Chapter One
A Pioneer in Holistic Science
Dr. Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957)
, a medical doctor and psychoanalyst from Austria, was one of the most interesting authors I had the privilege to read at the time when I entered law school in Germany, back in 1975. He has had a scandalous life, full of conflict and strife, was attacked virtually
everywhere and on every front, personally often, or targeting his scientific discoveries, but always in the most vicious manner, including his trial and death in an American jail in 1957, where he died from a heart attack. His biography is so well-known that I don’t need to further expand on it, and will therefore jump right into the pioneering and absolutely leading role he has played for the development of modern medical science and medical health care. In fact, over the entire course of our scientific history, those who were the realscientists were taken as queer freaks, and blamed and plagued to be charlatans, quacks, make-believes, moonwalkers, daydreamers or paranoid doctors, while half-baked mediocre and dry academics without the juice of genius were given laurels and nobel prizes. This was so from the Middle Ages to modern times and from Paracelsus to Nikola Tesla, invariably so.
In our postmodern era of political and social rebellion against a big brother state that is going to be more and more cannibalizing our children, we seem to find it almost normal that those who do things officially are the mafia, and those who are thought to be mafia are the real doers.
We seem to take it for granted that large-scale perversion has set in somewhere around the times of Hammurabi, which resulted in things, people and institutions being upside-down.
One result of this sad history is that young people have largely lost their trust in our governments and are focused upon conspiracies. It seems to me that conspiracy thinking has replaced what formerly was called a ‘critical mind.’ I myself have still received an education that, not because it was called humanistic , was value-based, one of these values being socialcriticism . However, conspiracy thinking is not critical, it is pseudo-criticaland counter-ideological
, and this is not surprising as humanistic education has almost completely disappeared and was replaced by standard education.
To become a critical thinker, one needs to be a scientific thinker first. Without correct reasoning, criticism is dull and superficial, and can never be convincing. It may even come over as an assault, while criticism naturally is a positive contribution and as such constructive. In conspiracy thinking the real penetration of the matter at stake is missing, as it is largely replaced by speculation . To put it as a slogan, we could say that science is intellectual penetration, while conspiracy science is politicalscience fiction , and can easily lead to absolutist and fascist attitudes and opinions. And here I must warn the reader against confusion; speculation is not intuition, it has nothing to do with the gift of genius that anticipates paradigmatic changes. Speculation comes from a certain overdrive of thinking, while intuition is like a lighting between thoughts. In all great scientific novelty, there is intuition. In other words, speculation leads to circular thought, while intuition leads to novelty in the form of new thought
.
Einstein intuited the relativity theory in a dream prior to its formulation as a scientific revolution. His mind was able to perceive the truth of ‘relativity’ in a holistic vision prior to the logical, critical, and methodological drafting of the theory in its scientific terms and vocabulary.
In scientific genius, there is intuition , not speculation.
The science fiction author speculates, but the science author intuits , and here we are facing two worlds that are quite apart. The first
world is popular gimmick that takes the approximation as exact truth, the second world is scientific isolation that suffers from the fact that unscientific minds take methodology spicedwithintuitive insightasapproximation.
By the same token, the first world is where the mass mind and our popular science magazines are thriving, the second world is the ivory tower of our science gurus and saints who, while being meticulously methodic, know that in a quantum world, the idea of scientific objectivity is a myth.
When Dr. Wilhelm Reich published his works on orgasmic sanity and the prevention of sexual pathology through truthful education, he was suspected to be a paranoid quack, and was defamed and persecuted over the main part of his scientific career, to end his life in jail. What is more, the vulgarization of science through the mass media has added another pitfall, which is to classify scientific achievement not according to the scientific novelty it brings, but according to its popularity among those who, for the most part, don’t even know what they are talking about.
This is really what is called ‘giving pearls for the pigs.’ Confronting the scientist with the mass mind is doing injustice to science and injury to the sanctified stupidity of the masses.
