SOURCE: Strachan, Pearl. “One Writer Introduces Another.” Christian Science Monitor 39, no. 301 (18 November 1947): 18.

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...