Volume 23, Number 11 · June 24, 1976
Swift's Sting
By Irvin Ehrenpreis
Jonathan Swift
by A. L. Rowse
Scribner's, 240 pp., $8.95
The challenge of Gulliver's Travels is of a playful fantasy that lures one into nightmare, of a nightmare from which one awakes to find it truth. Swift charms us with Gulliver's wild tales and gives us a sense of tolerant superiority both to the storyteller and to the people he talks about. At unpredictable moments the pygmies or giants commit some atrocity, or Gulliver himself disturbs us with his moral lapses. But the ugly moment passes like a sprinkle of rain, and we are back in the sunshine land of fairy tales.
Review, 2589 words
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