Our fanatical obsession with democracy is misplaced where it exposes the novelty bringer to the scribes and pharisaics, the ‘established’ and the common hypocrite as the prototype of Judas in modern times. This will not make science any better, while it certainly makes those richer who are eternally second-guessing life. In the contrary, we have to ask for more protection of scientific genius, and our governments should provide a safe haven for scientific novelty that may well shock old virgins, neurotic churchgoers and the common lot of homo normalis
. We give that space for creative delirium to the artist, why do we
deny it to the scientist? We allow artists to live in a certain protected space, surrounded by friends and donors, art benefactors and softminded agents, but we expose our best scientists to the tiger-claws of our ferocious populace, just as in the Roman games.
What is it that makes the masses resent the science genius while they do not really bother about perversities artistic geniuses may indulge in? The suspicion, the estrangement and the hatred that the revolutionary scientist faces comes from the fact that he or she actually anticipates social change, and often helps trigger it, while the artist who lives against social and legal rules just satisfies a personal need for space and freedom. Society fears change because it confronts established conventions previously thought to be set in stone or undisputed. Social change is likely to happen for we are living in the field of all possibilities. Reich had a profound vision for society and like visionaries before him, he was persecuted.
Jesus of Nazareth was put to death not because he indulged in personal fancies, but because he was showing a viable way of living that was in accordance with love , not with law alone, thereby subtly suggesting that love is superior to law, or that all law has to be interpreted in a spirit of love.
That his vision was right and sound, we know it all today, while at his lifetime the very idea of love being superior to law was revolutionary!
When we read through the biographies and autobiographies of outstanding scientists, we see that they all had and have a social vision , that they can see and imagine how their scientific novelty will
affect social togetherness, society, and the way people live and behave in time and space.
I found this especially true for Wilhelm Reich who was building a long-needed bridge over the gap between natural science and social sciences.
Fritjof Capra, in several of his books, writes quite eloquently about Reich and his achievements, and he especially notes this point, and acknowledges the pioneering role that Reich played for our modern understanding of science and social sciences being two parts of one functional whole.
Because of his highly intuitive vision, Reich was then able to see the functional link between the repression of our natural emotions and fascism as a social disease.
As emotional stuckness and neurosis typically go along with the person’s denialofcomplexity , so do fascist regimes belittle and deny life’s intrinsic patterned complexity and come up with simplistic formulae for solving social and political problems. For today’s scientific elite, this link cannot be unthought, but for generations before Reich, there was simply no connection to be seen between the two phenomena.
Another element present in the life stories of revolutionary scientists is their deep concern for being benefactors to society, their care for bringing about positive changes for each one of us, which is often frowned upon as ‘misplaced enthusiasm’ or idealism .
Really, the painful paradox is that their very zeal to bring good to the masses lets those masses reject them, and meet them with afterthoughts and suspicion; it’s the tragic element of purity meeting an impure mind, or sainthood meeting vulgarity. This was affecting me personally on an emotional level when I was reading those life stories, and I was reading them over years and years as my favorite pastime. Well, this study would probably never have seen the day if I had not indulged in devouring these biographies, and as it may be expected, the present study is rather one about the inventor of orgonomy than about orgonomy itself.
Seen from the perspective and the insights of quantum physics, my approach actually comes in handy, as the observer cannot be separated from the object of observation. As a matter of analogy, then, the study of science cannot be separated from the study of the people who do science, the scientists .
This leads to more coherence, as scientific novelty cannot be really understood without understanding the one who brought it about.
When I contemplate the entire life path of a scientist, I can more soundly and holistically understand how he or she came to make the discoveries they made. Then, I can exclude or forebear an element of randomness as a pitfall in non-scientific thinking.
There simply is no randomness in intelligent people’s professional lives, but the mass mind suspects it to be present in order to veil their ignorance of certain facts or relationships between things that seem to be unrelated at first sight.
Let me again provide an example from the quite dramatic life story of Wilhelm Reich.
