Sharp Fellow
The Twain Shall Meet. By Christopher Rand. (Gollancz, 16s.) IN limpid, unmysterious prose, like that of a good Oxford philosopher, the Far Eastern correspon- dent of the New Yorker sets down in a collection of pleasant pieces what his eyes have seen and his ears heard on his travels. The eyes are sharp, with the sharpness' of deliberate innocence, and the ears sensitive recording instruments. To achieve, such artlessness it is clear that you must exPenu much art and great trouble. Mr. Rand takes us to meet Tenzing the Sherpa trying to cope with his new fame in Darjeeling, or to look at Chandigarh being built by Le Corbusier, or on 3 flight with Chinese officials to a town in Turkestan' Not only do the people and scenes he describes come across with bright clarity, but by a kind of pointilliste miracle—from detail piled upon srnall detail—the ways and traditions of alien societies emerge into light to puzzle and vaguely disquieten us. From which. it may be concluded that the book's title is no brash assertion contradicting Kipling's negation, but an ambiguous, ironical and -
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