David's Reviews > The Medical Research Novel in English and German, 1900-1950

Hmmm. I'm not sure why this seemed interesting to me as I was prowling the back alleys of Amazon late one night. There was certainly adequate warning that it was basically a repackaging of someone's doctoral dissertation.

Maybe it was because I loved "The Citadel" at whatever impressionable age I read it.

It wasn't screamingly dreadful. At least Phillip A. Scott had the common decency to avoid any kind of hideous postmodern jargon, writing for the most part in simple declarative sentences. Unfortunately, if one were in search of epiphanies about the medical research novel (in English or German), it might be more fruitful just to read Sinclair Lewis's "Arrowsmith", or a couple of A.J. Cronin books and figure it out for oneself. Piercing insights are kind of thin on the ground in Phillip A. Scott's analysis.

But he was quite coherent, and managed to write for over 100 pages without saying anything truly offensive or obnoxious, which earns him two stars. Sadly, what he had to say wasn't really sufficiently interesting to merit a third.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the highly entertaining, albeit decidedly weird, cover that Bowling Green State University Press (or somebody) have chosen to adorn Scott's nugget of erudition. A slightly deranged older physician, a dead ringer for Brahms, stands over a patient 'etherized upon a table'. Her pre-Raphaelite tresses hang down to the side - we cannot tell if she lives or dies. But what is that in the doc's left hand? Why, yes - it's a human heart!! See for yourself:

http://books.google.com/books?id=51fy...

Goddamn it - haven't these people ever heard of GERMS?