When Reich was completing his orgasm research, and before he formulated his theory of orgonotic health, there was an episode that often is described by biographers as a sort of intermezzo , and the deep connection is regularly overlooked between Reich’s orgasm research and his discovery of the orgonotic streaming
in the subtle energy body. This interlude, as it were, is Reich’s experiment with what later was called the Sapa Bions
. The event bears an element of randomness, and Reich’s detractors always played on lacking connectivity between Reich’s discoveries as a matter of proving him wrong or paranoid where he was simply lucid. When Reich discovered that desert sand, when burnt and put in distilled water, was irradiating a blue-green aura that vitalizes plants, animals and the human body, he discovered that what he found to be sexualenergy in his orgasm research is actually a manifestation of the cosmic energy or life force , which cycles through both living and inanimate substance. The sunlight filled the sand particles with that force and through burning those particles and thereby melting them, the energy was freed and irradiated in the form of orgonotic radiation or streaming. When we look at the bion experiment as an isolated event
, it certainly bears an element of randomness, but that is because our observer perspective is reductionist and not holistic.
For me it is obvious that destiny helped Reich to find the truth through the cosmic play of synchronicity , and on this very line of reasoning, the bion experiments are to be seen as synchronistic events that led to a further sprocket in the chain of causality in Reich’s scientific life and in his research on the cosmic life energy.
Chapter Two
The Genius of Wilhelm Reich
My reaction to Reich’s research went through a certain pattern; in other words, it was a journey, starting back in 1975. I just read all I could get, then learnt about his fate and death in jail, then went through a revolt and joined the rings of the ‘Reichians’ in Berlin, the hagiographers, the groupings, then wrote an essay about his research. Then only was I able to eventually understand Reich as the person he really was: the scientist, the doctor, the discoverer.
It was a convoluted journey through thesis, antithesis and synthesis for gaining a somewhataccurate image about Reich that was backed by facts, not by myths. I should say that contrary to those who write pamphlets about Reich, I really have studied his works, not just some of them, but the integrality of hispublishedandnon-publishedwritings, including translations.
Myron Sharaf, author of a famed biography of Wilhelm Reich, said in a lecture on Orgonotic Functionalism in Berlin that Reich was always to him like great music.
The wonderful thing about Reich, it’s like great music. If you haven’t heard great music in a few months, it sounds like you never heard it before. And when you read Reich after not having read him for awhile, it feels like you haven’t read it before.
Myron Sharaf, Orgonotic Functionalism, Lecture in Berlin, Germany, 22 October 1989, published in: Heretic’s Notebook, ed. by James DeMeo (2002), 4554, at 45. See also Myron Sharaf, Fury on Earth (1983).
As uncanny and potentially unscientific as this remark sounds, it is true. I read Reich upon enrolling in law school in Germany, and I
am still today reading Reich, forty years later. Every time I read him, it’s as if reading him for the first time—why? Because his diction is so immediate and his scientific truth so shining and authentic that you feel reading him for the first time in your life. And every time it’s a transforming and deeply enlightening experience!
As a research lawyer, I have studied the circumstances of Reich’s imprisonment, the whole discussion he and his lawyer had with the authorities. The complete information was only recently released and the declassified FBI record published.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Dr. Wilhelm Reich, BUFILE: 100-14601, 813 pages.
This extensive dossier contains all the letters he wrote to the authorities and to his defense attorney. The letters he wrote to the authorities, especially to FBI Director John Edgar Hoover, bore a perhaps deliberately offensive tone: the language was rude and coarse, and some of the allegations seemed absurd. There was a tendency throughout to dramatize matters, and to blow the emotional whistle. In fact, the situation was not as dramatic. There was a simple violation of an FDA injunction by shipping one of his accumulators interstate to a client.
The FDA had disapproved the orgone accumulator because of lacking or contradictory evidence of its healing powers. In such a situation, a wise person would not fight but try to conciliate, get out of trouble, and then work for a later approval of his medical device by the FDA. Reich did the contrary, he not only defied the court action by not entering an appearance with the argument that the whole procedure was based upon ‘fraud,’ then, arrested, continued to tell the authorities they were ‘pranking gangsters’ and ‘psychopathic murderers,’ participating in a huge conspiracy that was intending to ‘destroy mankind.’
