Shorter Notices
The.Pleasure of Being Oneself. By C. E. M. load. (Weidenfeln and Nicolson. i 2s. 6d.) MR. JoAD has written nothing better than these charming essays on the pleasures of being himself. The book is full of lively relish for the things he likes—walking, climbing, food, talking, farming and the pianola ; -the things he-hates—motor cars, government officials, British railway meals and the despoilers of the countryside—are attacked with equal gusto. Yet although the subject is Mr. Joad himself, this is not an introspective book. He tells us that -when- ever he has ventured to look inward he has always looked out again very quickly. But he does not spare himself. Flashes of almost supererogatory honesty illuminate his pages. There is, for example, an account of how, as a prep.-school boy, he made havoc with the papers of a scholar in whose home he stayed, and another of how, as a Civil Servant, neglected by those who ought (he thought) .to have promoted him, Mr. Joad contrived elaborate devices for dodging work or used the Government's time and stationery and typing staff to write the books which he hoped would bring him fame and fortune elsewhere.
Fame and fortune came, but the reader is unpersuaded that Mr. Joad has ever thought them worth it. For Mr. Joad is a philosopher of the old Victorian-classical kind, which looks for a more satisfying reality behind the world of sensible appear- ance. There is thus the very slightest hint of melancholy in this book, not least in those parts where the author appears as the ever- green terrible child. He writes with assur- ance enough of the pleasures of living—and every day for him is closely planned and packed—but the pleasure of being Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad at the age of 59 is conveyed with less immediate conviction.
MAURICE CRoisToN.
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