unclassiliable, but arranged by alphabet for the consolation of the methodical-minded. Between ‟A Mr. Jones” and ‟doing yeoman’s service,” Mr. Evans explains such matters as the origin of drinking a toast (an old tale, but too good to omit), the various meanings of ‟refrain,” how to pronounce ‟Quincy, Mass.,” and the source of ‟gumption.” He denounces false elegance and fake French, the belief that words should be pronounced as they are spelled, and the assumption that a long word is automatically better than its short synonym. He finds much evidence, among his correspondents, of the vile influence of teachers, but he is a trifle overcredulous in interpreting it. The lady who ‟was taught in school never to use the word forgotten” and has cringed at it ever since is surely silly enough to have misunderstood the teacher’s instructions in the first place. Aside from this trifling weakness, Mr. Evans is a monument of laughter and good sense, and his description of the English tongue should do all its proprietors a world of good. ‟We speak a language rich in poetic splendor, magnificent in its possible rhythms, admirable in its sonorities, ancient in its lineage and glorious in its achievements — but a bit spotty in the matter of precision.”

THE DARKENING GLASS (Columbia University Press, $5.00) by JOHN D. ROSENBERG is a study of the aesthetic and social thinking of John Ruskin, based solidly on his books and letters. The subtitle, A Portrait of Ruskin’s Genius, is needlessly pretentious, but the text itself is both readable and scholarly and could hardly do better what the author has undertaken to do, which is to arouse an interest in Ruskin’s very real originality and breadth of thought among readers who know him only as the author of mildly distressing purple patches in anthologies of English prose.

GEOFFREY BIBBY’S FOUR THOUSAND YEARS AGO (Knopf, $6.95) is partly popular archaeology and partly history, the story of wars, trade, art, inventions, and all the comings and goings and hoo-ha of our remoter ancestors. Deftly condensing mountains of material, Mr. Bibby makes the second millennium B.C. both comprehensible and interesting.

MURIEL SPARK’S latest and very witty novel, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (Lippincott, $3.95), is a curious work, involving a progressive teacher at a Scottish girls’ school who is finally fired when one of her pet pupils, now grown up and turning to religious psychology, tells the headmistress how to catch Miss Brodie in mischief. ‟Betrayed” is the word used for this episode by all concerned, and the book keeps wavering toward Biblical parallels and moral ambiguities. I doubt that Miss Spark could write anything dull if she tried, but in this novel I am unable, possibly because of my infinite ignorance of Scottish girls’ schools, to discover her intention.

(Crown, $5.95), by H. D. DISSELHOFF and S. LINNÉ, is a fine item in the Art of the World series. The text covers all the great prehistoric Indian civilizations of Central and South America. It is generously and delightfully illustrated, and involves, thanks to the incursions of the early Spanish explorers, a good deal of picturesque and exciting anecdote. It is also less impersonal than such texts frequently are, for the authors do not hesitate to use their own observations in the field as evidence.

Dedicated to ‟the art of imperfection in the kitchen,” THE ARTISTS’ AND WRITERS’ COOKBOOK (Contact Editions, $10.00) includes, along with sensible classics, directions for the weirdest dishes ever concocted. The editors, BERYL BARR and BARBARA SACHS, begged recipes from a wide assortment of artists, and printed them uncensorcd. Estimates of practicality are left to the reader; anybody who wants to try dadaist eggs needs only courage and a saw.