[In the following review, Strachan offers a positive assessment of Lin's biography of Su Shih inThe Gay Genius.]

This is a most enjoyable book [The Gay Genius] by a gifted and poetic Chinese writer about another Chinese writer whose greatness has kept him, in a way, a contemporary of all great Chinese writers for nearly a thousand years. In fact, his biographer has presented him, against the background of a period in China not unlike our own period, with such charm and vitality that it is hard to believe in the intervening centuries.

Su Tungpo, or Su Shih, as he is perhaps better known to the West, lived from 1036 to 1101 and wrote lively and enduring poetry and prose. He was no ivory-tower recluse. China has always shown an adult attitude toward poets, and the Chinese poet of stature has seldom been a hermit either by choice or by force of prejudice. From earliest times, poets in China, because they were poets and scholars, have been given high official positions.

The eleventh-century Su Tungpo, therefore, followed long-established tradition in his climb to positions of importance in civil affairs. He served as Minister of Education, and was given the title of Scholar of the Tuanming Palace and later that of Scholar of the Tsecheng Palace. He was posthumously elevated to the rank of Literary Patriotic Duke. Nearly 70 years after his death, the emperors of the southern Sung dynasty, in the new capital of Hangchow, began to read his works and to acknowledge that he had been an intrepid and patriotic citizen, even after he was banished across the mountains. They, therefore, conferred upon him another posthumous title, that of Grand Imperial Tutor.

The mellow wit and wisdom of the poet are evident in his writings and in the lifesize portrait, entitled The Gay Genius. The mellow wit and wisdom of his biographer are evident, also, in the gems of comment which sparkle through the story. The poet hated evil, Lin Yutang tells us, but the evil-doers were of no interest to him. He adds: “Since hatred is an expression of incompetence, he never knew personal hatred, because he did not know incompetence.”

Su Tungpo was not only a force of integrity, and what we now loosely call “democracy” in public life, but a first-rate writer. He was also a talented painter and calligraphist. He performed a number of remarkable engineering feats, including the establishment of water systems for Hangchow and Canton, and the building of flood defenses for the city of Suchow, when the Yellow River overflowed its banks.

When his honest and forthright statements about the government earned him only banishment and ingratitude, he retained his poise and sense of humor, as a Chinese scholar usually does.

In spite of persecution and bitter disappointment, the great poet remained a joyous and vigorous character. Lin Yutang, with warm feeling for his subject, and obviously with conscientious and deep research, has given us an almost “modern” hero. The scholarly Chinese view is a long-range one, producing a philosophy and serenity which come only through the recognition that the human mind is fallible in all ages and throughout all civilizations.

One of the most interesting chapters deals with the Sung dynasty's experiment in state capitalism, China's last, “though by no means” its first, such experiment. Dr. Lin Yutang writes: “The government's absorption of small business was one of the worst features of the regime, and private business came almost to a standstill. … The Emperor found himself, to his great disgust, degenerating in the eyes of the people into a petty peddler selling fruits, ice and coal, calendars, and straw hats.” He points out that the most widely known of the new reforms was the system of loans to farmers.

The book is beautifully written and becomes a substantial contribution to literature in the English language.