Each is a man's most luminous self in words, ready for
others. Who wants it? Who can make use of it? Who will be dulled
by it? Who exalted? It is the reviewer's task to say. He grasps
the book, estimates it, calculates its audience. Then he makes the
liaison. He explains, he interprets, and in so doing necessarily
criticizes, abstracts, appreciates. The service is inestimable,
when properly rendered. It is essential for that growing
literature of knowledge which science and the work of specialists
in all fields have given us. Few readers can face alone and
unaided a shelf of books on radio-activity, evolution, psychology,
or sociology with any hope of selecting without guidance the best,
or with any assurance that they dare reject as worthless what they
do not understand. The house of the interpreter has become the
literary journal, and its usefulness will increase.
A liaison of a different kind is quite as needful in works of
sheer imagination. Here the content is human, the subject the
heart, or life as one sees it. But reading, like writing, is a
fine art that few master. Only the most sensitive, whose minds are
as quick as their emotions are responsive, can go to the heart of
a poem or a story.
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