Honestly, one wouldn’t think that a serious researcher, facing contradiction, would act out in such a way; his reaction could only corroborate negative rumors about him, and give his enemies right in their assumptions if those assumptions were true or not is not even the question in such a case. And as a side remark, I may be allowed to add here that either his lawyer was incompetent or Reich overruled his advice by submitting documents to the authorities without prior approval by his legal counsel.
In addition, he was proclaiming himself throughout this trial as ‘the discoverer of the cosmic life energy.’ He even signed his official trial correspondence with the title ‘Counsel for the Discovery of the Cosmic Life Energy.’
I have demonstrated with my own long-term research that Reich was certainly not the discoverer of the human energy field, while he made an important contribution in a legacy of major scientific novelty that dozens of scientists from around the world were working on since times immemorial.
The Wilhelm ReichTrust in Rangeley, Maine, now reveal on their website an unpublished statement by Reich, that gives an answer, without however mentioning with one word the trial correspondence:
I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted of making this energy usable. This is the sole difference between my work and all preceding knowledge.
The answer is that Reich was emotionally entangled with his work, to a point to perceive adverse reactions to his research as targeting his person. While it is documented that Reich was a walking tempest, known for his ‘explosions’ of rage, he could not forgive others any intellectual mediocrity, or the slightest lack of understanding of his daringly novel research topics. When facing a discussion, he would not quietly explain matters from the perspective of his research, but become absolute and personal in his responses, thereby transforming people who were merely critical or skeptical into lifelong enemies.
Interestingly, and symptomatically so, I have been in touch with people who were close to Reich, and who work on the lines of his research, such as Mary Boyd Higgins, trustee of his foundation and curator of the Wilhelm Reich Trust in Rangeley, Maine, and others, and was wondering about their categorical, unfriendly and aggressive tone, while I was doing non-funded research work on Reich to write an essay on his merits as a maverick researcher on the human energy field.
I will now shortly explain why and how Reich was a true scientific genius while as a simple human, he was certainly not up to the same standard of excellence!
However, it is important to remember that research on the life force, the secretoflife , was considered heresy under the Church’s definition of science. That is why great scientists like Paracelsus, Swedenborg, or Mesmer who knew about the ether and observed the moving and alternating current of our emotional body had a hard time to survive times of utter darkness and superstition. Paracelsus had to appear before the ecclesiastical court several times in his life for defending his miraculous healing successes against the Inquisition’s allegation he had used witchcraft to bring them about. At that time, according to the Church’s doctrine only recognized saints were allowed to do miracles, while the Inquisition in all other cases generally subsumed miracles and healing miracles under the witchcraft definition contained in the The Malleus Maleficarum(The WitchHammer) , first published in 1486.
Franz Anton Mesmer equally was slandered and persecuted, once famous, for his research on what he called animalmagnetism . And yet these men seem to have discovered something for the West which was never disputed in the East, that is, a bioplasmatic
energy as functional catalyzer of life in that it penetrates all, animates all, fills all, vitalizes all and destroys all again when a natural life cycle is at its end. The Chinese speak of ch’i
, the Japanese of ki
, the Germans of Lebensenergie or Vitalkraft
, the French of élan vital or force nerveuse
, Anglo-Saxons of bioenergy or the human energy field
, the Indians of kundalini or prana and most tribal peoples of mana or wakonda
.
Also the old Egyptians knew the vital energy. We can suppose that their notion of ka
, a term often to be found in Pharaonic hieroglyphs denotes that same universal energy.
Among tribal populations, the Kahunas from Hawaii, within their Huna religion, have extensively and systematically studied the life force that they call mana
. This teaching about mana , the vital force, and aka , a protruding bioplasmatic substance that is known as ectoplasm , forms an integral part of their religion that, for this reason, may be called a scientific religion.
