Word: santayana
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...front cover) THE LAST PURITAN-George Santayana -Scribner...
...George Santayana, distinguished philosopher and poet who abandoned a brilliant academic career at Harvard in 1912, is now 72. The Last Puritan is a memoir in the form of a novel, ''partly a work of fiction, partly a discussion of U. S. manners and customs," partly a witty and civilized analysis of modern moral dilemmas. Long (602 pages), rambling, diffuse, The Last Puritan is the February choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Despite the fact that it is sensational only in an intellectual sense, contains none of the melodrama, none of the honeyed sentiments that make...
Whether novel-readers could enjoy all parts of The Last Puritan, whether they could understand its full significance without some knowledge of Santayana's background and philosophical studies, seemed questionable. They might feel that the rippling, intellectual talk, full of subtle dialectical twists and adroit insight, which the philosopher puts into the mouths of his characters, was never heard on earth-or at least never in pre-War New England. They may feel also that the central character of a philosophical football player, a young millionaire who sickens and fades because his moral standards cannot be reconciled with...
...From the hotel room in Rome where he has lived obscurely since 1923, George Santayana has looked back to Harvard and New England for his fable. Born in Madrid, Dec. 16, 1863, he was 9 when he was taken to Boston, where his half-brother and half-sisters were members of the famed Sturgis family of New England. A strange set of circumstances lay behind this migration. "None of us," Santayana once wrote, "ever changed his country, his class, or his religion." Santayana's Spanish-born parents met in the Philippine Islands. His mother's first marriage...
Regrettably enough, Professor Santayana, sojourning in Italy, doesn't know anything about it yet. He will be notified by mail at once. Page doesn't think America will turn to a king this year, but "by 2036 it might...