BOSWELL'S CLAP AND OTHER ESSAYS by William B. Ober, M.D.
Southern Illinois University; 291 pages; $17.50
To sweeten adversity, Shakespeare played up the toad's jeweled eye rather than its warts and bloat. Dr. William Ober, a Boston-born pathologist with an 18th century prose style and a tart Yankee wit, would rather dissect the toad. The eye looks out for itself; the rude and frequently ugly support systems of truth and beauty need all the help they can get. There is, of course, a long history of the artist as freak and invalid: Plato's ideas of...
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