—See, for example, Max Freedom Long, The Secret Science at Work: The Huna Method as a Way of Life, Marina del Rey: De Vorss Publications, 1995,
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ROSS,
VICTOR. Evolution
of the oil industry. il *$1.50 (5c) Doubleday 665
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Beginning with the first mention of “oil out of the flinty rock” in Deuteronomy and the ancients’ acquaintance with it in the earliest historical records, the book shows that petroleum is a comparatively new agent for the service of mankind and the latest of earth’s riches man has learned to adapt to his needs. The development of the industry is described from the boring of the first well in 1859 to the present time. The book is illustrated and the contents are: Petroleum in history and legend; What is petroleum? Dawn of America’s petroleum industry; Founder of the petroleum industry; Petroleum as a world industry; Locating the oil well; Drilling the oil well; Collecting and transporting crude: the pipe line; Refining and manufacturing petroleum products; Petroleum and other industries; Petroleum on the seven seas; Petroleum in the great war; America’s investment in petroleum; Petroleum in the future.
Beginning with a description of old Boston, by the way of a foreword, the author invites the reader to accompany her on a trip along the earliest of the great roads in New England, the old coast road, connecting Boston with Plymouth. We are asked to travel comfortably “picking up what bits of quaint lore and half-forgotten history we most easily may. ” The trip is charmingly reminiscent a pleasure trip into history and old traditions, as the table of contents reveals: Dorchester Heights and the old coast road; Milton and the Blue hills; Shipbuilding at Quincy; The romance of Weymouth; Ecclesiastical Hingham; Cohasset ledges and marshes; The Scituate shore; Marshfield, the home of Daniel Webster; Duxbury homes; Kingston and its manuscripts; Plymouth. The illustrations and chapter vignettes are by Louis H. Ruyl.
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ROUTZAHN,
MRS MARY BRAYTON
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The book comes under the “Survey and exhibit series” edited by Shelby M. Harrison and gives a review of the educational activities carried on in recent years by means of modern transportation facilities, i.e. “the putting of exhibits, demonstrations, motion pictures and other campaigning equipment on railroad trains, trolley cars, and motor trucks so that they may tour a whole city, a country, or cross a continent.” (Editor’s preface) Contents: Purposes and advantages of traveling campaigns; How trains have been used in campaigning; Campaigning with motor vehicles; Advance publicity and organization; The message of the tour; Exhibit cars; The tour of the truck or train; Follow-up work; Appendix, bibliography, index and illustrations.
Ann Am Acad 93:226 Ja ’21 40w
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ROWLAND, HENRY COTTRELL. Duds.
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ROWLAND, HENRY COTTRELL. Peddler. il
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The somewhat erratic peddler of the title carried his miscellaneous stock of wares in and on an immense ex-army truck, so that his approach was invariably heralded by a clanging and banging of hardware. In this way he made his entry into the exclusive New England colony where the Kirkland family of four sons and a daughter was justly famous. To the same resort in less spectacular style came a small band of European crooks, who proceeded at once to work silently and effectively along their own original lines of robbery. Not until William Kirkland was accused of the thefts, did the peddler reveal the fact that he was there as a member of the secret police incognito. But when an attempt upon William’s life was made, the peddler was on hand to rescue him and to try to capture the criminals. Altho the result was not satisfactory to him, the others concerned seemed to be quite content, and the bonus which he claimed in the person of Diana Kirkland reconciled him to what he
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ROYCE, JOSIAH. Lectures on modern idealism.
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A book containing the articles which appeared in the Nation together with new material. Bertrand Russell writes as a communist who finds much to criticize in the bolshevist method of putting communism into practice. He says: “A fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with it very far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and feeling, in philosophy and art and private relations, seems absolutely necessary if industrialism is to become the servant of man instead of his master. In all this, I am at one with the Bolsheviks; politically, I criticize them only when their methods seem to involve a departure from their own ideals.” (Preface) The book is the outcome of a brief visit to Russia. Part 1, The present condition of Russia, has chapters on: What is hoped for Bolshevism; General characteristics; Lenin, Trotsky, and Gorky; Art and education (written by Mr Russell’s secretary, Miss D. W. Black); Daily life in Moscow; etc. Part 2, Bolshevik theory, is a criticism of the materialistic conception of history and other accepted doctrines, with chapters on: Why Russian communist has failed; and Conditions for the success of communism.
