The Critic in the Orient

The Critic in the Orient

This book of impressions of the Far East is called "The Critic in the Orient," because the writer for over thirty years has been a professional critic of new booksone trained to get at the best in all literary works and reveal it to the reader. This critical worka combination of rapid reading and equally rapid written estimate of new publicationswould have been deadly, save for a love of books, so deep and enduring that it has turned drudgery into pastime and an enthusiasm for discovering good things in every new book which no amount of literary trash was ever able to smother. After years of such strenuous critical work, the mind becomes molded in a certain cast. It is as impossible for me to put aside the habit of the literary critic as it would be for a hunter who had spent his whole life in the woods to be content in a great city. So when I started out on this trip around the world the critical apparatus which I had used in getting at the heart of books was applied to the people and the places along this great girdle about the globe. Much of the benefit of foreign travel depends upon the reading that one has done. For years my eager curiosity about places had led me to read everything printed about the Orient and the South Seas. Add to this the stories which were brought into a newspaper office by globe trotters and adventurers, and you have an equipment which made me at times seem to be merely revising impressions made on an earlier journey. When you talk with a man who has spent ten or twenty years in Japan or China or the Straits Settlements, you cannot fail to get something of the color of life in those strange lands, especially if you have the newspaper training [x]which impels you to ask questions and to drag out of your informant everything of human interest that the reader will care to know. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 27233
Author: Fitch, George Hamlin
Release Date: Nov 11, 2008
Format: eBook
Language: English