Word: wolff
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...book, Island of Death (J. J. Augustin; $7), Dr. Werner Wolff, professor of psychology at Bard College, N.Y., tackles the problem with a "psychological" approach. There is plenty of scattered information about Easter Island, says Dr. Wolff. Why not fit the pieces together and use psychological insight to reconstruct the island's ancient culture? Then the mystery of the statues might be solved...
Laboriously and learnedly, Dr. Wolff assembles his data. Quoting many languages (including several kinds of Polynesian), he describes the Easter Islanders as they appeared to early explorers. They were rather good-looking people, but by modern standards they were not nice. For one thing, they ate one another-enemies, friends, relatives "and neighbors-with gusto. Parents ate their children; children ate their fathers. They drew the line at mothers...
Long-Legged Fish. Behind this round-robin anthropophagy, Dr. Wolff detects the outlines of a weird and dreadful religion. According to ancient legends, death and the fear of death ruled Easter Island. It was good to eat people, for into the eater then flowed the life of a "long-legged fish." Human sacrifices, piously (and frequently) performed on the tops of volcanoes, gave new life...
Author John Steinbeck's estranged wife, Gwyn Conger Steinbeck, temporarily settled in Reno for a routine divorce, got mixed up in ugly complications. Her occasional dinner partner, Denverite Leonard J. Wolff, morose over his own divorce and out $86,000 on the night's gambling, brought her home one morning, 45 minutes later blew his brains out. Authorities cleared Gwyn of any connection with the suicide, declared that she was a victim of circumstances ("it could have happened to any girl...
...Wolff offers an alibi, but no cure, to people with routine hangovers. The amount of alcohol consumed has little to do with the morning-after head pain, he says: it comes from fatigue and excitement. Heavy drinkers will applaud the Wolff theory: that whooping it up all night, without touching a drop, is enough to cause a hangover...