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RUSSELL, CHARLES EDWARD. Story of the Nonpartisan league; a chapter in American evolution. il
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“Mr Russell’s defense of the league’s attitude during the war is the best that can be put forward, and it is put forward by a sincere patriot who risked and suffered much for his loyalty. But the country has made up its mind on that point, and his defense, honest as it is, is unconvincing.”
N Y Times 25:16 Jl 18 ’20 3950w
Wis Lib Bul 16:233 D ’20 60w
RUSSELL, MRS FRANCES THERESA (PEET).
Satire in the Victorian novel. *$2.50
Macmillan 823
20–2031
“The author of this book is a professor at Leland Stanford junior university, and her interpretation of the satiric contributions to literature, offered by novelists of the Victorian epoch, has literary as well as scholastic value. Written primarily as a thesis, offered at Columbia university for the degree of doctor of philosophy, the author’s style bears necessarily unmistakable and potent signs of academic standards. The volume is divided into Premises, Methods, Objects and Conclusions. After giving to her readers the groundwork of her scheme, making certain that they understand the satiric motive, Professor Russell passes to the categorical stage in her exposition. She analyzes methods of satire, romantic, realistic, ironic. For this purpose she quotes from the writers of the period she is considering, writers such as Samuel Butler, Thomas Love Peacock, Meredith, Disraeli, Thackeray, Trollope and Dickens. She takes pains to show us how much ingenuity these men display in their methods of satiric attack and how their weapons vary, likewise their skill.”
Boston Transcript
“A thoroughly competent and scholarly study.”
Booklist 17:22 O ’20
“What will interest the un-academic mind particularly in this treatise is the author’s personal contribution. She offers, sometimes with a charming unconsciousness, her philosophy of living; and more than one of her reflections has a satiric thrust which makes us realize that the talent for touching on the weaknesses of humanity with a deftly humorous hand did not die with the Victorians!” D. F. G.
Boston Transcript p4 Mr 17 ’20 600w
Lit D p126 Ap 17 ’20 950w
“She has a better talent for the abstract than for the concrete; her analyses are better than her discussions of actual examples. The reader learns much from her pages by gleaning over wide territory, but he drives behind an inexorable chauffeur who whirls him past alluring byways and leafy vistas. Names and ideas spin by like telephone poles. The author has a nice ear for the turn of a sentence, but she cannot train sentences to speak together.”
Nation 111:50 Jl 10 ’20 250w
N Y Times p26 Ag 15 ’20 50w
“It is full of sustaining, gently amusing reading, and most important the reader will want to read it all. There is no waste.”
Spec 124:83 Jl 17 ’20 900w
“A certain rehabilitation of the Victorians is the chief service that Prof. Russell seems to have performed, often, seemingly, in spite of herself.” G: B. Dutton
The Times [London] Lit Sup p242 Ap 15 ’20 200w
RUSSELL, RUTH. What’s the matter with Ireland? *$1.75 Devin-Adair 914.5
20–13138
“Miss Russell has undertaken her theme objectively, in the best reportorial sense, and by sounding a number of disparate apostles as widely dissimilar as De Valera, George Russell, Countess Markiewiecz and the Bishop of Killaloe she manages to throw light upon all phases of the problem. The book opens with a chapter on statistics, which bring the present plight of the country into the foreground of the reader’s imagination, and with this accomplished, the author turns to the narration of incidents, and to the gleaning of opinions, which are set down with impartial emphasis.”—Freeman
“She succeeds in rousing our sympathy for the poor working girls of Dublin, and the other unfortunate people of the city and the bogfield. But when she takes up the political, she seems unable to do justice to her subject. There is no doubt Miss Russell’s intentions are good, but it is doubtful if such books as this will help Ireland’s cause. ” Cath World 112:396 D ’20 210w
+ − + Springf’d Republican p5a Ja 30 ’21 1900w
“She wisely refrains from any ex cathedra dogmatism on her own account.”
