The re-issue of Dr. Anand’s classic in a fresh edition is to be welcomed for more than one reason. The format of the book is larger; the typography and lay-out are easy on the eye; and the illustrations in colour and black-and-white fortify the text. The first edition came out half a century ago in 1932, the second in 1957 and now the third. Since this is no glossy coffee-table book, kudos to both the publisher and the author.
Buddhadeva Bose who died in 1974 at the age of sixty-six was a distinguished Bengali poet, novelist and critic and the work under review is the English translation of his Mahabharater Katha. Fascinating as his fresh look at the greatest epic not only of India but of the whole world is, it would seem that the wrong man has been selected for reviewing it.
In ‘Cultural Literacy, Hirsch outlines a plan for making cultural literacy our education priority, to define core know¬ledge, put more information in school text books and develop tests of core learning that can help students, measure their progress. An index entitled ‘What literate Americans know’ was compiled by Hirsch and his two colleagues Joseph Kett and James Trefil.
This is a formidable book, strenuous to read, difficult to grasp, and nearly impos¬sible to review (though many have tried, including an editor of the firm which published the work). We learn from the acknowledgments that it was originally drafted at Cambridge during 1974-77 (presumably as a doctoral thesis), then its chapters got ‘somewhat distended’ no doubt as a result of discussion with the numerous scholars and editors the author has named, and only a ‘fellow Forsterian’ in India has ventured to publish it ten years later.
At the outset I indicate my limitations as reviewer of this latest collection of Bakhtin’s work to be translated into English. I have no Russian, nor most of the languages which Bakhtin knew so well and from which he drew copiously to ill¬ustrate his arguments. Also I am not well acquainted with several of the disciplines with which his wide and deep thinking engaged.
So much has been written and said about the post-Independence economic develop- ment of India, that yet another narration of the Indian experience demands some
justification.