Word: santayana
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Santayana's Spark Sirs: As TIME's review of copious The Last Puritan (Feb. 3, p. 75) was characteristically pithy and succinct, so TIME-worthy were the picture-cover of the author and the intimate comments anent his banker-build and the routine of his days on that philosophers' Olympus where years ago he found his peace...
...Goheen, popular head assistant in the equally popular Philosophy A, however, the loyalty and respect transcends ordinary intellectual acceptance and borders on adulation. Or so it seemed to his students in yesterday's section meeting. In speaking of Professor Santayana and the veneration in which Professor Whitehead holds his former colleague's beliefs, Dr. Goheen stated that Professor Whitehead held Santayana to be possibly the greatest philosopher since Plato. Finding occasion later to repeat his remark. Dr. Goheen blithely quoted Professor Whitehead as considering Satayana the greatest Philosopher since Whitehead...
Oliver Alden, who denied himself the easier road when he was yet a mere compilation of chromosomes--and chose to be a male, is the protagonist of Santayana's story. Born of Epicurean Dr. Peter Alden and hypocritical, timidly tyrannical Mrs. Alden of Great Falls, Conn., he denies himself the easier road all through his life. He is a real Puritan, as Santayana explains in his "Prologue." "He kept himself for what was best.... His puritanism had never been mere timidity or fanaticism or calculated hardness; it was a deep and speculative thing: hatred of all shams, scorn...
...Mediterranean because it is his duty to return to America to college. But Oliver is no mere prig, no stuffed-shirt; it is his heart as well as his mind which calls him to duty, and it is by virtue of this extremely vivid impression of his character that Santayana shows his real insight. It would have been easy to draw a caricature of Oliver--not one novelist in a thousand could have resisted the temptation. But Santayana, despite his innate antipathy to the Puritan ideal, draws "The Last Puritan's" character fairly...
...splendid delineation of life and character is a purpose of novel-making (and the Editor of the Bookshelf is not going to say it is the purpose) Santayana's effort has succeeded completely. It is the greatest American book, in the reviewer's opinion, since The Education of Henry Adams, and perhaps the greatest American novel since Mark Twain and Henry James...