L. B.
Freeman 2:214 N 10 ’20 140w
RUSSELL, THOMAS. Commercial advertising. (Studies in economics and political science)
*$2.50 Putnam 659
20–297
“Mr Russell is the president of the Incorporated society of advertisement consultants, and was sometime advertisement manager of the Times. He writes, therefore, with authority, and he deals fully with such themes as the economic justification of advertising, the functions and policy of advertising, the chief methods of advertising, and with advertising as a career. ” (Ath) “The six lectures were delivered in the spring of this year at the London school of economics.” (Springf’d Republican)
“The book should be useful and suggestive to commercial men and others.”
Ath p929 S 19 ’19 70w
Springf’d Republican p8 F 7 ’20 400w
“The six lectures are not only worthy of their academic auspices but might well serve as models of modern academic exposition. They have the breadth and insight that is properly called philosophic,
whatever the subject-matter may be, and the concreteness that makes a philosophic treatment glow with interest.”
+
The Times [London] Lit Sup p510 S 25 ’19 900w
RUTZEBECK, HJALMAR. Alaska man ’ s luck. *$2 Boni & Liveright
20–26890
“The book is a unique autobiographical chronicle, told in the form of a diary, of the struggles of its author-hero to make a home for himself in the land of the snows. Hjalmar Rutzebeck, or Svend Norman, as he calls himself in his book, was born and raised in Denmark. He left school at the age of twelve and has had no further formal schooling since then. We first meet our twentieth century viking in Los Angeles, just after he had been honorably discharged from the United States army. With winning naïveté he tells us how he has fallen in love with Marian. When Svend learns that the northland is as dear to Marian as it is to him, he immediately sets out to make a stake there.... As Svend goes on from adventure to adventure he records them in his diary, and it is this diary, mailed to Marian piecemeal as he went along, that is reprinted in ‘Alaska man ’ s luck.’” N Y Times
“Interesting specially to men or older boys.”
Booklist 17:74 N ’20
“It must be confessed that the tale is fascinating, in spite of, or perhaps because of its naïveté.” Margaret Ashmun
Bookm 52:344 D ’20 120w
“An extraordinary story.”
Boston Transcript p4 Ja 19 ’21 330w
“There is no self-consciousness in ‘Alaska man ’ s luck,’ nor is there any suggestion of a sophisticated striving to return to the simple and primitive.” L. M. R.
Freeman 2:454 Ja 19 ’21 110w
“For his first novel, Hjalmar Rutzebeck has wisely chosen a hero of his own race and temperament. He attains a consistent realism by letting Svend Norman’s diaries and letters tell their own story.”
N Y Evening Post p20 O 23 ’20 220w
“The simplicity and directness with which the author tells his blood-stirring story, even the occasional crudities in his English, serve to enhance rather than mar the epic quality of his narrative.”
N Y Times p14 N 14 ’20 2250w
RYAN, AGNES. Whisper of fire. *$1.25 Four seas co. 811
A series of poems arranged as: Wood, Kindling, Smoldering, Smoke, Blaze, Smoke again, Flame, Coals, Ashes. Altho they are loosely strung together the succession of verses tells the story of a woman ’ s love life.
Booklist 16:272 My ’20
“Several of the verses, notably ‘I wonder,’ are compact and vivid in imagery and spiritual message. ”
Cath World 110:844 Mr ’20 40w
Nation 111:247 Ag 28 ’20 40w
“Each poem is a mere fragment in free verse, a chip off the old block of femininity. This will please readers of poetry of the hour. For the present vogue is fragmentary. Many of these poems are trivial and unimportant, but a few have the eloquence of reality.”
Marguerite Wilkinson
N Y Times 25:82 F 8 ’20 120w
RYAN, JOHN AUGUSTINE. Church and socialism; and other essays. (Social justice bks.)
