Nonsense
The Spoor of Spooks and Other Nonsense. By Bergen Evans. (Michael Joseph, 15s.)
WE have much for which to thank the doubting Thomases of this world, particularly those who, like Dr. Bergen Evans, investigate with such thoroughness the multiple deceits we accept as common- place. It is oddly comforting to be told that nothing is what it seems, and that most things are incorrectly labelled. In this age of quizzes and questions which concentrate on accurate banalities, it is most refreshing to come across Dr. Evans who tells us, so lucidly, that half the time we hardly know what we're talking about. Dr. Evans is a kind of Buffon of nonsense; his Natural History of Nonsense showed him to be a witty, intelligent and dedicated investigator of popular fallacies. His latest contribution in this field, The Spoor of Spooks, can be wholly recommended to all on the verge of a nervous breakdown; Dr. Evans has aline in simplification which puts everything in its proper place.
Dr. Evans seeks 'to give aid and comfort,' but he warns off potential readers 'below the age of intellectual consent,' although, judging from Dr. Evans's findings, few of us can qualify as high, and, according to Spoor of Spooks data, most of us over-consent all the time. Dr. Evans finds us unashamedly gullible. Did I say Dr. Evans was the Buffon of nonsense? I should have said that his
Spoor of Spooks is a Kinsey report on what we believe and why we hang on so tenaciously to long-cherished bits of general mis- knowledge. Dr. Evans's approach is clinical; he takes us back to our childhood when we first reached the historical and were quite convinced that a common asp killed Cleopatra, that Nero, a model town-planner, ripped open his mother's womb, that Lucrezia Borgia, an insipid girl, was expertly acquainted with poisons, and that Louis XIV had courage enough to proclaim `L'Elat, c'est nun!'
Investigating our social activities Dr. Evans shows us to be nothing more commendable than a lot of criminals. In a brilliant cautionary chapter, 'Autointoxication,' which deals with our fondness for the motor car which leads so many of us to kill so many of our fellow human beings, Dr. Evans makes us face the facts: 'Such a state of affairs would not continue unless it grati- fied something deep in our psyche, and as the slaughter goes on, with ever accelerating ferocity, we must face the central fact; we like it. However much we may lament and protest, we are plainly having a wonderful time.' The motor car is found to be 'basically unreasonable,' which must explain why we love it so, and why, in fact, we enjoy all the other nonsense which Dr. Evans shows us to be in possession of.
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