Word: caustically
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...scientists. As early as 1776, an Italian, Abbe Spallanzani dried out microscopic rotifera and tardigrada, then brought them to life with water. But Spallanzani worried about the souls of his tiny experimental animals. Were they reborn or did entirely new souls develop after dehydration? He took his problems to caustic French Philosopher Voltaire, but got little help. If the rotifera and tardigrada regained life, Voltaire could see no reason why they should not acquire new souls. "The only thing I am really curious about," said he, "is, why does the Great Being grant the faculty of resurrection only to these...
Christina Stead is a globe-trotting Australian who has written caustic novels about failures in Sydney, high finance in Europe, black marketeers in Manhattan. The critics have generally praised her books, but the paying public has held back. Her new novel seems likely to get the same sort of reception. A snappish inquiry into the ways of men and dogs, it will appeal to those who take their reading extra-dry, their wit offbeat, their people eccentric...
Still, The Best of the Best is a rich hoard of U.S. writing. Perhaps the one great story is Ring Lardner's Haircut, a caustic glimpse of small-town brutality; it gets better with each rereading. Close runners-up are Ernest Hemingway's My Old Man, a poignant report of a boy's affection for his father, a crooked jockey, and Wilbur Daniel Steele's How Beautiful with Shoes, an eerie description of a meeting between an imaginative lunatic and an inarticulate farm girl. Most notable contribution from the younger generation is Prince of Darkness...
...Caustic John Davies was one of State's bright young men who, back in 1944, urged that the U.S. make friends with China's Communists as a matter of self-interest. Born and educated in China, he joined the State Department in 1931, served in U.S. consulates all over China, at one time was a friend of pro-Communist Author Agnes Smedley. He is married to the daughter of Henry Grady, U.S. Ambassador to Iran (see below...
Died. Ashton Stevens, 78, dean of American theater critics, for 54 years a drama man for Hearst newspapers in New York, San Francisco and Chicago (40 years on the Herald-American and predecessors); of a coronary occlusion; in Chicago. A mild-mannered, rarely caustic critic, he once defined his aim: "To be right if possible; to be read, if possibler...